Critcal Investigation proposal

I would pitch my idea as "Supernanny goes to school"

This reality show, set in a school, focuses on out of control, angry, intimidating students who have weak, vunerable teachers who just can't cope.

To solve this constant torment, the "Take Overs" come in- three strong minded, skilled, experienced, boot camp like authoritative figures who go into the class room and shake things up a bit by disiplining them, to turn them into ideal students.

This will have similar ideologies and values to Supernanny and Wife Swap as it aims to better people in society. It fits into a contemporary media landscape as it is reality tv and aims to tackle "obedient teens" and related moral panics associated e.g. gang culture and knife crime.

This would target an age range of 16-35: teens who can identify with the setting and student characters, and adults- parents and teachers- can identify with the teen characters in the text

Sinker

This text might be controversial as it may appear to reinforce negative stereotypes of teenages. However, as most classes are, there are particular students who are the bad one and some who are the good hard working. I would aim to reflect this as best as I can.

Narrative

Similar structure for every episode: Equilbrium would be the bad class with the stressed out teenagers, disequlibrim would be the takeovers coming in disrupting the norm, the new equilibrium would be the students' behaviour improves and the teacher can relax in lessons =)

Critical Investigation essay plan

How does the Reality TV genre construct "Reality" and why is it so popular?

Intro

The history of reality TV- where did it come from and why does it exist (http://http//biancamest4.blogspot.com/2010/10/reality-tv-big-brother-phenomenon.html, http://http//biancamest4.blogspot.com/2010/11/reality-tv-interview-with-annette-hill.html)
Cheap production, new fresh idea, wide audience appeal (http://http//biancamest4.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-can-philosophy-teach-us-about.html)
Reality TV- (Wife Swap and Supernanny: documentary style- more believed) (http://http//biancamest4.blogspot.com/2010/11/reality-tv-interview-with-annette-hill.html)
Point one

Mediation-how do the texts create meaning through selecting and editing (character roles and representations) - http://http//biancamest4.blogspot.com/2010/11/constructed-world-of-wife-swap.html
Selecting process- target the fame hungry and desperate- provies more entertainment (http://http//biancamest4.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-do-reality-shows-select-contestants.html
Hegemony (http://http//biancamest4.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-can-philosophy-teach-us-about.html)
Textual analysis of the two texts and how the mediation effects the audience

Point two

Why is it constructed this way?- The institutions values and how they are conveyed
Channel 4- commercial institution (famous for broadcasting reality TV e.g. big brother)can afford to produce "risky shows"
Present their own ideogies- take sides etc. (http://http//biancamest4.blogspot.com/2010/11/constructed-world-of-wife-swap.html)

Point three

Why is it so popular? (http://http//biancamest4.blogspot.com/2010/11/reality-tv-interview-with-annette-hill.html) Voyeristic element
Uses and gratifications theory- identification, escapism, discussion and information (Wife Swap and Supernanny-moral panics and media effects)- http://http//biancamest4.blogspot.com/2010/11/reality-tv-whats-happening.html
Postmoderinsm- bluring of reality and entertainment
Wide range of reality genres- accessible to a wide audience

Point four

Is it decreasing popularity (Death of Big brother)
Reality TV as junk food
Effects on society (Media Effects)

Relevant Issuses and Debates

Representation and stereotyping

There is a lot of exaggerated and repetition of representations, sometimes creating and reinforcing particular stereotypes.

Supernanny: Naughty and rude kids- typical behaviour expected of teenages not 5 year olds
Wife Swap: Dominant members in the family who are controling- this is brought up witgh the swap such as clashing of families and their values

Reality TV

The genre is reality TV but is presented as a documentary. This may be due to the criticisms of reality TV. Documentaries have historically been taken seriously and as a source of information.

Moral Panics

Due to the representations of groups constatntly being repeated, it makes the audience become concerned about certain issues

Supernanny: Constantly seeing children behaving extremely badly- could raise concerns about parenting in Britain as the parents are represented as bad or weak people.

Helps "fix" the moral panics of bad behaving teens who are constantly represented in the media negativly. This text aims to "nip it in the bud".

