ABSTRACT
As the most contemporary of television genres, reality television offers a bewildering variety of perspectives on modern life. But while the subjects vary wildly, reality television offers narratives which are driven by an anxiety/resolution dialectic in which always already destabilized viewers are offered temporary solutions to problems of identity and belonging. Reality television and in particular that variant known as “lifestyle” play an important part in maintaining the anxietyindustry – a complex mixture of psychological and social forces powered by the engines of consumerism. Reality television formats propose a flexible model of the self in which no stable identity can be found and whose only tenet is that change is always good. This self has two apparently distinct but actually interconnected parts: the consumer self that is endlessly re-rooted in the busy market place of identities offered by lifestyle is connected to the responsible citizen charged with self-management under changing patterns of rule. Into this flux reality television offers the salvation of hoped-for change and the comfort of belonging while also reminding us that the conditions for this momentary ease are transitory and unstable. The result is a self always ready for anxiety. The aim of this chapter is to consider documentary and in particular reality television’s role in the formation of these two models of the self and the ways in which they may impact on the body – that object at the very core of the anxiety-industry. I begin by considering the class-related factors that inform documentary
making. I then discuss the role that surveillance plays in new models of the self in reality television and in particular lifestyle television before considering how new forms of television foreground the value of discipline for work on the body. Reality television’s strategies and modes of address will be examined to see how they invite us to negotiate our identity as consumer selves and responsible citizens.
In the UK what we now know as documentary began as a public-spirited enquiry into citizenship. As encoded by its founders and taken up by personnel in large broadcasting institutions, documentary was a social project which eschewed the political in its quest to discover the real nature of contemporary
society.1 The means of production, exhibition and distribution have always rested in large broadcasters such as the BBC whose employees shaped documentary within institutional codes. The individuals developing public-service documentary as a practice and as a career have been predominantly middleclass figures, established university graduates educated in the liberal arts. From its very beginnings the situation of the working classes has been of interest to this group of documentary-makers. The former live at a remove from the producers, geographically, culturally, and socially. Perhaps inevitably they become subjects of an argument constructed by middle-class people elsewhere. For example, it is still documentary practice to re-write the experience of subjects so that it can be edited for maximum effect. The professionalization of the industry, its traditions and use of ethical codes, all ensure that a distance is placed between the producers and their subjects. In this way the sense-making properties of a class are enmeshed in working practices. The fact that public-service documentary’s investigations of the social have
been successful and have in some circumstances changed the lives of their subjects helps explain the genre’s privileged place in televisual discourse as a valuable enterprise. High ratings and industry accolades for BBC programs such as “Cathy Come Home,” “The Secret Policeman” and “7 Up” all contribute to the genre’s reputation. Documentary is further privileged when it helps articulate the always classed concerns of critics in other media such as the quality press who share their liberal-progressive discourse. Its regular place in the schedule, its protected status amongst executives, the oft-quoted history of the genre, being a training ground for the finest minds of the industry – all of this lends what Nichols calls the “discourses of sobriety” considerable gravitas.2 This respect is best preserved by Public Service Broadcasters whose continuing funding in a market-driven climate ensures a tradition of trust. As a genre public-service documentary proceeds on the basis that it is offering
viewers an insight into the world “beyond.” There is a depth model at work here. We are offered the language of hard-won expertise, the insight driven by a care and concern for the subject, the perspective of those with experience in putting the form together – in short the documentary helps us to place a situation in the widest possible context. Public-service documentary’s value, status and prestige derives from its claims to objectivity, the rendering of situations for our gently directed judgment. The tradition lives on through BBC 4 – a publicservice channel producing thoroughly researched documentaries at high cost for low ratings. The result is an expanded idea of citizenship – the liberal-democratic intention that inspired the founders of the genre but one that is directed from a position of class-privilege.
