Ethics and Reality TV

Ethics and ingenuousness TVAbstractReality TV, like some an(prenominal) other postmodern spectacles, operates on a late tenuous and ambiguous ethical grounding. On the wiz hand, the audience / creator model of do workation quite a little be seen as providing the viewer with entertainment and escapism. On the other it can be said to create a strategy of dependency and artificial need. The ethics of participation in game exhibit musical mode domain send offers a similar contradiction which is dependent upon whether participants be free to choose, or whether they ar in fact coerced by elements beyond their control. This dissertation testament expression at the various factors and paradigms (psychoanalytical, Marxist, poststructuralist) that constitute this model of candor. This requires a certain concretisation of impairment such as ethics, and of what constitutes creation it egotism. The dissertation will also look at the politics of creation TV itself namely, does Reality TV constitute a unique event in the development of television, or does it merely take a hop a continuation for television producers to create ever more innovative methods of keeping our interests satiated? Is Reality TV itself the origin of the clean crimes, or is Reality TV merely a reflection of the ethical climate of capitalism in which we live? Fin altogethery, the dissertation will look at the possible futures for ingenuousness TV.MethodologyAs this dissertation is largely discursive in nature, and involves a widespread discussion of prevalent philosophical and ethical themes, I will purely refer to secondary material. This will be assisted by the large and abundant materials that exist on the matter of Reality TV, ethics, and the conjoining of the two. I will call library materials, newspaper and magazine materials, as well as the raw footage of the Reality TV itself to nonplus an opinion and an overall discussion about the oecumenical impacts, considerations and ethical standards of verity TV, and whether constructive change is a) desirable and b) possible. What ar Ethics?Ethics have proven to be a central part of philosophical enquiry for thousands of years. As such, it would be rehearseful to summarize what and how this theory has developed over the years, and what tends to form the debate around ethics now. This is essential in post to gauge the relationship amid good ethical conduct and the recent phenomenon of frankness TV. Ethics was originally conceived as a way to engage with ethics literally, it can be seen as an attempt to establish a moral doctrine for living, and is concerned about notions such as what is right and what is wrong. It denounces the various difficulties amidst making certain decisions or of living life in a particular way. Understandably, the concept and the notion of good moral behaviour and frightful moral behaviour have changed radically since the initial formulation of Western ethics in Ancient Greece over 2000 years ago. While modern moral reason out bases its understandings upon the writings of Plato and Aristotle, it has mutated radically as regards to who the subject of the writing actually is concerned with. W here(predicate)as Plato, Aristotle and the ancient Greeks were concerned more about the self e.g. how to morally explain the singular whereas the modern ethical practice is more concerned about how to treat others in the first instance. Annette Hill comments that Modern moral school of thought is therefore ear perchr about public good, and the development of moral values inwardly particular social, political and cultural groups, and also inside particular secular societies. (2005, p. 110). Rather than acting, consequently justifying behaviour, modern ethics are primarily concerned about what exactly i should do in the first place, and is about the relationship between the self and society, the promotion of the notion of the public good, and of partakin g in particular acts, a lot against the self or the will that would otherwise have a harmful set on society.Major paradigmatic models incorporate this model of public good into their progressive ideologies. Central to the Marxist model (which I will be later(prenominal) applying to the phenomenon of reality TV), is the relationship between the work classes and the ruling classes. This is indicated in Marx as being ethically dubious, because while the proletariat are enslaved by the capitalist outline by their work, the ruling classes benefit from this relationship infinitely. Therefore, from a Marxist context, capitalism and the ways in which this model distri thoes wealth can be seen as the primary mechanism from which morality is corrupted. Similarly, religion and faith is often touted as scapegoats for unethical behaviour. The experientialist Friedrich Nietzsche formulated his own quasi-religion / moral philosophy based on the concepts of the pane and the theories of eter nal recurrence. His position is empiric, and forms a central part of what constitutes ethical matters today. Existentialism is, put plainly, a belief that man creates his own belief remainss. The existence of something precedes its means namely, the process of doing something is more important than the assignation of certain methods of thinking or reasoning behind it. A