Wife Swap: In society failing marriages seems to be a problem (something like 1 in 3 divorce rate). This text is possibly trying to resolve this by making families see their own problems and their attempts to fix them at the end of the show. This tells audiences that things can be solved in a marriage.

Media Effects

Similar to the moral panic, after watching this show, audiences that identify with the texts may change their ways to make their lives better.

Supernanny: Struggling parents might use similar techniques from the show to control their child.

Wife Swap: Families might review their lives after watching the show to improve their own.

Reality TV: an interview with Annette Hill

This article from Mediamagazine is relevant to my critical investigation as it provides information on the history of reality TV, how it appeals to its audiences, connections with other genres and its links and relativity to society.

"We could say that there are two broad elements of a genre that make it reality TV: an observational strand, where you follow people around and see what happens, and a created strand where you make a situation work in front of the television, almost like made-for-TV reality. Both of those strands always rely on a mix of fact and fiction, of popular elements of documentary or news, combined with popular elements of lifestyle or talk shows and even little bits of drama like melodrama or soap opera."

"it blurs the boundary between factual programming like news and documentary and fictional programming like soap opera or melodrama"

"Reality TV is a hybrid of the two things coming together."

"Reality TV is a direct response to that. For example, in the 1980s, the growth and huge success of the talk show, with people talking about themselves, arguing and debating and fighting over their emotional and personal lives became high conflict situations, could be seen as a precursor of reality TV. In the 1980s there was an actors’ strike and a big conflict around what was paid to writers of drama. And this created a wonderful gap in the market which was filled by reality TV. It also exploited the success of local news, which was a boom area in the 1980s, where we had ‘on-scene/as-it-happened’ styles of news. Throughout the 1990s reality TV took over from the talk show and became the most dominant genre in factual entertainment in America and in Britain...Now in the Noughties, we have strikes going on around writers’ pay and actors’ pay once again, and we can see the huge growth of the reality talent show genre as a direct response to this. So it’s always a creative and economic response to a crisis going on within broadcasting."

"Public service broadcasters like the BBC came in early on the more instructional observational styles of reality television....Changing Rooms were good examples of reality television which, though entertaining, also had an instructional public service element."

"commercial broadcasters was much more about shows which would produce income, for example, voting revenue; that voting revenue didn’t feed back into a public service environment but into a direct commercial environment. Channel 4, being a hybrid of public service and a commercial channel, can pick a format like Big Brother where the revenue feeds back into the commercial environment of the show."

"The reality genre has had a huge impact on other kinds of factual genres. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that there’s been a more general restyling of many kinds of factual content, from news and investigative programmes, through documentary to lifestyle and reality TV as a whole."

"It’s often claimed that reality TV only appeals to stupid people, and we have to start by saying that that’s just simply not true! Firstly, it’s precisely the experimental nature of it, the fact that it is a mix of the things you like in other shows, a bit of soap opera, a bit of documentary, a bit of a talk show. We’re attracted to that hybrid nature of the genre."

"A second factor would be the emphasis on emotions, drama, relationships: our hopes and fears and dreams, and what makes us angry, what makes us cry, what makes us happy. All of that is performed within these kinds of reality TV shows. And we get to interact with these people, whether through arguing with them, relating to them, or voting for or against them. And we get to think about our own relationships and what we do in similar situations in some way. So the ‘people’ element and the emotions is crucially important."

"Reality TV couldn’t be the success story it is if it didn’t appeal to lots of different kinds of audiences. It’s an all-round pleaser, an all-round entertainer. It manages this by drawing on the things we like about other genres. However, we do know some things: first of all, it appeals to younger viewers. I would call some older viewers ‘reality refuseniks’, whereas a lot of younger viewers, especially around 15-35 are much more attracted to the experimental nature of the genre, and the fact that it’s about people, about following ideas and subjects and emotions, and seeing what unfolds. Women tend to like it a bit more than men, and that’s certainly related to the fact that much reality TV draws on soap opera which, traditionally, has been a genre that appeals to women."

"reality TV unites the public across gender, and across class, and this makes it appealing to the audience, even though it’s representing different classes within the shows themselves."

