The National CollegePossible Worlds
Reality Screened
Ann Quinlan
'One may look through a keyhole without any awareness of self, but if footsteps are heard in the hall: 'I see myself because somebody sees me.' (Mirzoeff, 1999, p. 164)
Jean-Paul Sartre's existential theory aptly describes the astonishing power of the gaze and our own vulnerability to the glaring eyes of society. George Orwell's prophecies in Nineteen Eighty-Four, of a society under surveillance have uncanny significance in the goldfish-bowl environment of contemporary existence. However, no totalitarian repressive 'big brother' figure can claim credit for this. This is our own creation, a democratic submission to the visually charged world we live in. Society has embraced the visual representation as we arrive at a new departure in visual culture.
Visual culture is an entity concerned predominantly with people's everyday lives. Contemporary culture has become more visual than ever before as there is a growing capacity for individuals to visualise things that are not in themselves visible. Martin Heidegger has referred to this phenomenon of the visual as the rise of the world picture:
'a world picture [...] does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as a picture [...] The world picture does not change from a medieval one into a modern one, but rather the fact that the world becomes picture at all is what distinguishes the essence of the modern age' (Heidegger 1977, p.30).
The mobility and flexibility of the visual image is altogether a less elitist form of communication than the spoken or written word and is easily accessed by the world at large. Once seen as a distraction from the purity of text and history, the visual is now central to the expression of society.
In 1983 the post-modern theorist Jean Baudrillard declared the end of the society of the spectacle which he saw as giving way to the new age of the simulacrum (a copy with no original). He sees this new form of the image as not being based on reality but on artificiality. 'Disneyland' as the 'real' America (with its existence motivated by a concealment of this fact) is a famous example.
Fig. 1
The understanding of reality was the central theme in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, where Winston contemplated on the 'real world'as a hallucination:
'It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a 'real' world where 'real' things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens' (Orwell, 1949, p. 291).
Although this theory appears ludicrous, it does convey the fact that we see things from within our own consciousness alone, and it is up to oneself how we relate the information to our surroundings. The way we perceive or attach meaning to what we see is largely dependent on our social context and our ethnographic impulse. Ethnography has to do with 'how people understand and organise the world around them and what meanings they attach to their own behaviour and that of others' (Allen, 1992 p. 103).
John Fiske, in his essay 'British Cultural Studies and Television' (Fiske 1987) uses Magnum PI, a popular action/detective series from the 1980s to demonstrate the various ways in which one text can be interpreted. The hero of the series, Magnum, is depicted as a super-male masculine representation with the noble principles of duty and service at heart. Dominant readings would observe these values without question. Negotiated readings by young males could be as a male role model, while female viewers may understand Magnum's physical attractiveness as part of his protection of the weak. The female reader may not associate Magnum's rejection of intimacy with women, as a threat to masculinity or the suppression of the feminine in the male psyche, but rather see it as a way of maintaining his masculine freedom to serve all women. Oppositional readers might include rebellious teenagers, who see Magnum as working outside and in opposition to law and order, while feminists might see him as an obvious display of patriarchal chauvinism. (Fiske, 1987, pp. 9, 11, ff.)
Thus the 'viewer' has emerged as an incredibly complex element in the overall process of our engagement in television technology. Television, in a sense, through its depth of integration into the lives and hearts of its viewing public, has acquired an almost organic meaning - something that has become a natural part of our domestic lives. What separates television from other visual media such as cinema, is its participatory potential and its ability to address the viewer across a whole spectrum of meanings and identities. The viewer is, in a sense, the pivotal point around which television revolves, and it is this intimacy of involvement that makes television so much more personal a medium. 'Engagement with TV constitutes at least a mark and possibly even a requirement of membership of modern society' (McQuail 1969, p. 163).
Today, television has become inter-twined into our lives as no other technology has. The everyday and indeed, the domestic environment would now seem incomplete without the omnipresence of television. In 1985, Taylor and Mullan reported that they found that people equated the automatic action of the switching on of the television on entry to the house with the switching on of the light. Television is not just another medium; it has a certain quality that draws us almost hypnotically to it. It fascinates us with its unique ability to convey the idiosyncrasies of ordinary life.
In Marshall McLuhan's words: 'Since the satellites have gone round the planet, the planet has become a theatre, not figuratively but literally. The whole planet is now a single stage, and everybody is enrolled' (McLuhan, 1972, p. 68). This pervasiveness of the recorded image in contemporary society has been a significant factor in the emergence of Reality TV. Video footage - whether it is security cameras, web-cams, or home video, has become part of the visual experience of the society we live in (see fig. 1). The amateur orientation of home video style productions with their imprecision and imperfect aesthetic present a psychologically more authentic visual representation. The appearance of these video clips establishes an immediate context among its viewers (Fiske, 1998, p. 159). This style of camera technique has now extended into on-location documentaries as well as becoming a feature of the MTV aesthetic, which in itself is a televisual embodiment of youth culture.