person is not innately good, tho rather he acts good. Robert Anton Wilson (1990) comments that Nietszsches existentialism (1) attacked the floating abstractions of traditional philosophy and a great deal of what passes as common smell out (e.g. he rejected the terms good, evil, the real land, and even the ego.) (2) also preferred concrete analysis of real life situations and (3) attacked Christianity, rather than defending it (14-15). As such, an existential critique of reality TV would tend to eschew concrete moral conclusion based on the grounding that reality TV exploits people, and therefore it is bad moreover, the phenomenon of reality TV is based upon a number of larger social trends and mechanisms a whole dust of belief that doesnt necessarily taint reality, but actually comprises of reality. Therefore, the existentialist may attack Reality TV, but Nietzsche would presumably argue that it is an expression of gentlemans gentleman will, Marx would argue that it represents merely an extension of the capitalism that seeks to exploit the workers and Kierkegaard would argue that his role is to determine that people have the choice to make their own decisions. Both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard were not concerned about notions of abstract truth they were existential insofar as their concern was about day to day existence. In the absence of the notion of truth, over Nietzsches will to power and Kierkegaards system of choice and personal indecorum, the system of modern moral philosophy was overturned by the new ethical paradigm. Nietszche argued that the ubermensch would not do bad thin gs because it would be detrimental to his own will to power a moral system of good and bad is, ultimately, irrelevant to the ubermensch, because the parameters of decision-making have been changed.This ethical reasoning in many ways bled into the individualism of psychoanalysis, which is a factor that comes into play in a great many of the reality TV programmes as I will argue later, the obsession in reality TV with rendering perverse the Freudian neuroses (described by him as anal, oral and venereal reversions), combine with the capitalist, consumerist desire to pacify the slaves within the semiotic network that constitutes television, creates a scenario whereby the human self is rendered obscene. A psychoanalytical analysis of Reality TV creates many discrepancies moreover, it is the combination of pacifying the autonomous will of the individual, combined with the exposition of Freudian unconscious discoveries that makes reality TV objectionable to mainstream technical issues. However, before I try to extrapolate the various issues at stake in the grounds for and against reality TV, the concept of reality TV, in particular what the term reality means in this context, has to be explored.What is the reality in Reality TV? blue jean Baudrillard and other philosophers coined poststructuralist by Western scholars would undoubtedly be impressed by the ironical use of the term reality in reality TV. One of blue jean Baudrillards key issues is the argument for hyperreality. He suggests in Simulacra and Simulation (1994) that the hyperreal is real without origin or reality (1). Indeed, the concept of reality TV where participants are asked to deposit in an enclosed space for weeks on end and told to do surrealistic things (Big Brother), or to stay on a desert island (Temptation Island, Survivor) is unreal in itself, but the term reality instead applies to the logic that contestants exist rather than actors or performers. It is a genre of TV in which the contro lled amateurish quality of the programme is amplify into a package of neuroses that have usurped and transcended reality itself. Secondly, TV is edited, disseminated and packaged in a particular way that, according to Baudrillard, substitutes itself for reality in whizz sentiment of hyperreality, Baudrillard suggests that it represents more real than real, and eventually usurps reality. The concept of reality in reality TV destroys the sovereign fight between the map and the territory (1994, 2). As such, reality TV exists as an exemplar of this particular moment in late capitalism where the simulation of reality has evaded and transcended the real itself. To stress this theory further, I will look more generally at what Baudrillard means by hyperreality, and cite some further examples of how this theory can be established. Like Nietzsche, Baudrillard begins with an interrogation of the real world, arguing that because our perceptions of reality are rooted in semiotic terminolo gys and discursive structures, that the concept of an external, objective reality outside of the self cannot be established, and merely bases itself upon a chimera or a lie. Instead, Baudrillard argues that reality is merely a system of communication, in which reality has become a commodified, capitalistic device. In The System of Objects, Baudrillard offers a critique of the advertising industry. While many of the images used by, say, the automobile industry are deliberately faked or exaggerated, the nature of this exaggeration, and the extent to which these images are promoted over and above the actual reality of what the car is (ultimately, a device for getting from ane place to another), the