Reality TV shows have proven to be hugely popular around the world. Since their rise in popularity, several attempts have been made to analyze and explain the phenomenon of their success. Likewise, the shows have diversified, and while some of the elements, like the deliberately unedited footage and the absence of the script, is still shared by most of them, some other features are used to varying extent.
The Amazing Race is an example of one of the distinct type of the show, which has become popular both because of the presence of some familiar elements, like the characters who are easy to associate with and the exclusion of other, which are slowly declining in popularity, like the overemphasis on the humiliation.
The Amazing Race is a reality TV show that depicts a challenge between several groups of people traveling around the world. The teams are pursuing the same goal, by finding waypoints and encountering obstacles. The winner is determined on the elimination basis, meaning on the initial stage you have to avoid finishing last. The premise is far from something new, resembling familiar shows of previous decades, like Fort Boyard, or even the sports disciplines of triathlon and orienteering. So what makes it stand out?
First, it is the appeal of seeing common people engaging in extraordinary activities. Before the reality TV was dominating the screens, people could get access to the shows where athletes were competing for the prize. Alternatively, many TV series and feature films depict the protagonists overcoming much more dramatic barriers.
However, it is far more difficult for the viewers to associate themselves with a superhero-like marine jumping off the cliff into the abyss than with a real person who resembles their relatives and classmates. For this same reason, the people seen in reality shows tend to trigger a much stronger empathy towards them than less realistic characters: once we believe in a person, we can understand them, at which point they become important to us.
In The Amazing Race, characters are often seen expressing fear, doubt, dismay, and irritation in much the same way we do it in real life. The show does not make emphasis on it, like the others known to exaggerate emotions of their participants, but displays it to a degree which is enough to persuade us that what we see is not a staged performance, but a real thing.
The use of real people instead of trained actors has many other benefits. It’s cheaper, so the company may afford a better marketing campaign. It’s making use of the decline of the face-to-face communication, which has become uncommon but is still missed, so any character resembling a person from our neighborhood is guaranteed to grab our attention. Most importantly, according to several psychological and sociological studies, it presumably promotes mediocrity instead of shunning it.
According to Shpancer, “the audience buys the ruse and takes the mediocrity on offer as truly special, thus narrowing its own horizon” (par. 12). While applicable to some extent to every reality TV show currently or previously aired, The Amazing Race limits its use to the minimum. First, the format of the show rarely puts the participants in a position where they look remarkably average – on the contrary, it demands the effort to succeed in each challenge. Thus, while the factor of mediocrity is not absent (after all, it is responsible for associating viewer with the character), it may be ignored as a reason for the show’s success.
Another concern with reality TV, voiced by Eric Jaffe, is the feeling of false superiority that is derived from the way the people in the show are portrayed (32). Vengeance is another cause of the popularity of such shows, as those who feel the need for it “have the potential to enjoy watching people being humiliated.” (32) Again, while the character exhibiting fear of heights and struggling with herself before jumping off the roof to grab a waypoint may be viewed as humiliation – after all, she is showing her weak point. Nevertheless, it does not even remotely compare to the levels displayed by other shows, termed “humilitainment” by Jaffe (32). In this regard, we can safely assume that if the humiliation factor plays its part in the show’s popularity, this part is relatively minor.
So what is the reason behind the acclaim of this show? It does not possess the qualities which are the reasons behind the genre’s success, at least not all of them, yet it manages to stay on air for quite a bit of time. I feel that the reason behind it is the decline of novelty. When the shows were introduced to our culture, the factors mentioned by Jaffe and Shpancer were unusual and strong. Now viewers slowly grow tired of their presence.
There is still audience for humilitainment, but it is not enough to show someone’s inferiority and get a decent following. People get used to it, so reality TV, like any entertainment, must become inventive again.
To sum it up, the success of The Amazing Race can at least in part be ascribed to the usage of traditional methods like the simplicity of the cast and the absence of the detailed script. However, it is the careful balancing of these elements with good themes and decent challenges that makes it stand out from the multitude of similar programs.
Works Cited
Jaffe, Eric. “Reality Check.” Association for Psychological Science Observer 18.3 (2005): 28-35. Print.
Shpancer, Noam. The Meaning of Reality (TV). 2010. Web.