Semester Series: The Entertainment of 'Unreality' Television.

I think humans have an expectation in life that the things that we see and that we are told have a weight of truth to them. This is evidenced by the fact that no one generally likes to be lied to. As a matter of understanding the world around us, we need to be trusting to a certain degree or else we would live our lives in constant anguish over whether or not the world around us was 'real'. In a sense, the assumption that certain things are facts is what makes life tangible. Without this, we enter an entirely complex realm in which questions of what constitutes 'reality' begin to become overwhelming.

This week I watched Cake Boss. I have seen the show a few times before and I have enjoyed it because it is about food -- specifically sweets. I am a person who absolutely loves to eat, so my attachment to this show lies entirely in imagining what the different cakes would taste like. My interest in their aesthetic merits is extremely low, though on an artistic level it is often hard to deny the level of skill required to create them. Cake Boss follows a similar format to most reality television in that it revolves around the day to day lives of very human characters and the various 'drama' that unfolds in the process of doing so. Interviews sprinkle the half hour show with insights into the thought process of the various people being followed, and by the end of the half hour everything is more or less resolved. Cake Boss follows the idea of a specific subject each week, be it creating fancy cakes in a limited amount of time for a big wedding magazine, or an evil plant cake for a museum fundraiser. Layered throughout the footage showing how such cakes are made are personal arguments, worries, and foibles that at once make the show engaging and worth watching outside of basic cake assembly.

This week's topic questions the reality of 'reality' television and asks whether this possible subterfuge would in any way affect one's enjoyment. From a personal standpoint, the fact that Cake Boss probably has certain edits that play with the timeline of events or scripted lines that make interview sessions seem much more practiced does not really bother me. As I stated above, my interest lies predominantly in my own fascination with sweets. That's my own reason, but it stands to note that reality television changes its value dependent on what a viewer expects out of it. On a show like Cake Boss, I cannot imagine there are many who would be disheartened to find that much of the show is fabricated in such a way as to extract the most drama and intrigue. Understandably, were the show plainly about the process of making gorgeous cakes the viewing audience would not have much reason to return week after week. On the flip side of this, many reality television shows' intrigue hinges heavily on the fact that what we are seeing on the screen is real and indeed so bizarre that we cannot help but watch (the old 'can't look away from a car accident' idea). As I said when I began this post, humans expect a certain level of truth in the things they perceive in order to in turn trust what they are seeing. In the case of shows such as Cake Boss or Mythbusters or even Dirty Jobs, the realism acts as a buffer for whatever it is the show is actually about -- in these cases cakes, myths and science, and dirty jobs.

The problem that occurs when shows like Rock of Love or The Real Desperate Housewives of... fabricate large portions of its 'narrative' to seem more interesting is that the viewer runs the risk of disconnecting from their interest. For example, if we were to learn that an inflammatory remark said offscreen by a housemate on a dating show was ADR'ed (additional dialogue recording -- essentially recorded later in a studio to be added into the show later) instead of said in the moment; it would remove much of the shock of the fight we were watching. The same goes for moments that happen on camera that were scripted or at least strongly suggested by producers. We watch reality TV mainly because it is morbidly fascinating on some level that fellow humans exist somewhere who could be so uniquely damaged. The entertainment is derived from the fact that we can relate on the basis of being human, but cannot fathom how a human mind could handle or make the decisions that we witness.

Reality TV is more a heightened form of reality that is polished through editing and other various tricks to resemble the real world, but not actually approach anything like it. In this day and age, I think it is pretty universally accepted that most reality TV is garbage. The modern viewer is conditioned to watch with an eye to this and perhaps derives enjoyment from discerning the aspects of the show that aren't fake. In this light, the reality of the 'reality' show does not matter so much as the entertainment is actively derived by the viewer -- we take what we want from it