c



 

 
Issue: 114
M

 

×


’ row over racist abuse on the January 2007 edition of ×



focused public
attention in the UK on µreality TV¶. This round of public outrage is merely the latest in a long
series of disputes that have dogged 

since the first version was broadcast in the
Netherlands in 1999.

Controversy over the show is not confined to racism. Figures from across the spectrum of
opinion have debated the morals of the contestants, and the morality of watching them in
situations usually regarded as private and personal.1 In fact, the very idea of the show initially
struck its eventual British promoter, Peter Bazalgette, as too shocking. Writing to the
programme¶s Dutch inventor, John de Mol, he rejected the idea, arguing:

The rats-in-a-cage-who¶ll-do-anything-for-money is something that I doubt we could sell on to

commercial television«as currently constituted, we feel the show has a narrow market in the
UK.2

The storms over the show and the free publicity they generate in the media are a big factor in its
success or failure. The format of locking people into a confined space together for several weeks
is more or less bound to generate conflict of one kind or another. There are, however, much
wider issues about the nature of cultural experience in contemporary capitalism that are involved
in this kind of broadcasting. The various manifestations of 

are one version of the
broader category of µreality TV¶ that has a central place in contemporary television.

Œ








The kinds of programmes known as µreality TV¶ form a very mixed bag. They include what are
essentially game shows, such as 

, µdocusoaps¶ such as 

 and µtrue crime¶ shows
such as ×
. The popularity of such programmes is located in the shifting economics
of broadcasting, which involves increasing competition and a move from the search for a mass
audience to a niche audience. Television began as a technology that could only sustain a small
number of channels. The imperative was to try to attract the largest possible number of people to
a channel, and programme types such as the soap opera, the situation comedy and the variety
show were developed precisely to generate this µmass¶ audience.

Few channels meant little competition for revenue. In the UK the main commercial broadcasters,
the consortium of companies making up ITV, enjoyed a monopoly of the sale of television
advertising on terrestrial TV from its inception in 1955 right up to 1993. To the extent that ITV
faced competition from the BBC, it was for audiences, not revenues.3 In the course of the 1970s
and 1980s a combination of technical changes and shifts of government policy started to
undermine the mass audience. The increasing penetration of cable and satellite delivery systems
meant that multichannel television became a reality, first in the US and later in Europe. ’t the
same time, particularly in Europe, neoliberal ideology increasingly favoured competition and
markets as against the combination of political and cultural paternalism that had dominated the
main national broadcasting organisations.

Established broadcasters found themselves faced with a new situation (see

figure 1). On the one hand, they were, and are, still the only people who can deliver anything
approaching a mass audience: ITV¶s drop from 44 percent audience share in 1981 to 20 percent
in 2006 may be a drastic decline on the past, but it is still ten times as great as the most
successful of the niche channels. On the other hand, they no longer enjoyed a more or less
captive audience²some viewers spent more of their time watching channels that provided a diet
of programmes more exactly suited to their narrow range of tastes. The mainstream broadcasters
thus needed to develop programmes that could both attract as much of the mass audience as
possible and find ways of holding on to hard to reach groups such as young people.

The traditional terrestrial channels responded to the new challenges with a range of strategies.
The first was very traditional²they launched an attack on the conditions of the workers who
produce television programmes. One major mechanism for this was to move from predominantly
in-house production to subcontracting production to independent companies. For many workers,
this meant a shift from permanent, full-time, and highly organised, employment to a succession
of short-term contracts under much worse conditions.4 ’nother was to try to find new
programme types that could still gather a mass audience but which were much less expensive
than the traditional formats. ’ third was to try to minimise the risks of investing heavily in
failure, for instance by making new programmes that are quite like old programmes that were a
hit or by reusing a format that has succeeded in another broadcasting market.5 The fourth
important mechanism was to try to commercialise programmes more fully, for example by
pushing associated merchandise such as books and DVDs, and using the same material across
different platforms. ’ fifth was to try to develop programme types that appealed to particularly
desirable audience segments.
It was this combination of factors that led to the rise of the wide variety of reality TV shows.
Such shows are relatively cheap, and some are very cheap indeed. There is no need to pay
writers or actors, no endless rehearsals, no need for elaborate sets, no need for rights clearance
for music, and so on. Using µordinary¶ people, and later minor and declining celebrities, is a
cheap way to make television:

