Reality TV is one of the most popular genre the audience like to watch and there are variety of styles and techniques within reality TV. It is associated with everything from people to pets and from birth to death. According to Hills (2005), the genre of Reality has changed where it was associated with on-scene footage of law and order whereas now it is about how people live their daily lives and the dramas they have. Following on Hills (2005), reality television is like following the people with cameras and showing what they do every day. Watching the reality series of 'Cathy Come Home' in tutorial showed the shaking of camera and even if it was a scripted drama it showed the reality from the circumstances that people went through and with the acting of normal people. Television producers, directors and writers increasingly aimed to depict a 'history from below' that could give a voice to the working class experience and touch the social conscience of their audience. Cathy Come Home (1996), directed by Ken Loach and produced by Tony Garnett is widely recognized as a landmark docudrama that showed the chronicling of events and social realism that characterizes British documentary. The events that happened from the time of the two young couple to their marriage and all the difficulties they had to go through, showed the audience the miserable period in the political affairs.
The big series of 'Big Brother' was a major hit, and a lot of people were involved in voting online and text messaging to eliminate each person for the episodes. According to Hills (2005), 'Big Brother' and other reality television series are scripted and edited in particular ways so that audience can enjoy and follow up with the episodes. For example, Jerry Springer show is one of the most popular talk show that deals with real life problems with relationships and family crisis that needs to be solved. However, they are usually scripted which will make the audience want to watch. It is interesting that nowadays that reality TV is popular when the audience know that they are partially scripted but still enjoying the fact that they are from ordinary people which we may see in the streets or the next door neighbor. This can be the fact that most people are tired of only seeing real actors and actresses and presuming what the hit drama series would be about. In Korea the reality TV is really popular with documentaries about ordinary people and showing how they live. There was one episode about a Indian women married to a Korean man and it was about the women moving into Korea just by herself. It was interesting to watch and their stories might have been scripted with different episodes but showing their real life home and family showed the realism of working class people. Comparing Reality TV with other genres such as Fantasy and Sci-fiction are totally the opposite way. Whereas the Fantasy is going beyond reality and is about the other world that the director creates. Reality TV focuses on showing realism that audience will agree and understand.
References
Hill, A. (2005) The reality genre. In A. Hill, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. (pp. 14 – 40). Oxon: Routledge.
Biressi, A. & Nunn, N. (2005). Real Lives, documentary approaches. In Reality TV: realism and revelation. (pp. 35-58). London: Wallflower.
I agree that there are so many real TV in Korea as well. But personally I don't think they are 100 percent real. I think they have some script to follow
ReplyDeleteHi May Kim, interesting post!
ReplyDelete"Reality TV focuses on showing realism that audience will agree and understand."
Was just curious, what do you mean by this? My idea is that if a 'reality tv' show is too fake and scripted, I will get bored and annoyed at the show..because I feel as though I am being cheated! The show has to be convincing and life-like, in order for me to really care about what is going on, feel for the characters, etc. Is this what you are saying, that the 'realism' of reality tv must be believable, or am I misunderstanding? :)
yea that is true, I get so annoyed with some of the reality shows these days, there is too many and we know that it is all scripted. The sentence "Reality TV focuses on showing realism ... " the one you mentioned in saying that even reality show tries hard to show realism so that the audience can understand and agree to. For example, when we watch Kardashians, they have these huge parties and live their luxury lives and show their real lives everyday, however, we know that everyone doesnt live like their family and dont even have that many dramas. Even the reality shows wants to show their realism of taking their lives and putting it on a show. thanks for your comment Jess :)
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