“Reality” as a stimulus has a power that fiction does not have. Probably that’s why, beyond the fact that reality always surpasses fiction, it’s this kind of hypnotic light that allows reality shows to proliferate on our televisions for quite a few years now, and in relatively good health, by the way.
Reality, including the processed reality we see on our screens, also has its own rhythms, its own codes and its own formats. One of the core components of that kind of reality is that, in the shows to which it gives rise, it plays with a version of reality that is sufficient for the viewer as such. That which we see in them and which we call “reality”-to call it something that can be distinguished from pure and hard fiction-is fed by an encapsulated spontaneity, a kind of substitute for reality, pasteurized and served upon the subtle-sometimes non-existent-border between that same reality and the pure harshness of fiction.
For, how much reality is subtracted from reality by the presence of a script, a camera, a reporter, commented broadcasts? What, then, are the doable limits of a script, beyond which life makes its way as in the flourishing island of Jurassic Park? And, above all, why is the reality show format always capable of overcoming its own controversies, overcoming the barriers of phobias and germinating in one way or another without its definitive wear and tear in the short term?
These are questions that are more in line with the metaphysics of reality television than with the sleepy reflection of the average viewer of this type of shows. Not in vain, in most cases, the secret of their success lies in their narcotic capacity: reality shows are there to satisfy our need not to think, not to ask ourselves, to distract us in a banal way, without demands, without pretensions, leaving our guilt as enlightened but exhausted humanists entertained and turning us into advocates of our right to consume a product that, sometimes, requires more than one trick to fit it into the soft cushions of self-love.
(Non) Participant’s observation
What years ago was known as reality shows and now, thanks to the always necessary economy of words, we commonly know as reality shows in the dry, are not a monolithic product. From the same DNA, this television format has given rise to different ethnicities and, from there, has managed to adapt to the climate of different territories, understand, of viewers.
Thus, although the DNA of a reality show usually indicates that the objective is living together and resisting until the last man standing, there are those who go from the mere coexistence/growth in a house to those whose thread is a more elaborate competition: to win a musical contest by imitating, versioning or destroying, to get from Sebastopol to Beijing by jumping from goose to goose, to survive the torments of a “desert” island without being phagocytized by the mangrove or to resist the always sharp temptation to be unfaithful to the couple in front of that imprecise magma that we usually call “the whole country”.
In the beginning there was the program itself and the little children that came out of it: the weekly debate, the daily summary, the monographic section in the morning program. It was a degree of participation typical of classic television times: I-see-it, I-comment-solo-with-the-next-door neighbor. Today, the children of the cactus have not only multiplied with a degree of sophistication that we would not have been able to imagine twenty years ago, but they have also made the conversation mute, going from television to analogical chat and from this, in turn, back to the digital: now social networks dominate the earth and reality shows are the chopped-up thing that feeds the public square.
The fascination of cutting up
It seems undeniable that part of the charm of this type of program lies in a look halfway between the zoo and the spa. With those eyes we see our species brothers with the joker to stop considering them our species whenever their reflection is unbearable for us. We like to see these creatures devouring each other or splashing around in all kinds of swamps because that allows us not to think about our own swamp or to lull ourselves to sleep with the memory that ours is a crystalline lagoon.
I find them to be the perfect entertainment formula when you need a brain massageThis seems to be one of the most shared analyses when people are asked why the hell people watch these programs: because they allow us to observe and criticize in others what happens to us, without involvement, without feeling identified with them. We can watch them with pity or with horror but always respecting the basic principle of tribal functioning: there is a them and there is a us… and the us is always better than them.
This social spectacle supported by the ceremony of the shedding or, in the case of the most generous fans, by the ability to capture the twisted paths of the heroic, is only exempt from a certain guilt in those reality hooligans with the greatest pedigree. From them downwards there is the group of those who follow them because they are distracted, evaded, depressured, but not exempt from the uncomfortable feeling of being simple, of being mass.
There is in the spectator of reality shows a kind of internal division, a feeling of being attracted to something that their morality indicates they shouldn’t even like, much less abandon themselves to it with pleasure. It’s interesting to see how reality shows are confronting to us because they place us in front of our own contradictions not only as spectators (that is, as consumers) but above all as people, which is where it hurts the most. They show us that there are things that we like but that we think we shouldn’t like. In other cases, they remind us that some of the things we despise are idolized by our fellow human beings, not by distant and anonymous people living on another planet, but by the people around us. But let us stop talking in vain and give the people a voice.
“I like these programmes because they help me to disconnect from the rhythm of everyday life,” says Laura ( 27), without further complications. “I don’t hide the fact that I watch them but – she adds with a smile destined to take the edge off – I don’t feel proud of it either”. Beyond the complexes and guilty pleasures, there are those who openly claim to be fond of the different textures of bigbrotherhood. “I think they’re the perfect entertainment formula for when you need a brain massage to take your mind off the day-to-day business,” says Gonzalo (38), “the point of reality they have reminds me of the inconsequential conversation you can have with any friend or when, for example, you’re at the pool and you put the antennae on what the people around you are talking about.”