Reality programming provides a cheap alternative to drama. Typically, an hour-long drama can
cost approximately $1.5m (£875,000) per hour, whereas reality programmes can cost as little as
$200,000 (£114,000) per hour.6

The flood of µdocumentary¶ films about passing a driving test, working in the air transport
industry, looking after animals, and the flood of makeover programmes about houses, clothes
and body shape, all fit this economic dynamic exactly. 

and 

, which has
fulfilled the same function in the US, evolve out of these conditions. In many respects they
displayed all of the characteristics of the type, but they differ slightly from the bog-standard
reality show in some important respects. In neither the UK nor the US were the broadcasters
taking big risks. Both of the programmes are based on formats that had been tested in other
markets but then modified to take account of the particularities of different national audiences.


was originally shown in the Netherlands and, despite Bazalgette¶s worries, it proved
a successful formula.7 It was taken up widely as a proven crowd puller by broadcasters around
the globe.8

These programmes also originated with independent production companies, which meant the
broadcasters did not have to bear the development costs. This independent origin is, however,
something of a double-edged sword. The great success of the format has meant that Endemol, the
Netherlands company that originated 

, has been able to strike hard bargains with
broadcasters wishing to buy it.

This leads to one of the major differences between these shows and the standard reality
television product²they are relatively expensive. Quite apart from the cost of purchasing the
rights to such a successful show, 

has other large expenses. Continuous surveillance
of contestants requires a production team of about µ200 people«including 50 cameramen [sic]
and 13 producers¶.9 ×


has the additional cost that, while the celebrities are
not exactly ’-list, they still expect substantial fees. Shilpa Shetty was allegedly paid somewhere
between £200,000 and £300,000 simply for appearing in the show.10 

, which uses exotic
locations and is produced up to the standards of primetime US network TV, is also extremely
costly for a reality programme. The justification for this expense is that these programmes
deliver extremely valuable audiences, which in turn earns broadcasters very large advertising
fees. Hill writes of 

:



gave Channel 4 its most popular ratings in the history of the UK channel, attracting
nearly 10 million viewers in 2000; the second series of 

averaged 4.5 million
viewers, giving Channel 4 more than a 70 per cent increase on their average broadcast share. 


 generated over 10 million text messages, and attracted 10 million viewers for its finale.
’ 30 second advertising spot during 

 cost £40,000, over three times more than for
any other show on Channel 4 in 2003 (for example, G


¶s cash value was £14,000 for a 30
second spot).11

c


The label µreality TV¶ begs the question, µHow real is what we see?¶ The answer, of course, is,
µNot at all.¶ These programmes make a strong claim to some form of µrealism¶. This is sustained
by the style in which such programmes are usually shot, which clearly originated in the genre of
observational documentary, which does make strong claims to reveal reality. ’ further
dimension of µrealism¶ is added by the fact that the contestants are usually not professional actors
and they are usually seen in unscripted and mundane situations. In fact, these are rhetorical rather
than substantial features of such programmes; what we see is a highly-constructed artefact rather
than a slice of µreal life¶.

The process of manipulation begins long before the shooting starts. The selection of contestants
is the first hurdle. In ×


, and similar shows, there is no pretence that the
people are anything other than extraordinary. Unlike their more plebeian fellows, they are well
paid for their time. µOrdinary¶ contestants get a fee to cover expenses²for these contestants, a
major motive often seems to be a desire to become a celebrity and to work in television.
Certainly some people, Jade Goody for example, have seen their lives transformed by success.
From the first UK series, winner Craig Phillips, runner-up ’nna Nolan, and villain µNasty¶ Nick
Bateman have all had reasonably successful careers in the media. This is not an invariable
outcome, however. Nichola Holt, also from the first series, had some initial media success but
eventually landed in much less glamorous circumstances.

