What are reality shows?

What are reality shows?

• “Unabashedly commercial genre united less by aesthetic rules or certainties than by the fusion of popular entertainment with a self-conscious claim to the discourse of the real. This coupling . . . Is what has made reality TV an important generic forum for a range of institutional and cultural developments

• (Murray & Ouellette, 2004, pp 22).

Growth of Reality TV

INDIAN REALITY TV

Producers

• Cost

• Revenue

• TRP ratings of channels

• Dishing out what customers want

VIEWERS

• As spectacle of humiliation and grief?

• Jade Goody

• Insights into human psychology?

• Hear out Dr. John Paterson, Dean of Education

• Emotions?

Non - Reality

So What is it really?

• Debra Seagal’s notes on American Detective

• John Langley, executive producer COPS calls it "recutting or refinessing“

• Dr. William Beard, University of Alberta professor of film and media studies

• The Dating Experiment – Adam Sandler

• Jeff Bartsch – Editor – Blind Date

• BUT

• VIEWERS AREN’T FOOLS

INSTANT CELEBRITY

RACISM

IMPACT

• Cultural indicators and Cultivation

• Ettema and Whitney 1994

• Mean World Syndrome

• Gerbner (1994)

• Cultivation Analysis

• Signorielli and Morgan 1990

Impact cont..

• The more people watch television, and hence are exposed to these distortions of reality, the more they will come to view the real world as similar to the world portrayed on television and thus perceive a greater real-world incidence of the over-represented entities

So what do we do?

• Producers censor their own content

• Promote better breed of reality shows

• But will these sell? (Fountainhead)

Reality TV – Why or Why Not?

• Escape reality or manifest destiny

• Orwell Vs Huxley