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Reality TV Part One

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Introduction to Reality TV

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So we're talking about reality television in this course.

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And we have with us Deb Tennen,

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who actually runs our creative department here at Shmoop.

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And she is a PHD in literature,

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a published author in People magazine,

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and also is a regular subscriber to --

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- Where are you a subscriber to? - Entertainment Weekly.

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Entertainment Weekly. That probably qualifies her best

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to discourse on this topic.

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The challenge is that reality television has taken over our lives in a lot of ways.

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It accounts for about a third of the television programming on today,

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and it's growing very fast.

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So we're gonna talk about reality television from a few different perspectives

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and have Deb sort of enlighten us

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from the way that she sees things

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from reality television as literature.

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[ dog barks ]

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What are the origins of reality television?

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Reality TV can be dated as far back as Candid Camera.

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Candid Camera

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with Allen Funt

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starring you, the people.

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Welcome to the Candid Camera program,

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which brings you secretly made movies

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of all kinds of people in all kinds of situations.

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Which was in 1948,

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which most people know because there's been a lot of

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reboots of it.

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Hidden cameras, watching people do silly things.

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And that's considered reality TV

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because it's non-celebrities being put in unscripted situations.

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But reality TV as we think of it today

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really started more with The Real World.

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In the 90s, put people in a house and see what happens.

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Have them do stupid stuff

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and hear what they have to say about it.

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And the irony that it was called The Real World...

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When reality TV started, it actually was pretty real.

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Even the first few seasons of Survivor,

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which started in 2000,

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were pretty much unscripted.

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Today you'd be hard-pressed to find

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any reality show that is not, in some way at least, constructed.

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[ bird caws ]

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Does reality TV have a script?

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Well, there's not a script in the way that you would think of a script for a sitcom.

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They do have producers and writers

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feeding them at least conversation topics

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if not actual lines to say.

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They put them in specific situations

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and they give them conversation topics

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knowing exactly where that's gonna lead.

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So then, what's the casting process like?

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It seems like all these people are lunatics

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or trying to become stars, I guess. Does that ever work?

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Absolutely it does work.

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People become stars from reality TV all the time.

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Elizabeth Hasselbeck, I think her name is,

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who hosted The View

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started as a contestant on Survivor.

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There are tons of people on these food cooking shows

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that become celebrity chefs because of it.

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The casting process has changed a lot

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since the beginning of reality TV,

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since the early Survivor/Real World days.

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It used to be that you would do a video interview

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and show how kooky and weird you were

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and then they'd say,

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"Oh, this is an interesting personality.

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Let's get them in the house."

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Now most casting is actually producers going out

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and finding failed actors and actresses

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in Southern California and saying,

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"You're hot. You're hot.

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You can string a sentence together.

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Let's put you, like you said, on an island

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and see what happens."

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I think the most recent season of Survivor

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only had one auditioned person

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cast on the show.

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Everyone else was recruited from

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producers just going around finding them.

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So if you're a producer,

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you're looking for someone with

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an emotionally volatile personality.

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Maybe someone who's kind of an alcoholic?

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- Like, what are you even looking... - Yeah. [ laughs ]

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Well, there are definitely archetypes, right,

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that you wanna hit.

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So, yes, you want the person who's emotionally volatile

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because that's gonna make everyone else freak out

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and what you're looking for is the most drama possible.

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You also want someone who's really dumb,

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because part of the excitement of watching reality TV

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is feeling superior to everyone who's on there.

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So if you feel more competent than them, that's good.

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You want someone who's incredibly smart,

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someone who's incredibly hot.

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But that every single person watching

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can relate to one type of person

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and hate one type of person.

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So you bring up two interesting perspectives here.

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One is that of the contestant.

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What kind of low self esteem

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they must have to wanna actually be on

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one of these shows.

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And the other is the audience

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needing to feel superior

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- to someone who's kind of loserly to start with. -Right.

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Yeah, the contestants - the ones that we're talking about

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that get recruited - are people who just want exposure.

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These are the people who -- You watch The Bachelor,

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these are the people who go on

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even though they're in a relationship or whatever.

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They just wanna get their music career going.

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And they just wanna cause as much drama as possible

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so that people remember their name and their face.

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From the other side of it...

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- From the audience perspective. - Yeah, we, I mean...

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It's the same reason that you sit at the counter at Starbucks

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and watch people go by

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and think about how ugly her purse looks

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and how that person could lose a few pounds and all that.

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It's kind of that same thing of, you know,

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the way we all do.

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We judge people because it makes us feel better about ourselves.

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And some people voice it and some people don't.

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So that makes a lot of sense.

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Has society become more compressive?

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So that needing to feel superior

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has become a bigger deal to us

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as a mass?

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I think as we grow as a society

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that is more materialistic and more superficial,

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of course we're gonna wanna think

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that we're more beautiful and more intelligent than everyone else around us.

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