Do you watch Reality TV? Read below. Uh... scary!
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Think Tank: Greeting Big Brother With Open Arms
January 17, 2004
By EMILY EAKIN
For 50 years, Big Brother was an unambiguous symbol of
malignant state power, totalitarianism's all-seeing eye.
Then Big Brother became a hip reality television show, in
which 10 cohabiting strangers submitted to round-the-clock
camera monitoring in return for the chance to compete for
$500,000.
That transformation is telling, says Mark Andrejevic, a
professor of communication studies at the University of
Iowa at Iowa City. Today, more than twice as many young
people apply to MTV's "Real World" show than to Harvard, he
says. Clearly, to a post-cold-war generation of Americans,
the prospect of living under surveillance is no longer
scary but cool.
Media critics have frequently portrayed the reality show
craze in unflattering terms, as a sign of base voyeurism
(on the part of viewers) and an unseemly obsession with
fame (on the part of participants). But Mr. Andrejevic's
take, influenced by the theories of Theodor Adorno and
Michel Foucault, is at once darker and more subtle.
Reality shows glamorize surveillance, he writes, presenting
it "as one of the hip attributes of the contemporary
world," "an entree into the world of wealth and celebrity"
and even a moral good. His new book, "Reality TV: The Work
of Being Watched" (Rowman & Littlefield), is peppered with
quotes from veterans of "The Real World," "Road Rules" and
"Temptation Island," rhapsodizing about on-air personal
growth and the therapeutic value of being constantly
watched. As Josh on "Big Brother" explains, "Everyone
should have an audience."
At the same time, Mr. Andrejevic (pronounced
an-DRAY-uh-vitch) argues, the reality genre appears to
fulfill the democratic promise of the emerging interactive
economy, turning passive cultural consumers into active
ones who can star on shows or vote on their outcomes. (The
series "Extreme Makeover" takes this promise literally, he
notes, "offering to rebuild `real' people via plastic
surgery so that they can physically close the gap between
themselves and the contrived aesthetic of celebrity they
have been taught to revere.")
As seductive as this sounds, in Mr. Andrejevic's view
reality television is essentially a scam: propaganda for a
new business model that only pretends to give consumers
more control while in fact subjecting them to increasingly
sophisticated forms of monitoring and manipulation.
As he put it in a telephone interview: "The promise out
there is that everybody can have their own TV show. But of
course, that ends up being a kind of Ponzi scheme. You
can't have everybody watching everybody else's TV show. And
since that's not possible, in economic terms, the way it's
going to work is according to this model of a few people
monitoring what the rest of us do."
Think of TiVo or Replay, he said. These digital recorders
allow people to watch the television shows they want when
they want to. But in return, he points out, the recorders'
manufacturers get a stream of valuable information about
viewer preferences. The same principle, he argues, holds
true for online shops that offer custom CD's in exchange
for data on personal musical tastes. Or Web sites that use
"cookies" to track users' movements on the Internet.
Marketers aren't interested in exceptional behavior, he
added. They want to know about the routine aspects of daily
life, the same material that shows like "The Real World"
and "Big Brother" - in which banality passes as
authenticity - strive to capture on film.
In short, Mr. Andrejevic said, reality television's true
beneficiaries are not the shows' cast members (who can wind
up making little more than minimum wage for the hours - or
months - they spend before the camera) or ordinary viewers
(who don't really choose what happens on their television
screens) but the marketers, advertisers and corporate
executives who have a large stake in seeing surveillance
portrayed as benign.
Of course, he conceded, his students don't necessarily see
it this way. Raised on Web logs, Google, cellphones and
instant messaging, they "divulge much more information
about themselves on a daily basis than previous
generations," he said, and they don't associate the idea of
surveillance with a totalitarian Big Brother.
"The concern I have is that self-expression gets confused
with the inducement to assist in marketing to yourself,"
Mr. Andrejevic said. "But my students say they've got
nothing to hide. And until there are some consequences they
perceive as detrimental, they're not going to be
concerned."
At least in one respect, he added, reality television does
conform to real life. "It portrays the reality of
contrivance, the way consumers are manipulated," he said.
"I look at it with the fascination of somebody watching a
car wreck."
Link to the NYT Article
