Clever Girl... >> Writing >> Gender on Reality TV
Rachel's note: This is the essay I did for my Gender Studies take home exam, on which I, much to my amusement, got what I like to refer to as a Ridiculously High Distinction. To my amusement, because I didn't actually start it until 11am on the day it was due. Nonetheless, here it is.
Genre, defined by media analyst Michael O'Shaughnessy as "a set of characteristics, such as story type and visual style, [shared] with a group of other films of programs", is an important aspect in the understanding and interpretation of different media forms. A knowledge of the codes and conventions of genre allows producers to work with a recognisable and therefore marketable formula, and audiences to quickly identify and interpret a text. Genre also provides analysts with a greater understanding of the audience a program is aimed at, as well as an insight into some of the discourses surrounding the genre in question and subsequently the meanings derived from the reading of the text.
Reality television is a definably modern genre, originating in the 1990s and proliferating at an exponential rate since the advent of Survivor in 2000. As a genre which is at once a documentation of real people's lives and at the same time heavily scripted and contrived, reality television highlights the way in which the media both creates and echos public perception of gender, while simultaneously intensifying the audience's reaction to the program's portrayal of the relation. As a supposedly realistic representation of the way in which people interact with one another, reality television holds the potential to provide great insight into the way in which power relations are manifested within a group, highlighted by the events of 2001's Survivor 2.
Reality television marks an attempted innovation on the part of television producers, marked primarily by its extreme hybridisation, or mixing of traditional television genres. While different programs vary in their combination of traditional genres (in comparison to Survivor 2, Big Brother, with its continuous shots of people talking and greater emphasis on the mundanities of every day life, places a great emphasis on soap opera than on the action prevalent in the former), certain genres are almost universal in the mix of genre that is reality tv. These include the quiz show, the documentary, current affairs, and tabloid television. While the premise of Survivor 2 is that of a game show - the overt purpose of the contestants being to win $1 million - its drawn out nature, frequent use of close ups, and interest in 'character development' and interactions within the 'tribes' (Survivor's equivalent of the soap opera's extended family) suggest the influence of the genre of soap opera. At the same time, the apparent 'realism' of the program draws on documentary, and the program's emphasis on physicality recalls the genre of 'action'.
The purpose of blending so many genres into the one program is two-fold. In one sense, such a complicated hybrid is a mark of respect for the audience's ability to interpret and understand television, pointed to by O'Shaughnessy's statment: "Program makers need to be aware of the skills of their audience: they must provide novel material that continues to enthrall and entertain them, but they can also rely on the audience being able to appreciate, if not actually analyse, quite complicated variations on genres." At the same time, the hybridisation of genres present in reality tv widens a program's potential audience. That considered, it's no suprise that the first series of Survivor was the highest rating series in the US ever.
Despite, or perhaps because of, its popularity, the discourse surrounding reality tv is almost overwhelmingly negative. The genre is largely dismissed as 'bad tv', primarility because of the relatively small amount of effort it appears to take to make. What this notion ignores, however, is that the most popular and debatably highest quality reality television, the ideal example of which is Survivor 2, is in fact very expensive and time consuming to make, each one hour episode requiring one hundred hours of film. Another reason for the genre's widespread dismissal appears to be the lack of creativty required to produce a program, but this could well be the reason behind the genre's success: real people are far less predictable than any writer can be. Part of the appeal for the audience is that "they're not trying to outguess some over-appreciated TV writer with cliches for brains - this stuff unfolds like a live-on-tape sporting event ... and all CBS can do is edit it to look like fictional television." The appeal of reality television lies in its very reality, if not in the manufactured situations the shows deal with, in the "16 Real Ordinary People... stranded far from civilisation and [having] to scratch, claw and starve their way to 15 runners-up and one winner."
covers of his bed. However, the voyeurism inherent in most popular reality television is also one of its greatest strengths. Providing viewers with such an opportunity to watch 'ordinary people' (although the 'ordinariness' of these people is debatable, given the complex screening processes undergone by contestants on these programs) gives a unique insight into the way we both understand and create gender in our every day lives.
Teresa de Lauretis argues that the notion of gender, both as representaton and self-representation, is the product of various social technologies, such as cinema, and of institutionalised discourses, epistemologies, and critical practices, as well as practices of daily life." As such, reality television, being both a reflection and a representation of gender in today's society, plays an interesting role in the audience's ever-evolving understanding of gender. Contestants on programs such as Survivor 2 and Big Brother are effectively playing themselves after a certain period of time is spent on camera, but the audience does not observe them in quite the same way as they would were they watching them in a real life situation. as voyeurs watching via the television, we are removed from the situation onscreen so that we can observe the interactions and reactions amongst the contestants from a somewhat more 'objective' point of view. At the same time, the contestants onscreen are merely performing their personalities as they supposedly would at any time, thereby reflecting the expectations of gender that have been thrust upon them.
