How has the documentary genre influenced reality TV and how it presents the ‘real’?
So much of our television today is dominated by Reality TV. It is a genre that tries to portray what is ‘real’ to the viewer by following a subject through whatever they are doing whether it be a task or day to day life; and often stopping an switching to interviews with the subject to narrate what is going on. In my opinion it isn’t the most ‘real’ thing to see and I think that we are very manipulated by what we are told is ‘real’ today.
John Grierson who coined the term ‘documentary’ described the document process as ‘creative treatment of actuality’ (p. 36). In the 1930’s he was one of the first to depict everyday people on television. No longer were ordinary people unseen on the television anymore. Documentary has influenced reality TV in the way that people want to see ordinary people on television! It is interesting to see people like ourselves who live everyday lives on the television and follow their lives to get a little break from our own. "What these different documentary styles share is a political concern, differently informed by socio-cultural context, to depict the lives of 'ordinary' people."
Documentary has had a huge influence on some of the very contemporary shows today like ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’. It is a show following the lives of an American family showing their day to day lives as a weekly show. When a family member has a problem, it flicks to an interview of them to narrate how the problem was solved. A very noticeable change refering to this is how reality TV seems to be getting more extreme and more fake. More and more reality shows are coming out only depicting very wealthy people, shying away from Grierson’s idea of depicting everyday ordinary people.
Biressi, A. & Nunn, N. (2005). Real Lives, documentary approaches. In Reality TV: realism and revelation. (pp. 35-58) London: Wallflower.
I think it is a very good point in your last paragraph that incresingly 'reality tv' show people who are quite wealthy and famous, or an 'oddity' in some way, and not representative of the 'everyday' person on the street. It seems like 'reality tv' is increasinglty the visual version of typical fodder for 'glossies'.
ReplyDeleteHi Zane,
ReplyDeleteYes, well written and well said Zane. I totally agree with especially what you saying about we as viewers are getting more manipulated by what we are told is ‘real’ with respect to reality shows. I have also noticed that some reality shows don’t seem ‘real’ anymore as episodes go on. It seems to be more and more scripted and acting like they’ve been trained.
It’s actually NOT surprising that ordinary people were filmed and seen on TV in 1930s. I think it was before all the actors and actresses who we now know debuted some time after TV first produced some films. People who were on TV at the time must have been ordinary people in a sense.
Hi Zane
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen a lot of reality TVs but I think it is true that audiences are interested of how people solve problems. Some people think would rather go and watch reality TV shows because they think they are more realistic and sometimes can find hint of how to live better!
A well-written post - what about the 'presentation' of the real? How is this carried out in the Kardashians?
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