It
has been obvious for a while that the way in which the
media and entertainment industry are developing increasingly
shapes culture, social mores and even institutions across
the world. There are those who argue that the impact
of the media, and particularly the ''infotainment'' industry,
now goes beyond all that, to alter human nature in unexpected
ways. It is supposed to result in a whole new category
of human beings, whose social integration comes from
screens rather than live interaction and whose aspirations
are determined by what the purveyors of culture and
information through the mass market deem to be desirable.
The most extreme manifestation of this impact on human
behaviour and social perception is paradoxically not
to be found in the ''new media'' created by the internet,
but on television. The basic framework of most television
programming in the world today emanates from the United
States, and even when particular ideas originate in
other countries, it is the development of that idea
within the US market, by American broadcasters and media
companies, that then has the greatest global spread.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the extraordinary
spread of ''reality television'', supposedly based on
the depiction of how ordinary people in extraordinary
situations behave. As the popularity of this basic idea
spread, ever more exotic, weird, wacky or even revolting
ideas of what some people can be forced to do in order
to be watched by other people were developed especially
in the US and Britain, and then taken up internationally,
with only minor adaptations to suit local cultural requirements.
And as these ideas translate into television programmes
that become popular and almost universally known, they
can also transform the cultural attributes of the society
itself. So, while spectator sport is at least as old
as recorded history and probably older, the creation
of these newer forms of gladiatorial display that come
with very wide media coverage and international spread,
are likely to have very significant social implications,
even if we do not fully recognise them at present.
One of the implications is in terms of how human behaviour
is perceived and categorised and what kinds of behaviour
are encouraged. Reality TV promotes some aspects of
human personalities over all others, largely because
these are more dramatic and more watchable and therefore
make for ''better'' television. Thus, almost all successful
reality TV shows that are based on performance rely
on fostering a highly competitive spirit among the participants.
The performance can be related to many different aspects
or activities: endurance and physical strength; skills
such as designing or cooking; singing or dancing or
modelling or just making jokes; the ability to make
friends and influence people, and thereby be chosen
to join a successful entrepreneur with a job in his
company or even to marry a millionaire or another reality
TV star; the willingness to expose to wider public view
the most intimate and often distressing details of private
lives.
Such shows provide constant lures of success and threats
of failure, which expose and emphasise the participants'
drive to succeed at all costs and also highlight the
constant fear of failure and rejection. At every stage
there are winners and losers; the winners inevitably
exult and the losers turn on themselves and each other.
Weaknesses are both despised and exploited. Whatever
be the nature of the competition, the various reality
shows in different ways also play upon the emotional
fragilities of the participants and suck them dry for
their dramatic and telegenic content. They encourage
mistrust and lack of cooperation among participants
for whom competition is always the underlying reality,
even when the participants are banded together in temporary
teams. They tend to value and reward naked ambition
and highly individualistic and often manipulative approaches
to both performance and social interaction.
Most of all, they assume and thereby reinforce the perception
that everything and everyone have their price: the lure
of monetary reward is explicitly seen to drive participants
to the most unpleasant, humiliating and even dangerous
activities. Pecuniary gratification is therefore plugged
as the ultimate driver of human action.
Obviously, therefore, these shows promote and exploit
voyeurism at many different levels. But also, in privileging
and constantly highlighting these particular personality
attributes, they may contribute to making these the
more common, defining and socially acceptable features
of personalities, even if they are inherently unattractive
and even anti-social. This is the result not just of
the shows themselves but of the wide publicity they
benefit from in the media.
There is another social fallout of the proliferation
of reality TV, which could perhaps have been expected
but is nonetheless startling when it reaches extreme
forms. This is the emergence of a (shifting) category
of people whose very existence and public recognition
or stature is based on their appearance and possible
success in such shows. The phenomenon of ''reality TV
star'', celebrities who are famous only for being famous
particularly on flat screens, is relatively recent but
has nonetheless spread across all countries with amazing
rapidity, reflecting the speed and reach of television
as a major cultural force. It has also led to the conversion
of such activity almost into a professional choice,
with several such stars apparently making their living
through consecutive serial appearances on various different
reality shows.
And now we have evidence that such aspiration to keep
appearing on reality TV - for ''glory'' (or at least public
recognition) and financial rewards - can drive individuals
to the most extraordinary lengths, which would otherwise
seem not only irrational but even positively harmful
in terms of their own self-interest. So it may even
be possible that reality TV is actually changing patterns
of psychological health.
Since the US is the original home of reality TV and
still remains the foremost source of inspiration for
most ideas about programming, it is perhaps fitting
that some of the most bizarre recent examples of such
affliction have occurred there. Two cases deserve specific
mention.