Let’s be clear, who said guilt? Gonzalo is such a supporter of these programs that not only does he not care to say he watches them, but “in fact, sometimes I say I watch them without seeing them, because I’m a picky eater and I never watch anything fully. Whoever denies them by claiming intellectual superiority, in my opinion, shows a lack of sense of humor incompatible with true intelligence”. When asked what he thinks people like so much about these programs, he implies that there are many kinds of motivations behind the audience data: “Talking about reality audiences,” he says, “is like talking about news audiences: they are absolutely heterogeneous, no matter how much you try to sell the opposite. There will be those who, like me, enjoy the absurdity of humanity, who enter personal plots without filters, who simply want to see what everyone else is saying… And I’m sure that the percentage of viewers who seek company is high: I’m surprised at the lack of humanity in the contempt for shows that lighten the hardships of so many people”.
However, his enthusiastic defense of this format leaves one last crack at the selective: “Those that combine absurd humor with novel and potentially scandalous sentimental dramas are the ones I like the most. Now, when they become repetitive or criminal, I get them out of my sight.
In a similar vein is Anastasia (33), fond of having reality TV “as a background while doing anything else, cooking, chatting, mobile, reading … there is not full attention devoted to that”. She admits her hobby “without any shame” although she considers that doing so is not the most common thing: “People comment through social networks with anonymous profiles, but then they don’t talk about it openly because they have the false stigma that watching these programs is a discredit to their intellect. Anyway, these programs are liked because they allow people to think about the problems of others and not about their own.
Christian (30), is not one of the omnivores, but details that he is fond of reality shows “that are far from the everyday, but realistic: it is not the same to watch a Big Brother, who teaches ‘normal’ people locked up in a house, than to watch the Kardashians, which only happens to the very well-off and basically follows a script“. He, too, is a clear advocate of anti-cabinet policy as a viewer: “I don’t care if people think that I watch TV and that it seems uneducated or ignorant. It’s a show I enjoy and entertain myself and I don’t have to hide it. So what’s behind the love of reality TV? It depends on the reality,” he says, “but in general I think people like to see situations they wouldn’t normally be in but would like to live in, and even think about how they would act if they were the ones there, as an escape from another reality that is not impossible to live in but which, for different reasons, they don’t live in.
Against reality television
As we have indicated, there are many types of reality shows and therefore their followers also have different motivations. Moreover, if curiosity and its evasive power are very attractive to the defenders of this television format, there is also a common note in its detractors: their furious refusal to watch them.
These programmes I find to be a waste of time and I am very strict with my free timeHowever, in terms of anger there are also degrees. In this sense, Rosario (30) is one of those that the polls would place in the political center: “I understand the attraction that these programs can have, but it is not a format that I like and even less when the purpose becomes to see who has fought with whom, who has made out with whom or how the Pantoja was thrown from the helicopter”. Making an inspection of our conscience, she explains that “in the moments in which I have let myself be carried away by the mass and I have ended up seeing some time, I have felt simple and with the flat encephalogram, although I am aware that not all the people who see them are like that, I only say how it makes me feel”. In fact, he admits, “I do watch Masterchef and love it, even though I know it’s staged and most of the content isn’t real, but I take it as a show, plus I love cooking, so I don’t think it’s right to criticize people who watch other kinds of reality shows either.”
The temperature of rejection rises a few degrees when we ask Paulina (27): “I don’t like these programs because they reflect the worst of our society, they always show profiles that are callous, that criticize, that deceive… Many of these realities give a rather disgusting image of relationships, often from a rather sexist point of view and they also show a terrible image of women. I don’t like them because I don’t think they provide a range of different profiles, but they are always the same, taken to the extreme and taken out of context… Why then does something that is so harmful and attacks even the image of the viewer have such success? Paulina clearly conveys her hypothesis about the sadism of the audience: “I think people like it because it allows them to criticize those things they see in their day-to-day life, but without any concealment, because there is an ‘evil’ part in human beings that likes to see the weakest people suffer or laugh at them and that ends up generating a false sense of moral superiority”.
For her part, María (30) believes “that in a society where political correctness reigns, reality shows are an opportunity to gloat over socially frowned upon lifestyles and attitudes“. In the words of this sincere enemy of so-called reality TV, reality shows basically work “like a shitty catharsis. I don’t watch them because I don’t believe them, everything seems arranged to me, that’s why I watch a well done movie”. Finally, Maria gives us a powerful statement of principle: “These programs seem to me a waste of time and I am very strict with my free time.”
Deciphering the success of a sociological phenomenon like reality shows is not easy and not short. In his analysis we find stony paths around issues such as what is enjoyable for people, what should make them enjoy, what responsibility does television have over the education of its audience in values, what unspeakable needs are behind the consumption of reality television, what does it say about our society that there is such a widespread need to disconnect, through these media, from what is disconnecting each one… And the truth is that practically any response will continue to raise the same passions that we find in the defenders of reality shows and in those who hate them.
In any case, it is not superfluous to consider diversifying your spaces for resting, escaping and diminishing stress. If you see that TV, or whatever you do to achieve it, is not giving more of itself, perhaps it is time to take a step forward and talk to a professional. I’ll leave it there.
