Abstract
I love Mob Wives (VH1, USA). This is a structured reality show, part fiction part fact. It is variously called ‘reality drama’, ‘reality soap’, or ‘constructed reality’. In these shows, producers work with a cast of real people, structuring scenes and storylines to enhance drama and comedy. As in the docusoap trend of the 1990s, characterisation, emotional drama and multiple story lines work within a flexible frame of reality. The women in this show live on the edge, their daily experience a tidal wave of highs and lows, from fights and prison rules, to friendships and family loyalty. Domestic worries seem nothing compared to this.
My reactions to this show are similar to the women in Beverly Skeggs and Helen Wood’s thoughtful study of reality TV audiences. To take delight in other people’s misfortune is a common feature of reality TV. Skeggs and Wood conducted an in-depth textual and qualitative study of makeover and personal transformation shows with 40 women in South London during 2005–8, looking at working- and middle-class women, and black, white and Asian women, and observing their reactions to shows like Wife Swap or Faking It. The focus of this book is on an under-researched area of reality TV – that of gender and class. They use the method of affective textual encounter to look closely at how women react to reality TV, a genre they claim is part of television as an affective medium. In their textual analysis, Skeggs and Wood highlight the significance of melodrama to reality entertainment and how personal transformation shows capitalize on highly emotional performances where we, as audiences, are asked to cast judgement, often on working-class characters. This ‘judgement shot’ is part of a wider ‘production of an economy of personhood’ (p. 131), where audiences compare themselves and their individual experiences in relation to others. The authors make a crucial point that viewers’ reactions are part of an affective economy where there are continual connections and disconnections of the self to and from the social (p. 69).
With its title Reacting to Reality TV, the book addresses a central issue – that this is a genre more talked about than watched. A reality format like Got Talent (Syco and Fremantle Media) attracts millions of viewers to the live shows in each country around the world, and many more millions download and share YouTube clips. Even more people chat about the show. When people say reality TV is a phenomenon, they are referring to the sheer scale and sweep of the shows and formats that are often bigger than the actual content on offer. Key is the multidimensionality of the genre. Reality TV attracts attention from consumers, audiences and the wider public in a mediated environment. For example Dancing On Ice (ITV1 UK) was considered a failure by TV executives not because audiences turned their back on the show but because it did not make tabloid headlines once during the 2012 season. Trending on Twitter is another example. More people followed The Only Way is Essex (ITV2, UK) via social media than actually watched the show on TV in 2011. This book rightly situates reality TV as part of a broader social and media matrix, and chapters on social theories relating to gender and class and lifestyle shows highlight this matrix very well. But what people are talking about, what gives their reactions value, is so much caught up in what is happening now. The authors note the significance of liveness and presence to reality TV, and yet their analysis is bound to lifestyle shows that are suffering from format fatigue. A method like affective textual encounter could be helpful in tracking audience reactions to reality TV formats where social media, public voting and other interactive elements are embedded in the formats, alongside performance and affect.
The strengths of the book lie in the way these two authors bring different kinds of research together in their analysis of gender and class, and television audiences. At times the style of writing can be difficult to read, especially for students without a working knowledge of social theories. Where the combined approach works best is when the authors apply themselves to thorny problems such as the idea of governmentality. Briefly, this is an argument that reality TV teaches audiences a neoliberal politics of self-work. Instead, their viewers reacted strongly against the expert advice in personal transformation shows. What is more, their viewers reacted strongly as women from working- or middle-class backgrounds. Such a valuable empirical and theoretical analysis complicates the workings of ideology or pedagogy.
One of the authors’ main claims is that ambiguity has not been theorized in audience studies. They show how viewers’ reactions to lifestyle shows are entangled with the representations on offer. In many ways, women are boxed in and struggle to find their own value positions for troubling representations of class and gender. The ambiguous reactions of viewers give way to some positions of certainty as they connect and disconnect their selves to and from other people and the social conditions in which they live. Ambiguity also works in other ways. Consider the documusical, a novel form that invites ambiguous and open-ended reactions from audiences to this mix of fact and fiction. Or ghost-hunting reality TV, a form that relies completely on the notion of keeping an open mind. To see how ambiguity can be theorized and understood is so valuable, and this book opens a dialogue on the impact of ambiguity on big ideas and theories in media and sociology.