Sitting with my roommate on a Saturday night while having dinner, I decided to join her in one of her favourite activities: watching reality TV. That night, it was The Kardashians. As I quickly realized, this may not have been the best place to jump into the strange, convoluted world of reality television. Every time someone had a happy moment or broke down in tears, cameras would appear, zooming in on people’s faces while dramatic music swelled.
Something about this seemed about as far from ‘reality’ as anything. I had two choices: either I could burst my roommate’s bubble by arguing that all of this had to be elaborately staged, something I’m sure she’s aware of, or I could just quietly step away. I chose the latter.
The promise of a reality TV show is a view into people’s private lives: unscripted situations, real life drama, and uncoached stars. However, a little research regarding the genre proves this is pretty far from the truth. Recently, entertainment writer and former reality star Anna Klassen wrote a firsthand account of her experience with reality TV and, suffice it to say, it’s about as bad as you would imagine.
From fake dressing her dog to transforming her entire personality to better suit the reality TV genre, nothing about Klassen’s experience rings as true as TV producers would have you believe. As Klassen tells it, she wasn’t being filmed as a real person: “I was playing a version of myself — a character — and with a nudge here and a shove there, it was clear what character the producers wanted me to play.”
This is exactly what reality TV is: a cheap, reproducible format where actors are told to appear as ‘normal’ as possible, with enough glitz and glamour thrown in here and there to keep viewers interested.
Reality TV offers a level of wish fulfillment that keeps countless viewers glued to their screens night after night.
It reminds me of my older cousin, snapping at my wrestling-obsessed younger brother: “You know it’s all fake, right?” My brother, too young to know better, simply denied it and continued to watch it as if it didn’t bother him. Sitting with my roommate waiting for The Kardashians to end, I eventually confronted her with a similar reality check. Why, I asked, did she still insist on watching these barbie dolls play out fictions of their lives on national TV?
“I don’t know how to answer that, honestly,” she replied. “I watch The Bachelorette, for example, because it has a fairytale-like concept with a pinch of reality thrown in, and that just makes it believable. It’s fun to watch, and it’s still more realistic than Cinderella!”
To be clear, my roommate isn’t dumb. She knows this is all fake. But there’s still that level of wish fulfillment — of suspending one’s disbelief long enough to believe that shows like The Bachelorette are about real people — that keeps her and countless others glued to their screens night after night.
Film producer and television director Gavin Polone, writing for Vulture, spoke about how he was sure of the fact that the finale for The Real Housewives of Orange County was staged — the plot, camera angles, and dialogue were too perfect to not be written, he said. His experience in the industry suggests he knows what he’s talking about, and it helps to know I’m not the only one who has a hard time believing any of what I watch in these shows is real.
Polone goes on to write about a discussion with a top TV executive, who told him that “reality characters self-produce, knowing that they need to be a heightened version of themselves [. . .] Sometimes we’ll leak information to them [meaning things each character wouldn’t know that the other characters said or did, which may instigate a conflict], but we won’t tell them what to do.”
This recalls what Klassen wrote about her experience with reality television; she was told to be a more glamorous version of herself, one that appealed more to the camera and to the audience.
In the past decade, reality TV has become one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the Western world. But if we know it’s all staged, why do so many still watch it?
Polone suggests it may have something to do with the spontaneity of the form: though most reality TV shows are at least partly scripted, their use of untrained actors in semi-real situations can still result in some genuinely surprising and unexpected moments. Others, like my roommate, are willing to pretend what they’re watching is real, even if they know deep down that it isn’t. And, in a sense, we do this no matter what we’re watching. Otherwise, how would we be able to connect with characters we know are fictional?
It reminds me a little of my childhood, when my parents would start recording me and I would instantly change the way I was standing, sitting, or doing whatever I was doing. The minute you put a camera in front of me and press “record,” I’ll still alter my behaviour and actions accordingly: to look good, to be more camera friendly. This, to me, is a little like being on a reality TV show, except that, in the latter case, the camera is rarely off.
Ultimately, reality shows are cheap and formulaic enough to ensure that, as long as people are willing to watch them, producers will be willing to make them. And as long as we’re well aware that what we’re watching is not as real as it seems, what’s the harm in a little drama or a happy ending once in a while?