This unique opportunity for the audience to observe from a detached perspective people's reactions towards various manifestations of gender and sexuality influences our own understandings of gender and effectively seems to reinforce the dominance of the hegemonic manifestations of masculinity and femininity. It is most significant that some of the most hated women in the US and UK over the past few years have been 'characters' from reality tv shows, and it becomes even more so when we consider how exactly these women behave onscreen.
One of the most pertinent examples is Survivor 2's Jerri Manthey, routinely gossiped about and referred to unkindly. While the question of why Jerri is so disliked is somewhat contentious, it is hardly unlikely that Jerri's unpopularity is at least partly due to her upfront scheming and strong personality. Strong women are not well received in the realm of reality television. Indeed, the week personal trainer Alicia Calaway was voted out of the Barramundi tribe, Time Magazine publish an article entitled: "The Strong One, She Must Die."
In contrast, the more popular female cast members, Tina Wesson and Elisabeth Filarski, represent femininity in a very different manner. Elisabeth, described as "koala cute, but bushfire deadly", and Tina, who managed to conduct Machiavellian manipulation "while looking about as threatening as June Cleaver holding out a plate of warm cookies", may have been strong on the inside, but they rarely, if ever, showed it. While it might be argued that the trend for those who seem nice but aren't inside to succeed is all part of the machinations of the game, it is interesting to note that the strong and manipulative Colby, Keith, and even Survivor 1's openly scheming Richard Hatching, were well-liked cast members, perhaps because to be outwardly strong and manipulative isn't to go against the ideal representation of masculinity.
In the same vein, women who seem too sexually agressive are also poorly received in reality television. The work of de Lauretis would suggest that this is the result of a widespread understanding of sexuality not as gendered, but as having one form, that is, as an "attribute or property of the male", even when located within a woman's body. It is perhaps for this reason that dominatrix Andy was the first evictee of the Big Brother house, and that Sara-Marie, while still on the show, has been nominated for eviction almost every week. Jerri was also relatively sexually agressive, ardently pursuing Colby for the entirely of her time on the show, and partaking in enthusiastic discussions with Amber about sex and chocolate.
What is ironic about the unpopularity of emotionally strong and/or sexually agressive 'characters' on reality television is that the very same personality traits make up the most popular charatcers in one of the genres reality tv is derived from: the soap opera. Ellen Seiter et al noted that audience reactions to supposedly sympathetic characters, best equated with Elisabeth in Survivor 2, "more typically involved hostility ... as well as fond admiration ... for the supposedly despised villainesses."
Why strong characters are applauded in Melrose Place and to be sexually agressive is part of everyday life in Sex & The City (representations of femininity which supposedly influence our understand of gender), and yet the strong women of reality television are uniformly denigrated is something of a disputable matter. The discrepancy suggests an ability on the part of the audience to distinguish the difference between reality and fiction: it is fine and even laudable for a fictional character to show strength at the expense of others, but we wouldn't want anyone we actually knew to behave like that. Because reality television shows are made up of real people, we can't accept representations of gender that deviate so far from the norm, despite the heavily scripted nature of the shows. There is a sense of reality that goes beyond the fictional world of entertainment and into a possible threat towards our real lives. This points to an ambiguous awareness on the part of the audience. While we know that Survivor 2 in no way reflects either the reality of the bush or the reality of the castaways' lives and relationships, there remains a part of us that sees them as real people. It is for this reason that the representations of gender in reality television have the potential for a more marked effect on their audience than those in fictional television. If we behave like Jerri Manthey, we are libel to receive the same treatment she does.
rejects potentially subversive and certainly unconventional representations of femininity because it does not serve in what they perceive to be their best interests for them to do otherwise. At the same time, while the representations of femininity shown by Jerri and Andy aren't hegemonic as such, they still fulfill a feminine stereotype - that of the 'bitch and the 'slut' and subseqently are ineffective in terms of creating new public perceptions of gender.
The genre of reality television provies its audience with a voyeuristic insight into the lives of 'ordinary' people, and subsequently has the potential to alert the 'masses' to many of the social issues that plague the human condition, not least of which is gender. At once heavily scripted and maintaining a sense of realism, the genre sparts unique reactions from its audience, at once reflecting, creating, and reinforcing hegemonic discourse regarding gender. The genre is yet to fulfill its subversive potential.
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