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Changing realities
by Louise Jolly| Brighton, UK
Thursday, 21 July 2011
tags: consumer culture, culture, emergence, europe, semiotics, uncategorized
The latest genre to send ratings soaring on British TV is ‘structured reality’ – often described as an amalgam of reality and drama. Series such as The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE) and Made in Chelsea feature people playing themselves, but in scripted or semi-scripted scenarios.
The emergence of structured reality marks a response to the cultural pressures and contradictions which sank the earlier reality landmark Big Brother.
When Big Brother was first screened on British TV in 2000, it was partly rooted in the slacker genre of the 1990s. Reality was represented as baggy, loose and unstructured – about endlessly hanging out and discussing trivia.
Although housemates did face the occasional task or challenge, the idea of reality here mostly opposed narrative structure and dramatic action. It enacted the postmodern undoing of ‘plot’: the liberation of trivia from over-arching narrative.
Also in keeping with the slacker genre, early Big Brother represented people in an ‘off duty’, function-less state. The house was a suspended, abstract environment, which cut its occupants off from the personal or professional identities they held in the outside world.
But as the years rolled on and slacker culture waned, Big Brother found itself unable to maintain the loose and non-prescriptive reality it staged in its first season.
Levels of intervention, manipulation and narrative twists increased – clashing with the idea that the house was meant to offer an open-ended, experimental environment in which outcomes would be unpredictable (although ideally involving sex of some sort).
Last year, the programme finally did collapse under the contradiction, as ratings fell and Channel 4 announced the 2010 season would be its last. Big Brother lives on, but only just – having been bought by a smaller channel.
And as its popularity waned, so structured reality rose to take its place, bringing in a new idea of reality compatible with overt scripting and management.
For example, in contrast to the ‘off-duty self’ represented in early Big Brother, structured reality gives us the professionalised ‘always-on self’. Coherent and self-coincident, the ‘always-on self’ flows seamlessly between on and off-screen life, reflecting the way social media are undoing the boundaries between private and public identity.
The stars of TOWIE and Made in Chelsea are, effectively, specialists at being themselves. And there’s a clear connection here with the quasi-professional identity management encouraged by today’s social-media discourse.
11 years ago, Big Brother represented reality as an experiment. And, of course, the idea behind an experiment is that no-one knows what’s going to happen (however much manipulation was going on behind the scenes). It was the possibility of surprise and inconsistency – best of all, lapses and slips of every kind – that kept viewers interested.
Structured reality expresses the opposite: a managed vision of reality and identity that reflects wider cultural changes – in particular, the rise of the transparent, ‘always-on self’ that’s the same at work, at home and at play.
© Louise Jolly 2011
26 July 2011 at 8:37 am
Louise says:
Definitely. I think reality is always structured in some way – but with these kinds of structured identities, the structure is seamlessly ‘built in’ rather than hidden behind the scenes or knowingly/ironically referenced.
24 July 2011 at 2:15 am
Sandra says:
Very interesting Louise. I’ve been thinking recently about something slightly similar, but in another context. I recently read someone describe his job in negative terms as having to ‘put on a business mask’ in contrast to jobs where you ‘don’t need to be a type of person but be yourself,’ (usually in companies that use creativity and innovation as a selling point). And I find the latter very interesting, since the result is usually something which you call a ‘structured reality/identity’ at the workplace, thus it also ends up being a ‘business mask’ that actually pretends to be reality. You could also argue that social media profiles and ‘about me’ boxes are the same thing.