"some of the biggest and still most dominant discussions about reality TV are precisely that it’s trash TV, junk food TV. Reality TV as junk food TV has become such a dominant discourse in society that even viewers who watch it are repeating the same arguments back to us.

"Also, because reality TV is controversial in the way it mixes different things, it often makes mistakes and can produce something that’s terrible as well as something brilliant. And these concerns are not only about the quality of the content – is it good? – but about the impact of the content on the audience."

"Reality television is very much a people-orientated kind of genre. It is about emotional relations, social relations, the way we communicate, the way we don’t communicate. It draws people in and forces them to take a position, often a critical position, often by imagining, would I do that in that situation? Would I behave in that way? In some ways it provides a kind of safe space in your own home to watch the social relations, the way people fight and argue and love and hate, and so on."

"What reality TV does is bring up a moral issue and make people confront it and say, well, what kind of position are we going to take? Whether it resolves the issue for people is another matter."

Renowned documentary maker, Roger Graef’s idea of chains of trust and distrust is a wonderful concept for us to use in the analysis of reality television. I would say at its best, reality TV can invoke a chain of trust"

"If the genre continues to deal with big issues to do with health and education and mind, body and spirit matters or family breakdown, or the ‘broken Britain’ theme, then the programme-makers really need to build trust with the viewers. They’re dealing with serious issues and this requires a basis of trust that people have been treated fairly, that it’s a well-made programme with an ethical consideration to participation."

"The trend that we’ve seen already set over the last few years for reality talent shows is going to continue, for lots of reasons. One is that variety is an absolute fundamental part of popular culture, and it’s part of its history from day 1, and it will continue to be a crucial part of the way popular culture develops in the future. And secondly, economically and in terms of production issues, the birth of the format, which allows a particular show to be reproduced around the world, will continue to ride the wave in popular TV genres."

"Looking at social and cultural trends more broadly, I think we’re going to see some kind of move towards issues to do with the mind, body and spirit, perhaps to do with religious beliefs but, more importantly, in the way that we relate to our dead relatives – getting in touch with them; speaking to psychics. These issues are already featuring in daytime TV, and talk shows; Most Haunted is one quite long-running example. I expect to see examples of spiritual transformation shows in the future."

"We can also expect to see even more short-term examples of programmes that deal directly with the economic crisis – how to make more money, how to improve your CV, how to get a job in a difficult environment. So we’ll see some short-term responses to specific issues that we’re dealing with right now and I think, some longer-term trends that clearly raise much bigger questions to do with what happens to us when we die"

Annette Hill was interviewed by Jenny Grahame.

This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 30, December 2009.

The constructed world of Wife Swap

Lucy Scott-Galloway shows how reality TV, and a single episode of Wife Swap can help us to understand ideology. (Important information and quotes from the article)

Defining ideology:‘a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action; a mental impression; a belief’.

"When the same life choices are valued by the majority of texts, the majority of the time, these ideologies become dominant. Because the majority of the mainstream media are owned by similar people, with similar interests, the majority of media texts encourage life choices that are in the interest of those media owners"

"He describes residual ideology referring to beliefs and practices that are derived from an earlier stage of society, and emergent ideology, referring to those values and practices which are developing in society outside of, and sometimes actively challenging, the dominant."

Wife Swap – the concept and the narrative

"The narrative structure is clear. After a set up which involves the male voiceover introducing the two families, the problematic is caused by two women being placed in unfamiliar roles at odds with their own values."

"The stage of selection in the process of representation cannot be overlooked here. Subjects are clearly chosen on the basis of their demographic and psychographic heterogeneity (or difference); it is no coincidence that moderns are swapped with traditionals, urbans with rurals, etc...These binary oppositions in the organisation of the programme are a basic prerequisite; no friction, no show."

This text challenges gender roles, expectations and their own values and how they might differ to others in society. This creates conflict of individuals and people creating entertainment for audiences.

"The structure: Stock situations throughout the majority of the show include disagreements between husband and new ‘wife’ in both homes as the two narrative strands of each family are cross-cut to imply parallel action, usually over cleaning, cooking and disciplining children. The narrative climax is provided by the showdown between the two wives in the debriefing."