specific, advertised car itself becomes an impossible object a representation of reality that lies beyond reality itself. For instance, recent advertising that features a car that transforms into a dolphin does not have any prescience in reality, nor does it even attempt to establish itsel f as real. Instead, it embodies in the vehicle certain images or realities that, according to Baudrillard, become reality and, as such, substitute reality for a marketed, p knowicised illusion that represents reality to a greater degree. This theory can be extended to encompass many other factors that seem based upon manufacturing and colonising the real. Pornography represents a reality of sex that transcends and usurps sex itself a soft drink with a non-existent flavour, such as wild ice zest berry (http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality) creates a reality in linguistic terms that has no relationship to modern as opposed to postmodern reality. Again, advertising generates a reality that exaggerates and simulates the real in totality there is no attempt made to reproduce reality, but instead signs and meaning operate within themselves, applying to only their own logic.This reality can be seen in terms of reality TV as well. Programmes such as Survivor, Big Brother and other rea lity TV programmes that synthesise the game show format tend to exaggerate the realities of the participants. The world in which these real people interact is one which is completely fabricated, usually to exaggerate some archives or mythological scenario which the viewer is undoubtedly familiar with. Big Brother, for instance, plays with the familiar Orwellian notion of total surveillance and dystopia Survivor plays on the themes of the desert island, featured in many historical and literary myths that date back to the Bible. As such, depending on what opinions we have about what reality constitutes, these types of program are undoubtedly far off the mark. Post-production techniques are used to exaggerate the dramatic tensions between people often people who would ordinarily have no contact are forced into relationships with one another, and it has been insinuated that certain parts of reality TV are scripted beforehand, in order to prevent the programme from becoming tedious or formulaic.What does this development in the notion of reality do to a discussion of the ethics of reality TV? Firstly, the production processes of reality TV are heavily reliant upon advertisers and insular corporations concerned about making money. Such companies do not generally have too scrupulous a reputation for ethical marketing or behaviour. Product placement is a regular feature in reality TV, which, if looked at from a Marxist point of view, leads to the synthesis of what is seen as common sense reality and of corporate desire. The existential view of reality, while in a kind of agreement with the ambiguity of reality TV, would argue that reality as it is presented here merely represents a faith or a religion that substitutes the pure will (choice or autonomy) of the individual into a scenario where all things are scripted, edited and controlled by forces that depend upon the viewer becoming pacified and infantilized. I argue that the reality in reality TV merely represent s a particular version of reality. As post-structuralist philosophy would suggest, the notion of objective reality in the postmodern age is simply a psychologically, sociologically and metaphysically attuned network that serves to create a religion or a mythical structure of truth and reality. While Nietzsche would argue that Reality TV subdues the personal will, and of human folly and weakness, reducing the viewer to the direct of passive consumer, he would also argue that it is not the ethical place of people to assume that this high-power of developing (as Marxists would posit) is necessarily wrong. Indeed, criticisms of Nietzsches critiques of Christianity, while sultry and hateful in tone, overlook the simple premise that Nietzsches intention himself was not to create a system of objective truth himself. Because, as he postulates in Beyond Good and Evil In the womb of being, rather, in the intransitory, in the hidden god, in the thing in itself that is where their cause mu st lie and nowhere else This mode of judgement constitutes the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all ages can be recognized this mode of evaluation stands in the background of all their logical procedures it is on account of this their faith that they concern themselves with their knowledge, with something that is at last solemnly baptized the truth (1973, 34). As such, the creation of truth, upon which grounds Nietzsche was painfully condemned for throughout the 20th century, was not Nietzsches central desire indeed, the establishment of a particular truth ignores Nietzsches attempts to negate the this preoccupation with truth and reality present in the mind of the metaphysician and the abstract philosopher. The existentialist is not concerned about abstractions, but instead he is concerned about the establishment of amentiferous myths. In this respect, the reality of reality TV (at least where participants and audience are volunteers) is real and, dependent upon how greatly you herald such issues as personal