The participants in the non-celebrity shows are presented to us as a cross-section of µordinary¶

people reflecting contemporary British society, or at least its younger, European members.12 In
fact, the people we get to see are the product of an elaborate process of selection in which the
producers choose a group that they hope will produce good television. ’s Bazalgette puts it,
µThere are three crucial factors in the production of 

: casting, casting and casting¶.13

For the earlier series, the process began with a flood (usually more than 100,000 each time) of
expressions of interest, and the filling in of an elaborate form. Motivated individuals who
survived that sent in two-minute videotapes. There were about 5,000 for the second series, 9,166
for the third, and 10,012 for the fourth.14 The process of selection for the 2007 show, which
closed in February, was rather simpler, which may reflect reduced public interest.15 ’s the
selection proceeds, candidates are interviewed, by a psychotherapist among other people.
Eventually, a small number of participants and reserves are chosen.16

’t least for the earlier series, the producers denied casting for open conflict, and specifically they
denied they cast for explicit racial or sexual conflict. The psychotherapist for the first series
argued that it would be counter-productive to µthrow in people who would obviously disagree,
like putting a racist and black guy together«we know opposites like that would have a big fight
and then stop communicating, and in the house they had to keep communicating for a long
time¶.17 What they are certainly looking for are characters who can be expected to develop
complex relationships and thus ongoing dramas. The producers are also prepared to manipulate
the contestants to achieve this, rather than simply relying on events to take their natural course.
The contrived nature of the environment, with many of the determinants (eg work) and
distractions (eg television) that characterise our everyday lives removed, acts strongly to
prioritise personal interactions based upon taste and interest. This probability is intensified
through the interventions of the disembodied Big Brother himself and the tasks set for the
participants.

In order to achieve dramatic narratives, the producers ruthlessly edit the raw footage. For
example, in the first ’ustralian series 182,750 hours of material were edited down to 70 hours of
television.18 ’n extreme µobservational¶ documentarist like Roger Graef might have a shooting
ratio of 30 to one, and a drama perhaps three to one; the ’ustralian 

figures work out
at 1,565 to one. Even the µlive¶ show broadcast continuously (first on the web and then on E4 in
the UK) is not an unmediated account of reality but an edited selection of shots (there are no
µaction¶ shots from the camera in the toilet, thankfully). More importantly, it is not live: there is a
built-in delay of ten minutes to allow for editorial intervention in the case of unsuitable material,
for example, brand advertising, swearing, defamatory material and µinappropriate behaviour¶.
This resource is used. Bazalgette records an incident involving Jade Goody from her first
appearance which provoked a long debate among the production team and heavy censorship in
the great British tradition of prudery.19 More recently, police investigations into charges of
racism have focused on tapes allegedly containing more offensive material that were not
broadcast.

Just as much as anything else on television, 


is constructed to attract and hold an
audience which will, in a commercial context, be sold to the highest bidder. It uses µreal¶ people
in certain kinds of µreal¶ situations, but it chooses and manipulates them in order to produce
narrative, drama and conflict.


 
 
Not all series of 

have been equally successful. The indications are that the first three
series played to average audiences that increased from 4.6 million to 5.9 million.20 Between
versions three and four, however, Channel 4 issued advice on µhow not to get into  Brother¶,
the prospective contestants¶ tapes contained less extreme behaviour, and the casting appears to
have been designed to provoke less dramatic conflicts.21 The series was rewarded with a slump
in ratings to 4.9 million and the producers thought again. What they thought was that they
needed to make the show more sensational in order to recover the audience, and both casting and
editorial interventions became more extreme. This reversed the decline in ratings, but in order to
maintain interest there has been an obligation to ratchet up the eccentricity of the cast of
characters and the unpleasantness of the tasks they must perform. ’s the Creative Director of 


argued, µThe levels of intervention from us increase as the show progresses²we have to
find creative ways of making the experience different¶.22 In pursuit of this objective, the
µcharacter¶ of 

has changed over the years, becoming crueller and more demanding.
The BBC reported at the start of the 2006 series, µ

will be ³more twisted than ever´
this year, according to the Channel 4 reality show¶s producers¶.23
The British production team continue to reject the frequent charge that they are casting
specifically for sexual encounters, although they recognise that there is likely to be at least some
of the latter.24 ’s Bazalgette put it:

Put twelve young people in a confined space for a length of time and there will be both sexual
tensions and releases. But to succeed 

needs relationships to develop. Sex is
incidental²

remained popular in the US, ’ustralia and the UK for several series
without any instances of sexual intercourse.25

Some conflict, and some crises, and some romances are valuable elements in developing the kind
of narrative that µgood television¶ requires in order to attract a large audience, but these elements
must appear to us to arise out of the dynamics of the household.

