In Germany, Jana and Juergen
go to their bedroom for the first time in the Big Brother house.
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Peter Lunt, a social psychologist
at University College London and expert on the impact of television, pins the vogue
for “reality” on changes in public emotional life
Do you see reality shows as a new television genre, or something that has evolved
from previous programmes?
Reality television seems to have two different origins. One of them is the changing
form of the talk-show, which from a very gentle format based on celebrities’ public
relations evolved via presenters like Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey in the United
States into something that shifted interest from the everyday life of a celebrity
to celebrating everyday lives.
Take the programma Queen for a Day as an example. This was a gameshow in the U.S.
in the 1960s for middle-class housewives, who would file in the studios and be selected
on the basis of their hardships: the people who had the most heart-rending and difficult
stories got to tell them to the audience, there was a vote, and the most worthy person
was crowned Queen for a Day, and given all sorts of presents. It was a momentary
reversal of social status, like putting the ordinary in the position of the king,
which was done in medieval fairs and tournaments.
But to understand reality television, you also have to look at another genre, which
is fly-on-the-wall documentary. In the 1960s, especially in Britain, this formed
part of a cultural trend towards representing ordinary lives in cinema and television.
And what you see there is a movement from celebration to something closer to scrutiny
or surveillance.
But in contrast to fly-on-the-wall documentary, the presence of cameras in these
new shows is absolutely crucial.
That is very important. Compared to previous shows, the new programmes have a
much more managed feel. Jerry Springer [a U.S. talk-show] is a good example of this
format. A first person comes on and is given lots of time to discuss an intimate
problem—everything is quite calm. Then there’s a gradual build-up of tension as other
people are levered into the process. Then the people who come much later get much
less time, leading much more intensely to an emotional eruption. The idea is that
we’ve lost the ability to express ourselves, and that it’s only in these carefully
structured and managed public spaces that we can do this. You can see similar structuring
elements in other reality shows. There is the inevitability of voting, an underlying
push in the process that is highly ritualized.
Are you saying it is increasingly difficult to express emotions without some kind
of intervention?
I’m not making radical arguments that we’re completely transformed in our emotional
life, though some thinkers have argued just that. The most I’d want to say is that
this new mode of public expression and scrutiny of emotions is of central importance
to how we think about ourselves and experience our emotions. The appeal of these
programmes is very much based on that.
How do you explain the success of these shows in so many different countries?
I am inclined to link this to the globalization of culture. The new kinds of
global social relations are precisely formulated through mediation, through business,
through travel, and are not grounded in the traditional collective social forms.
The same goes for work, which is no longer a life-long career but requires flexibility,
adaptability and the construction of teamwork within organizations. What we now know
is that we all live in these sorts of artificially constructed relations—which are
not artificial anymore, but have become our reality.
How do you interpret the connection between these programmes and new technologies,
many of which seem to undermine people’s privacy?
There’s been a lot of vague talk recently around issues of privacy. In the case
of e-commerce, for instance, everyone knows that companies have a lot more information
about them. So there’s something being worked through here about this extraordinary
explosion of information about individuals, and what this implies for how they can
live and be private, expressive individuals. The programmes stand I think as a metaphor
for that—and no more. The shows work because they push these buttons, though they
definitely don’t provide any interesting analysis of the question.
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