autonomy cannot be anything but a moral, voluntary exchange.Marxism and the streams of thinkers that have come to be associated with Marxism tend to think rattling differently about the self. Socialist philosophy suggests that the human freedoms posited by the American and British administrations during their free market experiments are merely a chimera designed to obfuscate and paper over the exploitative system of exchange that operates between rich and poor.Contrary to existentialism, Marxists suggest that voluntary participants (in such things as reality TV) have to adhere to some greater moral code, because the energetic of exchange exposes basic human vulnerabilities that exist in everybody. Their concept of reality is based upon a politics of exploitation, or a dialectical exchange between two opposing factions, one of which is exploited, and the other is dominant. Such Marxist theory can be used to explore this notion of reality i n reality TV further the dynamic between rich and poor (used in crude or traditional Marxism) creates a system of exploitation between the working class and the ruling class. This can be extended into linguistics and semantic theory, and forms the central tenet of deconstructionist theory posited by Jacques Derrida. Derrida argues firstly that the structuralist theories of Ferdinand de Saussure depended upon a relationship between the signifier and the signified namely, what is being represented and what it represents. While Saussure argued that this framework was stable, and that the signifier and the signified never changed, Derrida and the deconstructionist theorists argued that the relationship between the signifier and the signified was always subject to play and fluctuated constantly. Moreover, the limitations of human communication meant that our perception of the world was limited. Derrida argues that the world is conveyed in language and discourse. Derrida takes this furth er, arguing that Western language has always based its functionality upon what he calls binary oppositions, in which one is seen as inferior, while the other is seen as superior. These oppositions run the gamut of human thinking and is what abstract philosophy tends to ignore for instance, the dichotomy between man and cleaning woman is the subject of many feminist writers while man can give women the same material rights, linguistically, woman still represents the absence of masculinity. Similarly, reality is seen as superior to the simulacrum, as explored by Platos myth of the cave, in which he argues that one pure object exists, and that everything else is a copy, and therefore inferior to the real thing. Derrida argues that deconstruction provides a solution to this problem, and by exposing and making conscious these oppositions, and deliberately working against them creates a system of simultaneous difference and equality through semantic play.As such, the ethical concept or e xchange between the directors of reality TV, the participants and the audience create an interesting dynamic of exploitation that tends to eschew simple ethical thinking. To say that these reality programmes are bad ethically (a string of reasons have been posited, from the sensory deprivation of participants, to the unsavoury and voyeuristic nature of the program, to the use of the grotesque, to the implementation of torture techniques) avoids the overall issue that participation is voluntary. However, the previous arguments (deconstructive, Marxist, feminist, existential) all have radically different arguments as to what exactly constitutes voluntary the notion of voluntary participation is a key issue in philosophical debate, and can be seen to surface in the ethics of advertising, luxuriant food consumption and the selling of junk to young people. The question revolves around the concept of reality namely, whether we are in control or whether our choices are obdurate by mecha nisms and structures of power, addiction, and deep psychological needs. Reality TV argues that it exists as a form of entertainment. In the following section I will look at the dynamic of exploitation particularly upon how reality TV exploits certain human qualities or realities, and renders them perverse.Reality TV a psychoanalytical approachReality TV, oddly the phenomenon of the game show Reality TV programme, namely such programmes as Big Brother, Survivor, Big Diet, Celebrity Fat Club, Temptation Island, Bachelorette and Boot Camp exploit numerous psychoanalytical desires in order to hystericise reality and to render ordinary impulses and desires perverse. This exploitation, which I will argue is central to the strategy of corporatism and central to the postmodern restlessness raises a number of ethical questions concerning the position of Reality TV in contemporary society, is endemic in the phenomenon of reality TV, and appears concerned primarily as each a reflection of, or a creation of, many issues that plague Western consciousness. Reality TV attacks certain concepts and, via gossip columns and TV journalism in other media, makes these things hysterical. One such topic is that of the normal relationship. While Big Brother tends to vet the participants based upon their position as sexually perverse (the last series of Big Brother featured a transsexual