The development of the form, however, has changed those dynamics. In reality, the show has
moved away from its always tenuous claims on µreality¶ and more towards performance. The
casting and the situations are more and more contrived to allow the participants to display
themselves in situations ranging from the undignified to the grotesque. In this, the standard 


has converged more and more closely with ×


, where the casting of
entertainment professionals always meant that a high degree of performance would be central to
the show. Jade Goody, who was the star, if not the winner, of the standard series she participated
in (

_3_ back in 2002) exemplifies this shift towards the self-conscious performance
for the cameras.

The producers of the recent series of ×



might not have known and agreed in
advance that the mix of personalities they chose was going to result in racist bullying and abuse,
but they certainly knew that it contained all of the elements of a first rate row and this would be
very good for ratings. Good for ratings is good for business: Endemol¶s share price rose sharply
after the recent row.26

Œ






  

 
’ll of the series of 

, even the µboring¶ fourth series, and all of the celebrity versions
as well, have played to audiences that are quite substantial for contemporary British television.
They are not the highest rated programmes: as figure 2 demonstrates, those spots are held, week
in week out, by the primetime soaps. To compare the 

audience with that of the
soaps, however, is slightly misleading. While the soaps air early in the evening, 

is
broadcast much later, when the available audience is smaller. In its late evening slot, 


often has the largest audience share. ’s is also clear from figure 2, the audience builds through
the week and peaks around the weekend evictions. Usually it rises over the run of the series, too,
but this standard pattern was interrupted in the case of the most recent ×


.
The racist abuse, and the furore surrounding it, more or less rescued an ailing show. Its audience
leapt, peaked with the eviction of Jade Goody on 19 January, and continued at a somewhat
higher level for the final week of the show. The calculation of conflict that had inspired the
casting produced the expected rewards in terms of audiences.
The crude figures, substantial though they are for Channel 4, conceal a very important
distinguishing feature of the audience. Reality TV in general attracts audiences from across the
social spectrum, and  Brother¶s numbers, at around 25 percent of the total audience, are less
impressive than those of µobservational¶ shows such as 

 (67 percent), but it attracts a
unique and valuable audience.27 The hardest audiences to get watching television are younger
people. They have so many other things in their life, in contrast with those with families or living
in retirement, that they spend much less time in front of the TV. On the other hand, they are a
particularly attractive audience to advertisers because they have larger disposable incomes.
Young men, in particular, have advertisers queuing up for their attention. ’s figure 3
demonstrates, 

is very good at attracting a young audience. It is true that the audience
is disproportionately female, but it still contains a large number of those attractive and elusive
young male viewers. 

also captures a relatively affluent audience.28 What is more, the
people who watch the programme tend to be highly educated: 51 percent of students claimed to
be regular watchers, for example.29

Figure 3: Social composition of the audience for Big Brother ( 

  
!
0
 
 ! "!
)
’      
 

8-16 11.5
16-34 49.3
35-54 29.2
55+ 10.0
Male 42.4
Female 57.7

This audience has few illusions about what it is watching. When asked to comment on the
µreality¶ of different television programmes, regular viewers rated 

as much less
likely to be giving an honest picture of the world than other µfactual¶ forms such as news and
wildlife documentaries.30 ’udience responses demonstrate a sophisticated approach to what they
are seeing that has been honed over long periods:

The fact that audiences apply a sliding scale of factuality to reality programmes suggests one of
the ways they have learned to live with this genre over the past decade. ’udiences watch popular
factual television with a critical eye, judging the degree of factuality in each reality format based
on their experience of other types of factual programming. In this sense, viewers are evaluators
of the reality genre, and of factual programming as a whole.31