The first relates to a young couple with eight children,
a pair of twins and a group of sextuplets. While multiple
births are more common now because of the greater use
of fertility drugs, survival of all the infants is still
comparatively rare. So it is not surprising that this
couple attracted some media attention when the sextuplets
were born. An enterprising media company then had the
idea of tracking the daily lives of this couple, who
had to manage eight children as well as carry on with
their lives and somehow earn enough to support the large
brood.
So, much in the manner of ''The Truman Show'' which describes
a life that is continuously lived on camera, this couple
consented to have cameras and crew constantly in their
home, recording almost every aspect of their lives and
even bringing their very young children into constant
exposure and media glare. The parents all had periodic
face to face interviews with the camera, where they
recorded their reactions to daily events, their frustrations
and hopes, their changing emotions.
Because of the constant surveillance, intrusion into
personal space and human tendency to alter behaviour
subtly according to the knowledge of being watched,
it is not clear how natural all of this was at any point.
In any case, the very process of filming the reality
created massive disruptions to it, including the constant
presence of many other people and the inevitable need
to then recreate what was by then an artificial reality.
Also, because the version screened was necessarily a
substantially edited version of what had been taped,
the producers effectively determined what was finally
shown and therefore projected as reality. So, like all
''reality'' shows, this was not reality so much as a complicated
construction in which each player had a role in generating
that particular illusion of reality.
Nevertheless, the show became a runaway hit, with millions
of Americans apparently hooked on to watching what seemed
to be the rather boring quotidian activities of this
unusual family. (It is now being rerun on cable or satellite
television in many countries across the world, including
India.) The wife became a major star in her own right,
authoring books describing her experience and touring
the country offering advice on the rearing of children
and the joys and difficulties of maintaining a happy
home. The reality moved even further from the manufactured
illusion on the show, as the wife's frequent absences
and the husband's work moved the care of children to
paid professionals and unpaid relatives, who remained
invisible on the show.
When the couple's relationship came unstuck, ostensibly
through episodes of infidelity and mutual recriminations,
it continued to be played out on television. The role
of the constant media pressure and abrupt life transformation
it brought about in dramatically altering the terms
of the relationship were not discussed; instead the
marital break-up has become even more of a media obsession,
with the couple suffering all the adverse effects of
fame including intrusion by paparazzi. The impact of
all this on the still very young children can only be
imagined.
The other case is possibly even stranger, and more alarming.
A few weeks ago, there was a sensational ''accident''
of a boy being left inside a home-engineered air balloon
alone as it lifted off into the air and flew for hundreds
of miles before finally coming to rest in an open field.
While it was going on, it became a national emergency
in the US: the news media covered little else; airports
were closed and the fate of the little boy became almost
a worldwide concern. When the balloon landed, the boy
was nowhere to be found, sparking fresh speculation
that he may have fallen off at some point in the flight.
A few hours later the boy was found hiding in a box
in the attic of his home, apparently scared that his
father would scold him for playing near the balloon.
The media frenzy this generated can be easily imagined,
with the boy, his parents and two brothers appearing
for endless interviews (probably paid?). It seemed like
a freak accident with a happy ending, until the boy
blurted out in one of the interviews that the father
had told him to do it ''for the show''. This sparked official
suspicion. Further investigation revealed that the entire
episode was set up by the father. The entire family,
including the children, acted out their roles of terror
and despair so well that the authorities and the media
were completely fooled. The family had already appeared
in one reality show, which involved ''swapping'' wives
with another very different kind of family for a few
weeks. And this incident was staged to increase the
family's chances of being offered another lucrative
deal on reality TV!
Now, of course, the family - and the father in particular
- is being excoriated by the media and will face penal
and possibly legal action. Of course, it is easy to
be moralistic and derogatory about such actions, and
to deride either the father in this case or the couple
who exposed their children to media glare. Indeed, that
is precisely what is happening, with these people now
receiving possibly even more bad publicity than the
public praise that was heaped on them earlier.
But the current high moral tone of the same media that
built up the obsession with such supposed reality is
misplaced. It is not only that, especially in this period
of economic recession, with few job opportunities available,
the tendency is much greater to turn to this form of
self-publicity in order to earn some income. It is also
that the very voyeuristic obsession that has been propagated
by reality TV can cause personality and behaviour changes
that may not have been anticipated.
In T.S. Eliot's famous poem Burnt Norton (from his Four
Quartets), ''the roses had the look of flowers that are
looked at''. Unlike the roses, not all human beings can
survive such a gaze.
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