The use of parallel allows audience to journey with both families learning new things from both. It also allows audiences to viewpoint from both sides. By paralleling these activities, usually done by women, is it at the same time reinforcing gender roles? Representation and stereotyping

"The swapping of wives, a sexual double entendre in itself, may suggest that a wife is owned by her husband in some way, and is his property to swap with another man. It is the woman who changes home and leaves her children, not the man....writing of manuals as ‘experts’ in their domestic environments and their participation in the final showdown, all reinforce the competitiveness of women for the approval of others, in this case, the audience."

This is reinforcing a patriarchal society- females are swaping rather than males. Suggets women are interchangable. This could suggest there is hegemonic values in this text- as it still in some way subordinates women through male dominance. There is also a representation of women to need acceptance from other people and society- it reinforcies it as a representation and also it might impose this representation on others- media effects/hyperdermic needle theory

"It may be in keeping with feminist thought, Wife Swap refuses to take up a permanent ideological position on gender roles in contemporary life, preferring to sit, accompanied by the audience, on the proverbial fence – a particularly high fence from where we may look down with sadistic glee upon the warring, dogmatic wives."

Though it could be argued this is hegemony, a feminist would argue that there is no set gender ideologies- as some female characters are very dominant, there is no repetative ideology of males or females being more powerful than the other.

"It is usually one of the husbands who emerges in the most positive light, having undergone an emotional journey in which he realises that perhaps things could be done differently. Flexibility is therefore suggested as a desirable character trait; husbands who are willing to embark on a spiritual journey provided by Wife Swap are rewarded with positive – or at least sympathetic – representation."

There is a typical narrative struture, or narrative role that is dominant in the text: most likely constructed this way. Another example of hegemony- the males get the sympathetic view and the positive representation- suggested this text is constructed by an elite male.

"Such a narrative resolution is common in the ‘self-improvement’ broadcasting trends of the early twenty-first century. The problem with Wife Swap is that the couples don’t realise they’ve got a problem; that’s the show’s role to point out. Although the newly enlightened husband’s new ‘wife’ invariably claims his ‘conversion’ as her victory, it is doubtless short lived, as both women will be represented as narrative antagonists. The women rarely admit alternative life options are viable, sticking to their guns as overbearing harpy or lazy good-for-nothing. Who was it who said that if women ruled the world, there’d be no more war? Certainly nobody working on Wife Swap!"

This shows how the text suggests how people should be or live- media effects theory.

"Whilst the juxtaposition of such obvious binary opposites is useful in the study of ideology itself, it is the narrative representation of women that I find most interesting. I’m fascinated not by the ideological choices that the producers openly display for us to dissect, but by the ideology implicitly encoded in the programme’s production."

Wife Swap case study – the New Year episode: Channel 4’s Christmas 2004 ‘specials’

"The audience’s perception of these two women is very carefully constructed in the opening five minutes of the show; and we may begin to make some educated guesses about how the audience will be positioned in relation to the female ‘stars’ of the show."

"Darenda is presented seated in the bottom two thirds of the frame, on the far left of a high angle shot with Pete, standing, taking up most of the right hand side. He points at her as he speaks, as if addressing a child, and penetrating her half of the frame. Dressed in a shirt and tie in comparison to her casual style, and emphasised by the choice of shot type, Pete appears authoritative and domineering, Darenda insolent and child-like. To reinforce the point, Darenda punctuates her sentences with the word ‘fuck’ – and it’s only two minutes past 9pm. The VO continues, ‘and what happens when your new man doesn’t meet your standards?’ There is no irony lost in the juxtaposition of the now common-currency term ‘new man’ to anchor an image of Alani in which the pint he is downing takes up the majority of the mid-shot."

This is an analysis of how characters are mediated to convey an ideology of the institution. It is mostly done in the opening of the text.

"Whilst we cannot overlook the way Wife Swap is constructed, the fact remains that the participants are real people, living real lives after the cameras have stopped rolling. For us, as audience, the pleasure in the programme comes from our view of the drama of social difference played out before us. Not only must the participants be different from each other, they must be different from the audience. Perhaps this is why this particular episode of Wife Swap is so entertaining."

This reminds us that the text is based on real people, but is constructed to show create entertainment: this is why the show is popular.

