Sigh..... I didn't get around to viewing this video and now it "has been removed by the author" Anyone know another site where it is accessible? Has the evil blackboard silenced this voice??

Terry

Should work now. I found the link I had first posted; the audio in the one they took down was better. But it's all here. Catch it while you can.

In the meantime, I'll download a copy of the flash video in case this link goes 404, too.

It is VERY funny - I enjoyed viewing it  - thank you for letting us know.

Hi Mark,

I agree with you that most "reality" shows involve the participants putting on a character that's only loosely based upon themselves, but then, isn't that the nature of all television and movies? I mean really, can you see David Caruso's character in CSI: Miami as anything close to a true reflection of police or police work? If you want to talk about characters exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness for the sake of drama...

I have to admit, "Survivor" is my guilty pleasure. Sure it's crap TV, but it's still enjoyable enough to be worth an hour of my time per week. What I find fascinating about it is the psychological dynamics more than the character drama; which manipulations are effective in terms of the person's goals, and which come around to bite the person in the behind? That can be surprisingly difficult to predict. Of course, as a viewer we have a different database than the players in the moment, as we have the benefit of the one-on-one rants to the camera in which the players often outline their plans. But the dynamics are still interesting, especially in terms of which players are able to listen to the others and truly hear and connect with people from very different contexts, and which leave the game with exactly the same set of assumptions and pre-conceptions as they went in with. It's somewhat disappointing how much the latter out number the former. 

I agree that the contingencies of personality, action, and setting contribute in a big way to why reality shows are entertaining. So are the calculations of the film editors, who assemble the footage in certain ways to heighten the suspense and mystery. And it's the editors who are at least as responsible as the contestants -- who are more responsible than them, I'd say -- for portraying these contestants as specific dramatic characters who assume certain roles. Contestants may put on a character role, knowingly or unwittingly, but the editors & producers are at least as responsible for putting these roles on the contestants.

The "reality" genre differs from fictional film and TV (and even from documentary forms) by capitalizing not on its uses of realism, an aesthetic, but on its claims to the real. At every turn the genre does everything it can to make its own forms and frames of representation as unobtrusive, as transparent, as natural as possible. (Maybe it's the fact that Amazing Race is now in its 17th season, but I like to look for the camera crew, always kept just out of sight.) The genre's success depends on its audience receiving it not as a scripted plot, but as a life or lives that happen (or, better, just happen to happen) in front of the camera. Ironically, The Amazing Race (and likely other examples) achieves this effect of immediacy in no small part through the on-screen ubiquity of cameras and recording devices like those worn by contestants when they bungee jump and so on. This contradictory achievement of a sense of immediacy through hyper-mediation is what Jay Bolter and David Grusin call "remediation," and it helps to explain the peculiar but also (for reasons outlined  in the original post) pernicious apparent "formlessness" of reality programming.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about these questions.

I realize it's somewhat contradictory to suggest it, but Dr. Drew Pinsky (yes, that Dr. Drew) has a book out about the mirroring of celebrity behaviours - The Mirror Effect. It's actually quite an interesting follow-up to a journal article he published with another doctor, looking at the Narcissistic Personality Index and the celebrity phenomenon...and also the kinds of behaviours celebrities seem to be exhibiting now.

From what I recall, he has consulted with and for reality shows before, in casting, and talks about how contestants who were somewhat unstable were sought after - as long as it seemed likely that they wouldn't harm themselves or others.

It's a painful irony that he has his own reality show - Celebrity Rehab - and consults closely for Sixteen and Pregnant and Teen Mom, along with his syndicated radio show, Loveline (granted, though, that none of them are competition based shows, and the rehab program is associated with an accredited rehab medicine clinic).

But he has a unique perspective into the world of celebrity and the reality television phenomenon.

I had been seeking a replacement for the phrase "insufficiently counter-hegemonic" that still packed a bit of punch, and a friend suggested "revolutionarily weak-ass." Unfortunately, "revolutionarily" isn't a word, but I might start using it anyway, as an excuse for skipping work and handing papers in late: "I'm sorry, I'm just a bit revolutionarily weak-ass today. I'll check in when I'm feeling better."

That's kinda sad about the origins of "truth to power." It's a lovely phrasing. I suppose it's no less pretty knowing its history, but I hate giving the credit to business lobbyists.

Resistant, oppositional, and even critical all connote something like "counter-hegemonic," but without the precise term's sense of exerting a real influence over public opinion. Counter-cultural gets close, too, for connoting a sense of generalized mobilization, but that phrase is usually understood in the context of the civil rights and anti-Viet Nam foment of the late 1960s. I suppose this is one reason such a specific and specialized vocabulary for critical theory has developed. Sometimes le mot juste is just the polysyllabic untranslatability it insists on staying.

That said, I think revolutionarily counts as a real word.

... and that's how I ended up reading about Gustave Flaubert on wikipedia, instead of doing anything even remotely responsible (not that the task occupying me - no paper-writing!!! blog about the internet!!! - was any better). The moral imperative of appealing to justice, instead of a simpler correctness or precision, is interesting. Wikipedia didn't offer any insight, but it suggests he would have thought it through.

I will give "revolutionarily" some credit: most people would know what is meant, and it avoids, rather than causes, syntactic awkwardness. That at a whopping 7 syllables. Maybe using fewer big words isn't a good tactic. If we had a choice between "stop using big words" and "offer real access to discourse to the people you're talking about," one hopes we'd all choose the latter. Let's form a committee to replace the bibles in hotel rooms with dictionaries.

(the humour might be lost on a het audience, but "let's form a committee" is prit'near the dykiest phrase known to English)