Abstract
Lorenzo-Dus and Blitvich’s anthology Real Talk ably demonstrates discourse analysis’ ability to critically scrutinize the global media phenomenon of commercial broadcasted reality TV. The editors argue that what we call ‘reality TV’ is not a genre but that it might more properly be considered a discourse that tends to hybridize other, more stable television genres such as games shows, soaps and so on (p. 15).
The anthology has a three-part structure. Part I provides the justification for why discourse analysis, although a latecomer to the study of reality TV, is an important and vital approach for understanding how reality TV negotiates a freighted ideological version of reality for viewers. It provides a lucid map through discourse analysis that unpacks how Critical Discourse Analysis – which tends to focus on the exchange of utterances – and Multimodal Analysis – which accounts for how editing, lighting, framing, mise en scène and so on function to shape the televisual discourse of reality TV – can be combined. Part II surveys various programs in various cultural contexts that seek to shape identity for viewers, while Part III explores how impoliteness operates as a defining feature of reality TV in various programs worldwide. Although the bulk of the chapters focus on English-speaking reality television, there are chapters based on Israeli, Chinese, Spanish and Argentinean programs, giving some support to the anthology’s claim to a global focus; given the reach and popularity of African reality TV, already explored from a cultural studies perspective, the absence of any chapters devoted to this continent seems, however, an important oversight.
I have the sense that some of these chapters might have been stronger if they had dug a little deeper into prior historical and cultural work on reality TV. Part III’s exploration of reality TV’s reliance on impoliteness, for instance, assumes that rudeness cannot operate as a way to disrupt the civil middle-class televisual discourse that characterizes vast swaths of commercial broadcast television. For example, Tolson’s reflection on The Jeremy Kyle Show (Chapter 12) deftly demonstrates how the host’s rude and leering antics generate a neoliberal hegemonic space that consistently demeans and silences lower class guests (pp. 266–287). While I do not dispute his findings, the chapter does not explore the corollary to this line of argument articulated by Andersen et al. (1990) in their study of The Morton Downey Jr. (1987–1988) daytime talk show. They argued convincingly that this wild program with unruly guests and crude host may give voice to folks traditionally excluded and silenced by the mediated public sphere. While I appreciate the directorial control of much reality TV makes it an incredibly challenge for participants to produce little more than sound and fury, I think it is important to at least entertain the possibility that resistance to the often banal neoliberal logic of reality TV may come from within the genre’s reliance on vulgarity.
The analysis conducted in this anthology is a product of the current digital era where so many of these programs are archived in digital forms on file sharing and video streaming websites. Researchers have access to a vast corpus that 20 years ago with VCR technology would have been cumbersome if not unthinkable to study. But one methodological limitation of this approach is the focus on programs as discrete corpus-like texts cut off from the larger digital mix of texting, twittering, blogging that many reality television programs rely on. Given the focus on discourse analysis, the studies in the anthology tend to pay attention to the televisual texts, but to look inward at programs while ignoring the material forces that give rise to this cheap-to-produce, scriptless and actorless discourse, or its digital reception and proliferation by viewing audiences. The editors’ notion of reality TV as a discourse is complicated by the manner in which commercial broadcast television now operates less on a terrestrial style broadcast mode and more as a part of streaming culture deeply embedded in Web 2.0 ‘selfie’ culture. If reality TV is a discourse, it is one that is only partially occurring on TV box sets and in a more virus-like fashion embedding itself in a multitude of digital interactions.
In this respect, the approaches taken seem a tad quaint. I would expect a rejoinder to this anthology might be one that considers not just the exchange between reality TV participants and the way they are framed by the directors, but how fans digitally interact with the content and how producers of reality TV frame and shape these digital interactions. The wider exploration of reality TV as a discourse morphing other more discrete and stable television genres and indeed digital and face-to-face human interactions is beyond this anthology’s reach but suggests an extension of the valuable work done here.
I will certainly use chapters of this book in teaching my third-year undergraduate television studies course not only because its careful methodologies introduce students to valuable critical approaches but also because the text introduces students to the notion that while reality TV might be considered one of the prime examples of a western narrative form that in the last three decades has secured global dominance, it also operates worldwide as a nuanced way to service local and national tastes.