"Going back to Raymond Williams’ classifications of ideology: whilst the audience are dominant, Bonny has been represented as having residual values, and Darenda as having emergent, both safely represented as outside the ‘norm’."

"Wife Swap is no more or less constructed than any other pseudo social-scientific documentary"

"These hour-long offerings of entertainment contain significant records of social identity and hierarchies of class in Britain in the early twenty-first century."

Lucy Scott-Galloway teaches Media Studies at Havering 6th Form College
This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 12, April 2005

Reality TV : What’s happening?

"We certainly expect to see real people in somewhat strange situations, and we expect to watch them, safe in the knowledge that they are unable to watch us back."

The audience take great satisfaction out of watiching others lives- voyerism

"It seems clear why producers make reality TV: these programmes are relatively cheap to make, certainly compared to drama, and they appear to guarantee audiences."

The audience

"The success of reality TV is partly due to the increasingly voyeuristic nature of the society in which we live, and in part due to the obsession with celebrity and everyone wanting to be one. I would also argue that we are living in a much more ‘open society’; not open in terms of freedoms (in fact we have less freedoms), but open in terms of the ‘nothing is sacred’ philosophy."

This is why people are more willing to be on TV, because its acceptable to spill your whole life out onto tv.

"I know that there is a huge voyeuristic component attached to my own and others’ viewing. I’m watching people in odd situations, with their warts and all in full view, but they can’t see me watching them. Do I watch because it makes me feel better about myself, because I think I am not like them?"

This explores the uses and gratifications of identification or lack of it. People use these reality texts to explore their lives and their own vaules.

"Firstly, reality TV appears to have arrived in our schedules at a time when soap operas were becoming more and more realistic: very naturalistic acting/characterisation and realistic storylines and issues"..."producers could see that the next step was to use real people and see how they react, hence the title docu-soap when they were first screened."

Instant success – no talent required

All four categories of Uses and Gratifications research: (Diversion, Personal Relationships, Personal Identity, Surveillance), can be applied to reality TV.

"There is no doubt that we use reality TV as a form of escapism, it certainly helps you forget about the stresses of the day when you can see people having a much worse day than you have had.

Reality TV performs the function of companionship through identification with television characters, and there is no doubt that there is sociability

In discussion: everyone was talking about BB5. In terms of personal identity, comparisons are a relatively natural thing to make: we either take the stance that we are better than the participants, or we want to be them.

And finally, it is a source of information about the world, not just from a psychological perspective, but also from finding out about a particular way of life – for example, Airport, Property Ladder etc."

Reality and post-modernism

To quote Baudrillard: Art (or popular culture) today has totally penetrated reality.

He meant that the border between popular culture and reality has vanished as both have collapsed into the universal simulacrum. There are four stages to this:

• It is the reflection of a basic reality.
• It masks and perverts a basic reality.
• It marks the absence of a basic reality.
• It bears no relation to any reality whatever – it is its own pure simulacrum in which the distinctions between ‘real life’ and its media representations have become blurred.

"Reality becomes redundant and we have a hyper-reality, in which images breed with each other without reference to reality or meaning. Though a little abstract, it is possible to apply this to reality TV in the sense that we watch the shows because we believe we are watching real people; which in fact in a postmodern sense is nonsense. They are not real anymore; they are not even in a real situation anymore. In real terms, once you see the mediation process involved, you are aware that it is not a real situation."

Tina Dixon is an Examiner for AQA.

This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 10, December 2004

What can philosophy teach us about reality TV?

Sean Richardson suggests the Greek philosopher Plato might give us a steer.

Reality television appears to have taken over our TV schedules! From the monstrous behemoth that is Big Brother the genre spawned many hybrids and sub-genres. Faced with a serious documentary on BBC4 or Wife Swap on Channel 4

"The relatively cheap production costs and high audience viewing figures ensure a steady stream of new and repeated formats of reality television on our screens. The ‘real’ drama of the programmes is added to by the interactivity, with the audience supposedly directly influencing events on screen."

Again, the reality genre is a cheap production: no actors, scripts or major setting creations (sometimes), making the genre abundant on TV! The more successful shows, the more they create.