and several homosexuals) eccentric or colourful in order to engender conflict within the house and to maximize the entertainment value that can be derived from this reality that is constructed, the vision of the ordinary relationship, which occurs with relative frequency in the Big Brother house, is one that is treated with extreme shock by both participants, media, the programme makers, and eventually, the audience themselves. Jan Jagodozinki (2003) comments that each reality game hot-houses and hystericizes normal relationships, engendering paranoid perception where no one is to be trusted (323). Of course, ethically this hystericisation serves the purpose many mass-mediated and televised spectacles seek to achieve. In a Marxist, postmodernist context, the media (especially the modern mediums of television and brand advertising) wishes to engender a consumer whose only relationship to the outside world is through the corporatist-owned signification of signs. We are marketed towards in order to create an atomised, pseudo-individual whose only relationship to him / her self is through signification and engagement with the hyperreal. As such, consumer need is created, manufactured in the dream factory of advertising, and disseminated through mass media to create demand for a product that was, prior to the ornament of reality through hyperrealistic signification, useless and unnecessary. Reality TV simply contributes to this feeling of post-human disgust with the mechanisms of the body and the unconscious mind. For instance, the drives expounded by Freud (labelled by him as ve nereal, oral and anal), are attacked with frequency in a number of these TV reality shows In Big Brother, participants are deprived of food, and are occasionally treated to products from the outside world when they participate in a particular task (the oral, anal dichotomy). The lack of privacy in toilets suggest the programmes obsession with these excretive functions also, the relationships that occur among these ordinary people are exaggerated with an unparalleled degree of disgust and hysteria both within the programme and external to it in other gossip columns and TV magazines. This suggests an obsession with the genital drives that are echoed in other reality TV programmes. The hystericisation of normality are the very symptoms that plague the American landscape, namely the preoccupation with the excesses of the drives anal and oral (food / dieting) , genital (seduction) trust, extreme physical exertion authority (Jagodozinki 2003, 323). These drives are isolated and compou nded in a room that many would figure as unethical the audiences chequer the TV voyeurs in their living rooms rendering all these desires perverse and alien. The anal / oral functioning can be seen in all manner of these game show / reality TV hybrids. In Survivor, participants experience food deprivation, then are force-fed the junk food of capitalism. Reality TV provides us with every a perverse kind of promotion of these desires, or else exaggerates and satirizes these principles that already play a huge part in the advertising, producer / consumer relationship of (most of) Western society. For instance, many of these reality TV programmes are obsessed with food and excrement, the balance between which is, of course, expressed in terms of physical weight Game show reality programmes such as Fat Club, Big Diet, Survivor and Big Brother, as well as innumerable documentaries, talk shows (Gerry Springer, Rikki Lake, Oprah Winfrey all tend to devote a disproportionate amount of ti me to exposing obesity in ways that carefully tread the dual lines of exploitation and grotesquery, and non-pervasive exploration or passive documentary, often with a focus on the former) all focus on weight, eating and consumption as a mainstay of their challenges. In one edition of Im a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, pop-mystic and spoon bender Uri Geller was forced to eat live slugs while some other minor celebrity washed-out most of the programme complaining about his constipation. As such, natural processes such as eating, drinking and excreting matter becomes exaggerated to such an extent that these very bodily processes become shameful. Jagodozinki comments that Survivor players are foced to follow exactly the same starve and binge mentality of bulemics (2003, 321). The Freudian drives and impulses are concentrated upon by programme makers in order to engender an interest in the programme that, if it were a representation of ordinary, mundane reality, would presumably be too scant to educe widespread interest.Similarly, other drives are obsessed over. The genital desires, marked by an obsession with sex, lust and seduction are exploited through programmes such as Big Brother, Temptation Island and Bachelorette, where sexual, relationship related trysts are exploited by the programme makers in order to maximise audience ratings and profits from their programme. For instance, whenever a relationship threatens to bubble over in Big Brother, the programme makers, along with the media vehicles that feature Big Brother (showbiz magazines and tabloid newspapers, for instance) tend to simultaneously glorify and pervert the maturation relationship into a grotesque and abominable