When asked, viewers respond that they think that the situation has elements of reality in that it
uses non-actors and has no script, but they are well aware that they are watching something that
has been contrived by the producers to make entertaining television.32 Far from confusing the
behaviour on the screen with the ways in which people µreally¶ behave, they are very conscious
of the extent to which they are watching performances and this is in fact one of the main
elements in what they think about the programmes. Like soap operas, which make their own,
rather different, claims to be pictures of reality, one of the appeals of this kind of programme is
that it provides topics for conversation and reflection in which people speculate about the
dilemmas facing the characters, relate them to their own experiences and values, and use them to
reach moral judgements about human behaviour.33 In this case, though, there is a specific
element that is not present in the soap opera. ’udiences put great stress on trying to discriminate
between the µperformance¶ that the participants give and what they are µreally like¶:

Reality gameshows have capitalised on this tension between appearance and reality by ensuring
that viewers have to judge for themselves which of the contestants are being genuine. In fact,
audiences enjoy debating the appearance and reality of ordinary people in reality gameshows.
The potential for gossip, opinion and conjecture is far greater when watching reality gameshows
because this hybrid format openly asks viewers to decide not just who wins or loses, but who is
true or false in the documentary/game environment.34

The tendency, at least in the earlier 


shows, was for the winners to be drawn from the
participants who were seen to be most genuine and most honest. The specifically unpleasant
characters tended to be despised, marginalised, and voted out.

The evolution of the reality gameshow that we traced above in the case of 

has
produced a shift in the nature of the kinds of talk and judgement that audiences make. The
triumph of nice people hardly made for the sort of compelling television that the producers were
trying to provide and as the characters have become much more eccentric so the ways in which
they are judged have changed. There is now a much clearer sense that the people who take part
in what is sometimes called by audiences µhumiliation TV¶ are willing participants in their own
exploitation and degradation. They are thought to be decreasingly µreal¶ and driven much more
by an unbridled, and unbalanced, ambition. ’s one respondent, a 30 year old male gardener, told
Hill:

When I saw a bit of 


recently, I didn¶t realise they were so, kind of, they are
wannabes. I thought they were genuinely just people plucked out of nowhere. They all, like,
wanted to be a presenter« Reality TV is, they¶re more like sort of caged animals. ’nd they¶re
agreeing to be degraded. Whereas in documentaries, I think, there is a tradition of respect and
humanism in documentary making. There should be. People who want to make documentaries
are different types of persons to people who¶d get involved in reality TV.35

The participants in the µordinary¶ versions of 


are today seen in much the same light
as the minor celebrities of the celebrity version. They are treated as people who are
µextraordinary¶ in a negative sense and regarded as not deserving of the kinds of care, respect
and fairness that television should extend to the really ordinary people who are seen in the news
and in social documentaries. People still watch 

, but today they are slightly ashamed
of the pleasures they derive from it.

× 
  
Reality TV in general, and 

in particular, has generated an enormous amount of
critical commentary. Much of this material is frankly moralistic, seeking to condemn everyone
involved²producers, broadcasters, participants and audiences²as engaged in a debased form of
discourse in the µbread and circuses¶ mode of public distraction. ’longside this there is a small
library of more substantial analysis from academics, some of which address important issues like
surveillance. The installation of video cameras capturing every moment of life in the 


house has obvious parallels with the spread of CCTV through the public spaces of the
contemporary world.36 ’nother major issue of concern for academic analysis is the political
implications of the fact that 

commands a large, enthusiastic and largely young
audience who pay to vote in considerable numbers. There are serious analyses claiming that
shows like this can provide a model for the regeneration of bourgeois politics.37

From a Marxist perspective these issues, while interesting, miss the point about what kind of
social relations are embodied in the show and what that helps us understand about the nature of
contemporary capitalism. Producers and broadcasters are engaged in producing a marketable
commodity, but to get the attention of the audience (and so sell it to the advertisers) they have to
produce something that resonates with their intended audience and they have to recruit suitable
participants. The central question then is, what kinds of motivations does the show offer to
participants to take part and to audiences to tune in and to vote in such numbers?

