“I Know Very Well, But…”: Reflections on Viewing Reality T.V. - Core Post 3, Josh

It seems that the notion that reality T.V. is not really real has taken a backseat in the three readings for this week, perhaps because it is so obvious that it isn’t something that needs to be argued. Nonetheless, it might be worthwhile to think through the type of cynical rationality that reality T.V. produces in most of its viewers: I know it’s not real, but I’ll go along with it as if it were. Of course, fictional programming also depends on a suspension of disbelief, but unlike fiction, or perhaps less like fiction, reality T.V. constructs a believable “elsewhere” that maintains the possibility of a truth located in an imaginary space in the minds of viewers. As an example, one is told to believe that all of the contestants in cooking competition shows actually do have a background in cooking; one sees no reason for the show to outright lie, because to believe that they are all hired actors with no culinary background would ruin the pleasure of watching, so one believes in this “elsewhere” from whence the contestants came (and we are further led to believe that they are not actors by reminders from scholars like Chad Raphael, who tell us that it is indeed cheaper to hire contestants than professional actors). Again, fiction also constructs an “elsewhere,” but it is one that is secretive and clearly demarcated from the characters portrayed.

                The reason I think this is important is because it bears on the neoliberal politics and citizenship training function of reality T.V. discussed by McCarthy and Ouelette and Hay.  McCarthy writes that “Citizenship preserves (one might say cooks, in Lévi-Straussian terms) the natural human much as alcohol preserves a specimen or a foodstuff—it forestalls decay and in a sense keeps the thing being preserved alive, while rendering it palatable” (20). It’s difficult not to think of cooking competition shows with the language McCarthy uses. As reality T.V. functions as a way to install “responsibilization,” meaning self-governance, or conducting one’s conduct, in viewers by examples on screen, it also has to constantly reconstruct neoliberalism both in positive space and negative space, or the “elsewhere.” The positive space, of course, is everything occurring within the program’s window of time, while the negative space is everything that presumably has led up to and leads after the show’s airing. This negative space is crucial; indeed, it may be more important than the positive space. We never see the winner of Top Chef living with their earnings after the show has ended; instead, we must imagine what they will do with the money. And, not surprisingly, the only way we can imagine that is to imagine what we would do with the money ourselves. This lottery imaginary is part of the functioning of a neoliberal/late capitalist economy; McCarthy refers to it as randomness, and it is why neoliberalism operates in both affective and actuarial modes. One imagines the happiness they will feel if their number is called.

                This is ultimately why I think the disclaimer that reality T.V. is not actually real is still important and worth arguing for. Reclaiming that “elsewhere” from those who would rather continually reconstruct it in terms that benefit the elite, or those who do not have to play the numbers game, is a way to think through a representation of a world to come.