Introduction
For the last several decades television has been a huge and very important part of modern people’s life. Even though the internet has become a much bigger influence lately, television still manages to keep its positions. It is impossible to imagine a modern home without a TV set, which provides us with information. Today information is one of the most important and meaningful resources, it is valuable and essential for us. Since 1950s television became one of the main sources of information.
Television in the modern world represents multiple functions. It distributes the news, it does the advertising, it entertains, it warns, it brings happiness and tears. Since television first appeared in people’s lives, many various genres of it started to emerge and win our hearts. For the last couple of decades the genre of reality TV has become one of the most influential and popular types of television. It is watched by dozens of millions of people every day.
It brings incredible amounts of income; this is why some of the biggest TV channels have switched to broadcasting only reality shows and programs. What is the secret of this incredible popularity of this genre?
What attracts so many viewers, what does it have that we values so much? Reality TV is not only an enormously popular genre people enjoy watching these days, it is also a huge factor that influences our brains, it directs the minds of the whole world and gives people what they are starving for – views of better life. Television takes part in forming our history. The genre of reality television has shaped the notion of television the way we know it today.
Television in Our Minds
The connection between television and human minds should not be underestimated. The brain of a viewer never stops processing the information it receives consciously and unconsciously. It records the most unexpected moments. Everyone has experienced the feeling when some melody or line from a film keeps spinning in our mind for hours. Reality television is able to influence our decision making process just like advertisements on TV are able to make us purchase certain goods just because they looked nice in the video.
We switch on the TV and pick favorite shows. Each person has different preferences in this genre. Some people like game shows, some enjoy watching the real life shows like The Big Brother, some just adore talent contests like The Voice or American Idol, some are attracted to following reality crime shows and chases. Why do we pick certain programs over the other ones?
The scientists say that people watch television looking for something that resembles real life. Reality TV claims to give this to the audience. The feature that defines reality TV is the focus on “real life”, “real events” and “real people” (Holmes, Jermlyn, 4).
History of the Reality TV
Most people think that the phenomenon of the reality television is new and it only appeared in the beginning of 1990s with shows like The Big Brother and Survivor. Yet, actually, this genre is much older than that. Officially the first reality show known to the history is the series called The Candid Camera, which first was released in 1948, and in 1950 Truth or Consequences appeared. Both of these shows were based on the artificially created reality and they used hidden cameras to observe people’s behavior in various circumstances.
Bringing real people in studio became popular since the early 1950s. The show called An American Family was focused on observing lives of the members of a standard family, who kept shocking secrets and were uncovering these secrets on the screen surprising the audience and making people discuss the show, care about the participants and look forwards for the next episodes. Initially, this genre evolved from the documentary TV and was based on trivializing the serious approaches of the documentary.
Eventually, the genre has changed so much that it stopped fitting into its old category, and this is when the term “reality TV” appeared. Types and kinds of reality television started to multiply, 1988 gave us America’s Most Wanted, 1989 – Rescue 911. After that Funniest Home Videos captured the interest of the audience. The reality TV moved from the studios and artificially created surroundings to other kinds of settings such as real homes or streets of the cities.
Influence on the Society
The historical and sociological importance of the reality shows is big. It is a well known fact that the television and the social context we live in today are interrelated (Fishman, Cavender, 5). They reflect each other. The events bothering the society catch the most of attention when they are shown on television. Accordingly, what is shown on TV influences people’s minds and creates the social context through our ways of thinking and behavior.
For example, people who watch reality crime shows are the most alarmed. They have fears and tend to overreact about various situations. This leads to tension in the society and, of course, there are victims of this tension. Not so long ago an African-American woman was shot because late in the night her car broke down and she knocked at some person’s door asking for help. The home owner, being under the influence of all the mass media and reality show information, thought he was in danger and tried to protect himself.
As a result, the woman died, and there are many of such cases. Social reality and the TV reality are connected closely. Before the parents were trying to prevent their children from spending too much time in front of the TV because it influenced their eye sight, today children are not allowed watching TV for social and psychological reasons.
Reasons of Attraction
According to the research made by Reiss and Wiltz, there are sixteen basic desires or end motives people can have (364). These motives are the goals which determine our decision making and the choices of TV shows. These desires are power, curiosity, independence, status, social contact, vengeance, honor, idealism, physical exercise, romance, family, order, eating, acceptance, tranquility and saving. The list may seem incomplete, but with a closer look these truly are the final goals of all our choices we make during our life.