More recently, this fast-cutting, hand-held camera technique has been a feature of the BBC drama series This Life. The visual techniques applied in this production were interesting as the lighting was kept natural, without interference from studio lighting, while the camera, generally staying at eye-level, swivelled rapidly to give a deliberate sense of disorientation (Lynch, 2000, p. 39). This use of visual effects in a soap-like production to achieve a feeling of the raw reality of urban life was extremely effective in setting the mood for the series. Although it is still in the realm of soap/drama its visual appearance gives it an innate sense of reality. While we live in a monitored society we are still very protective of our own right to privacy. However, most of us remain fascinated by other people's private lives, and television with the help of new technologies has provided the perfect medium to satisfy the voyeuristic tendencies of human nature.
In the summer of 2000, the Reality TV show Big Brother hit the Channel Four screens. A psychological experiment based on the voyeuristic prophecies of George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the series had already featured on TV stations in the Netherlands, Germany and the US, generating phenomenal interest.
This contemporary interpretation of Big Brother has come about due to a new wave of Reality TV, which has surfaced as a result of technological developments that have made the original concept more attainable, i.e. the development of the internet as an accessible medium to enable an intimate sense of involvement and interactivity between viewer and participant. Channel Four's Big Brother involved 10 contestants who were challenged to stay in a house for up to 9 weeks under 24 hour surveillance.
There was no TV and no contact with the outside world. An edited version was cut from the daylong activities and presented on television as the highlights, while more avid viewers could view the live proceedings on-line. The extensive editing of these shows is a factor, which bears heavily upon their legitimacy as reflections of reality. Many Big Brother contestants were dissatisfied with the editing process.
According to Stuart Fischoff, the television industry is prepared to go to any extremes to satisfy viewer expectations:
'How long will people sit still, essentially to watch grass grow [...] they are going to have to escalate the anti through sex and violence [...] They use psychologists to give the show a sense of legitimacy - nobody really cares what they have to say' (Panorama, BBC1, 2000).
Several countries' versions of Big Brother contain explicit sex and violence. One wonders how far TV is prepared to go in order to maintain public interest.
This issue of exploitation is prevalent throughout The Truman Show, which, as a philosophical commentary, is surprisingly accurate in showing the extremes to which television networks will go in order to attract viewers. It has all the attributes of commercial Reality TV, from the controlled living space to the integration of advertising directly into programmes. The title character, Truman Burbank, is unaware that his entire life including his birth has been broadcast live to millions. His living environment is a carefully concealed TV studio, while his friends and family are roles played by actors. It contains an audience obsessed with the vicarious social interaction of Truman, while also addressing the element of exploitation, which sacrifices human privacy, and in this case a human existence to provide mass entertainment.
The screening of reality has psychologically destructive potential that is often trivialised by TV producers, whose main concern is to entertain, whatever the cost. The extremes to which television producers are willing to go to satisfy hungry audiences is evident in American daytime talk-shows, many of which dress up on-screen humiliation as entertainment. In the case of The Jerry Springer Show, it relies on the spectacular, the shocking and in many cases the obscene. Despite the questionable ethics of this tabloid television, it has succeeded in redefining the boundaries of what is acceptable.
Show titles such as 'I'm proud to be a prostitute', 'I've slept with thirty men and twenty women in the past six months' and 'Sex change girl shocks lover' are now emblazoned on our screens, unimaginable even five years ago (Panorama, BBC1, 2000). The very existence of these shows and certainly their ready acceptance also has implications for our systems of belief and essentially our perceptions of reality.
In an increasingly competitive market, it remains to be seen what the future holds for Reality TV and how far TV producers are prepared to push the boundaries of acceptability. What is certain is that the participatory and interactive properties of television combined with internet technologies have provided a potent environment for the representation of various forms of reality. Will the current brand of Reality TV endure the test of time and the ephemeral nature of television? Despite the drastic efforts of TV producers, ultimate control remains in the hands of the viewers, who have the definitive power to switch off.
Bibliography
ALLEN, Robert C., Channels of Discourse Reassembled, Television and Contemporary Criticism, 2nd Edition, London: Routledge 1992.
FISKE, John and HARTLEY, John, Reading Television, London: Methuen 1978.
FISKE, John, Television Culture, London: Methuen 1987.
LYNCH, Andrew, This is the Life, In Dublin, Vol. 25, No. 13, 29/6-12/7/oo, p.39.
MCLUHAN, Marshall, Understanding Media, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1964.
MCQUEEN, David, Television - A Media Studies Guide, London: Arnold 1998.
MIRZOEFF, Nicholas, An Introduction to Visual Culture, London: Routledge 1999.
ORWELL, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, London: Penguin 1949.