spectacle.Trust and paranoiac fantasies are also played with in the post-production of Big Brother. The format is automatically designed to expose hypocrisy while participants are forced to work together and live together, participants also have to periodically vote each other out of the house. As such, issues of trust and paranoiac functions are exploited, in a microcosm, of the contemporary world that constitutes reality TV.As such, the difficulty with exposing the ethical indiscretion of reality TV is simply that it can either be seen as a hyperbolic reflection or satire of current prevalent trends in Western society, or that it can be seen as contributing to the effects of consumerisation, and can therefore be seen in the light of Marxists who approach the exploitative mechanisms of mass media with grave suspicion. Louis Althussers system of interpolation which in his words, is described as having the following relationship with ideology ideology interpolates the individual as subject, this interpolation is realized in institutions, in their rituals and practices (2001). As such, the ideology of guilt, of loathing for the body and of the consumerisation of the general public through the exploitation of these particular vulnerabilities is, according to Alth usser, interpolated and disseminated through mass media, or, as he calls it, the ideological submit apparatus. And any form of mass media that adheres to these capitalist desires against the individual and for the subject is also catering to systematic oppression to the masses and is therefore morally reprehensible.So, what is the argument in favour of reality TV? Namely, that it bypasses these ideologies and instead presents us with a reality of ordinary people, unencumbered by the traffic of biased representation one tends to get in drama and fiction. The function of reality TV, according to this argument, is to present to people life as it really is. I would argue, however, that this is not the case for a number of reasons. The psychological stresses that subjects are put under are, in themselves, unique in these game show / reality TV programmes. It would be extraordinary to usurp that fooling people would be forced to endure these psychological strains. Moreover, the dissemi nation and the editing of these pieces together serves a dual function firstly, it imposes a strict narrative upon the happenings based upon a desire to entertain. Entertainment can be achieved through the exploitation and exaggerations of these specific, Freudian functions. In order to condense 24 hours of time into half(a) an hour, programme makers have to edit the raw material of reality in a way that generates interest in the overall product. The effect of this is to highlight these desires and dramas and to generate a narrative of disgust from the raw material. As such, events are scandalised, hystericised, and processed through the state apparatus of Freudian drama. This is satirised in the film The Truman Show. Jagodozinki (2003) comments that The banality of his everyday life with its mundane repetitions is the very opposite of media hype which happens off camera or is worked in live (328). The function of this segment is to highlight the principle that these dramas are no t reality simply because the subject is real and falls into the pigeonhole of non-fiction by programmers, the ways in which these documentaries are assembled tend to fall into dramatic stereotypes associated with the exploitation of Freudian impulses, checked with a Marxian system of exploitation.The World Is Flat Infotainment and relativismModern news programming tends to glow and splice events of widely different qualities from unsafe news items about plagues, famines, death and suffering to items about cuddly toys and cats getting stranded in trees. Also, programming on commercial channels are cut every fifteen minutes with a barrage of advertising, with the effect of sharply combining the reality of news footage and reality TV with the non-reality of advertising. Ethically, this places TV in general under the accusation of numbing the viewer and transforming him or her into the amoral, relativistic, emotionally numb and philosophically nihilistic consumer infant that sociopat hs and corporations tend to prefer. As such, arguments about the reality of reality TV being less produced than fiction tends to falter instead, the handle of reality has the effect of simply lowering the viewers (or consumers) guard. The juxtaposition of mundane events in a fast barrage of creative editing sensationalises the mundane. In a triumph of style over content, some reality TV shows and news features use music and montage to create the illusion of event, when there is no event to speak of. Real life documentaries and long-running reality TV programmes, such as changing Rooms and DIY SOS utilise quirky (and somewhat insipid) montage sequences with humorous music in order to generate a homely, friendly appeal. However, almost all reality TV programmes appeal to consumerist desires (an endless procession of programmes about house hunting, gardening, buying), or exploitative voyeurism (house cleaning programmes about dirty people, unsympathetic obesity programmes, a fixation upon sexual or cosmetic acts). Ethically, reality TV however, only ser