Title

"For the actual 'real world', see Reality." - Wikipedia's entry on The Real World reality program.

Introduction

What is reality tv?

Why does it matter?

The Meaning of Entertainment

Exposé

Escapism

Voyeurism

The Human Narrative

Anagnorisis/Peripeteia

News as Entertainment

Guilty Pleasures

(D)evolution of Entertainment

Comedy and Tragedy

Celebrity Culture

Celebrity as a Causa Sui

The Truman Show and First Person Media

Pornography

Self-exposure for Profit

Commodifying the Human Experience

The Cultural Fire Sale

In 2006 Time Magazine named You it's "Person of the Year," declaring that we are all part of "a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube? and the online metropolis MySpace? ." The recognition of you, the average man, as the "Person of the Year" was, of course, an affirmation of the digital revolution; the advent of a new brand of culture, democratized by personal media. The new technologies that foster and facilitate our so-called digital revolution have done more than just expand the ways we communicate; they've discovered new, almost limitless possibilities for what and how we consume.

Reality as a Product

In the classical economic model, wealth was generated almost exclusively by the production and sale of goods (explained very well by puppets here). Human activity was not widely consumed as entertainment, because there were very few ways to transmit performances. Performance-entertainment was generally limited only to live performances of music, theater or sporting events. The boundaries between consumption and production were clearly defined. As our technological capabilities expanded, enabling us record and transmit our activities with ease, the classical model of production and wealth-generation gives way to a new model - a model of nearly limitless consumption, where all things have economic value. Suddenly, the mundane activities of daily life become a value-generating, consumable product, by virtue of the simple fact that they are watchable; reality itself becomes an economic good.

Division Between Labor and Leisure

On MTV's My Super Sweet 16 viewers are invited to watch wealthy teen girls as they plan extravagant parties. The girls don't hesitant to admit that they need to out-do their friends and impress their guest, the more ostentatious the better. It is tempting deem this behavior as conspicuous and unproductive consumption - and generally it would be - but in the new, post-industrial media economy, it becomes something different. These young girls aren't simply buying expensive goods, they are being filmed buying expensive goods, and by doing so, they are actually, in a way, producing. Activity that was once purely consumptive is here transformed into a product, to be sold to advertisers and consumed by the MTV audience.

Shantih, shantih, shantih

The devil is sad, but honest.

-- JuliaS - 29 Mar 2008

Julia - Interestingly, I understood the proliferation of pornography under the same themes - expose, escapism, and voyeurism. Plus, pornography is reality to boot, if, by reality, I mean a non-fictional and non-imitative simulation of 'real world' events. On this basis, it is closer to Good Morning America than No Country for Old Men.

You should check out this You Tube video which is tangentially related in intellectual mood rather than actual substance of reality tv, but it may inspire some ideas for you on a possible purpose of reality tv.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQEBDoi5MyE

-- JesseCreed - 29 Mar 2008

Great video. I hadn't considered how pornography might fit in, but the more I do, the more supremely relevant it seems. Thanks a lot, Jesse!

-- JuliaS - 30 Mar 2008