"In his most famous allegory, Plato described a dark cave containing prisoners chained to the floor facing a blank wall. They know nothing other than the shadows they see on the wall, cast by objects and people moving in front of a fire. They have lived this way for their entire lives, and most of them are content to sit staring at the shadows."

The dark cave becomes the TV "shadow box"..."The voyeuristic scopophilia of watching reality TV is undeniable."

"As well as the chained people, there are other people in the cave. Plato calls them the puppet-handlers, the ones holding those in the cave captive". e.g. the institution or authority...possibly the voiceover who constructs meaning or makes "puppet show".

"If we think of the puppet handlers as the ‘elite’ or ruling class then this idea of a reality television-obsessed audience becomes controversial, drawing on the Media Studies concept of hegemony."

The hegemonic view

"Theories of hegemony are based around the idea that dominant classes persuade subordinate or lower ones to accept and adopt their values. In programmes like Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor, a panel of so-called experts decide who has talent and who has not."

Supernanny: Jo could possibly be the elite one on the show: she makes strugging parents adopt her values of looking after their children.

Wife Swap: The instition picks a family that they most vaule and represent them as the right way to live, while the other family are subordinated.

"The programme makers and the television networks are the ultimate puppet handlers, with their manipulative editing and presentation of the judges to the viewing public. Channel 4 and ITV are the organisations that broadcast the most popular reality television formats."

"The allegory of Plato’s cave offers an interesting comment on reality television programming, particularly with the notion of celebrity, our obsession with confession and voyeurism, and the desire to get past the ‘puppet handlers’ and the fire to the rarefied celebrity lifestyle. The chained audience theory might be limited by the active social engagement that audiences bring to this viewing experience, as reality programmes clearly seem to serve a social function. "

The future of reality TV in the UK seems assured, as new series are continually commissioned.

Sean Richardson is Head of Media Studies at Penistone Grammar School, and an examiner for WJEC Media Studies A Level.

from MediaMagazine 22, December 2008.

Reality TV and Theory
Sean Richardson, MediaMagazine 22, December 2007, TV special, New online September 2008, Reality TV, accessed 6 Nov 2010

Supernanny Series 2, Episode 1: MIGRAIN

http://www.seesaw.com/TV/Lifestyle/b-5160-Supernanny?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=CPC&utm_term=supernanny%2Bepisodes&utm_content=Broad&utm_campaign=SeeSaw%2BMost%2BViewed%2BProgrammes&gclid=CJyK85LBjKUCFSr-2Aod7iC8MA


Media Language

Voice over- informal- reflects "real" family life as informal- inviting audience
V.O used to anchor a lot of shots

Few shots with lots of cameramovement- voyerstic- looking into familes private life- audience fulfilment

Mise en scene-setting- housing: family environment
clothing and props- casualwear with familes
Supernanny wears suits and glasses- connotes

Institution

Channel 4

Genre

Fly on the Wall documentary/ reality TV
Fly on the wall makes the text inclusive
Audience feel apart of the family home
Conventions: Voice Over with character sound bridging, interviews, shots of events, hand-held cameras, long shots of setting

Representation

Children- represented as violent, abusive and childish (alternative representation of children)

Parents- weak, vurnerable- almost presented as children- character development, crying, sadness

Supernanny (Jo Frost)- Teacher-like
Reinforces female expectations- maternal females
subverts female expectation- powerful and dominant over children and parents

Echoing of roles:

Parent and child
Parent and Supernanny= almost like parent and child

Audience

Esapism and identification for the audience

Possibly a main female audience

Ideologies

Narrative
Linear narrative- audience journey with the process- gain a sense of achievement, learn new skills along with it

Equlibrium- Meet new family, see the problems they deal with- in a montage
Disequlibrium- for chilbren- Supernanny brings change in the house with rules ect.
Equibrium- the children and the parents live more peacefully

Change in focus...

As the reality TV genre is so vast, I have decided to narrow my search to fly on the wall documentaries. In particular, I plan to focus on Wife Swap and Supernannay

Similarities

They are both fly on the wall documentary reality tv shows.
They both focus on family life and aim to rebuilt them.