All of these desires can be explained from the biological point of view and are natural results of our life cycle. Reality shows are cleverly designed to present “real” events and “real lives” in a way that would stimulate certain desires in our minds, this is why the reality TV is so tempting and mesmerizing, once you switch it on and start watching, you find yourself being stuck to the screen for hours.
Importance
The reality TV proved to carry quite frightening influence on the society when in 2007 on the Dutch Public Television it was announced that a new reality show will be broadcasted. The show was called The Big Donor and featured a fatally ill woman willing to donate her kidney to the three contestants, who were supposed to fight for the organ. The winner was going to be chosen by means of text message voting (Murray, Ouelette, 1).
There are opinions saying that television has absolutely nothing to do with the real lives and that it only exists as a way for us to escape the reality we do not enjoy and spend some time watching things that are exciting or interesting. There are points of view saying that television is just a shallow entertainment designed to provide temporary pleasures and impressions that evaporate within a very short time.
As a proof there are the examples of most of reality show stars, whose fame lasts while the show is going on, and after that they disappear forever from the screens and from people’s minds. This is a strong argument, yet it has also been proven that reality television is capable of moving past the actual television. Now this genre started to conquer the World Wide Web (Andrejevic, 2).
While in our country the reality shows are in blossom, China is shutting down most of its “junk TV”. This policy is explained by the fact that the influences such programs make on people are highly destructive and gradually ruin the values the country leaders want to preserve. Eastern rulers care for the spirituality and morally of their nation, while capitalistic West is driven by ideas of a different kind.
Annotated Bibliography
Andrejevic, Mark. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004. Print.
This book is designed to explore the connections between the development of the phenomenon of the reality television and its popularity and the media field. It studies the nature of the desire of being watched and the desire to demonstrate yourself and be in the center of public attention that became incredibly influential all around the world.
The author of this book traces the connection between the economic parts of reality television and the digital revolution in the modern society. This source presents reality TV through its ties with the social, financial and cultural aspects of people’s lives.
Fishman, Mark and Gray Cavender. Entertaining Crime: Television reality Programs. Piscataway, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Print.
This book is concentrated on the crime shows mainly, the author studies the influences that crime shows create on people, who watch them. The book explores the bigger picture too and views the impacts of the crime shows on the social context in the whole world. The author also examines the issue of the high interest towards crime shows and its basis.
The book uses very detailed and examines how the reality crime shows are able to twist and shift social stereotypes and ways of perception of actual reality. It reveals the dangers such shows create for the viewers and the society in general.
Holmes, Su, and Deborah Jermyn. Understanding Reality Television. Hove, United Kingdom: Psychology Press, 2004. Print.
This book is focused on following the history of the reality television from the moment it first appeared to present days. The authors comment on the phenomenon of the reality show and explain how it manages to win such huge audience. The book explores the contexts of many of the most popular reality shows in order to understand how they work and what exactly makes them so popular.
It also explains the processes the development of reality TV triggered in the society and the controversy of opinions that followed. The authors explore the concept of moral panic, which occurred as a result of the way reality TV affected the conventional values. This book is useful because it presents very detailed description of the most famous reality shows and their analysis.
Murray, Susan and Laurie Ouelette. Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture. New York, New York: NYU Press, 2008. Print.
The authors of this book explore the questions of how and why the genre of reality television appeared. Besides, they speak about the process when the genre of reality television moved from the fringes of TV to its central field and became the irreplaceable and strong core of the whole industry.
The book also studies the variations of topics for the reality shows and the range of their popularity, their economic sides and the effects they make on the masses. The authors also follow the ways the genre of reality television speaks to the people’s most common and important issues, fears, anxieties and the political, social and historical situations in the countries.
Reiss, Steven and James Wiltz. “Why People Watch Reality TV”. Media Psychology 6 (2004): 363-378. Print.
This article presents a research of the genre of reality shows from the psychological point of view and suggests the results of a test conducted with the help of two hundred and thirty nine adults and a list of the sixteen basic desires. According to the rating the test participants performed, the researchers have made a conclusion that there is another way to study the reality television and evaluate the shows.
The results of the test showed that people tend to choose the shows that stimulate the emotions and feelings that the viewers appreciate the most. This source is useful for my work because it depicts the practical reasons of the decisions the representatives of the reality TV audience make picking certain shows and making them popular. Super popular shows receive the power and ability to influence the history of the mankind and television namely. By choosing what to watch we choose our future way of thinking and our history.