In its origins, reality television contained a strong current that celebrated the labour of workers²
at ’ngel tube station and the London Zoo, for example²and other examples of virulent class
hatred directed at the rich (#G
M
). Even much more entertainment driven
programmes such as 

 consisted in large measure of following working class people as
they solved difficult and unusual problems. Work, in these programmes, is seen as a central part
of human experience, and one that constantly challenges the capacity of workers, although there
was seldom any explicit reference to the capacity of workers to challenge their conditions of
labour. Programmes such as 

represent a radical departure from that model in that
they are designed to cut the participants off precisely from the exigencies of the world of work,
and in that they represent a different account of life under capitalism. They inhabit the world of
leisure, consumption and reproduction rather than that of labour, and one major attraction of the
show is that it takes us into that world.38 It is the way in which it shifts of the boundary of what
can be made public to include many things that are normally thought of as private that has
provoked most of the outrage about the programme.

The explanation for the attraction of this move is to be found in the central features of human
experience in developed capitalism. For most people, most of the time, work constitutes a realm
of unfreedom. Not only can hours be long and wages low, but work involves following orders
that are imposed from outside, and producing commodities over which one has no control. ’ll of
one¶s creativity and individuality is subordinated to the commands of the employer and devoted
not to the satisfaction of human needs but to the generation of surplus value. The analysis of this
reality is an important part of Marx¶s critique of capitalist production from the $  
M
 

 
 %&'(( through to the pages of × , and the basic ideas were
generalised to society as a whole in the first part of a famous essay by George Lukács:
µReification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat¶.39 The human being entering the workplace
not only surrenders the fruits of their labour, but also their control over their labour itself.40 ’s
contemporary capitalism has developed, and productive labour has come less and less to rely on
µhands¶ and more and more on µbrains¶, so the demands of alienated labour have become ever
more onerous. The conformity demanded by the contemporary labour process includes much
more than simply clocking in on time and doing what the foreman says²today you must
abandon your individuality as well as your overcoat at the door.

There are two possible strategies in response to these realities. One is the confrontation with
alienated labour, whose highest form is revolutionary struggle. ’s we all know, this is not an
everyday activity for the mass of the population. The other is to try to discover some area of life
which is not thoroughly permeated with the logic of alienation. In contemporary society that
takes the form of a stress upon personal life and consumption. ’s Marx put it, µThe worker
therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at
home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home¶.41 It is only
here²in what we wear, the car we drive, the music we like, the relationships we form²that we
can try to believe that we are truly and fully individuals pursuing ends determined by our own
needs and desires.

There are, however, in capitalist society a tiny layer of people who for a variety of reasons are
not anonymous and interchangeable. and whose personality counts for something. Some of them,
such as footballers and film stars, are richly rewarded for their special attributes. Others have less
tangible claims to distinction. But however they come to hold this status they are clearly visible
in all their individuality, relationships and conspicuous consumption in the pages of ) ! and
*. The realm of celebrity is the realm of legitimised personality. One of the key characteristics
of celebrities is that their private lives and doings are taken to be interesting and treated as public
property. This is often denounced as an intolerable intrusion, but in fact it is the highest reward
that can be bestowed under capitalism. Unlike the mass of the population, the celebrity is
someone whose individuality is taken seriously. The idea of an individual magical escape into
the world of celebrity is an attractive one if the alternative of collective action to achieve radical
social change seems remote.

The evidence is that the people who participated in the first series of 

did not
anticipate how this could be a life-changing experience, but the potential was clear to those who
tried to enter later.42 The would-be contestants knew that for some at least success in the house
could lead to a different life, richer for sure but, just as important, a life as a celebrity.43 This is
very clear in accounts of the selection process. By the time the British third series was recruiting,
it was reported that a definite theme emerged in the tapes sent in for audition:

There was a great deal of nudity: people on the sofa nude, playing football nude, running down
the street nude, one man naked except for an accordion in field full of cows, a naked girl
smearing mud on her body, lots of women with tassels on their breasts doing stripping routines, a
man jumping about on a pogo stick without his clothes.44

By taking their clothes off in front of a camera, potential participants were doing more than just
signifying that they were ready to go along with what they imagined the producers might be
planning. They were signifying their willingness to undertake the role of celebrity and make their
most private attributes public. ’s the series has veered towards more eccentric participants, so
contestants¶ willingness to be public becomes clearer and clearer.45 Being on the show
guarantees at least a short period of time when one can be a celebrity, and for some such as Jade
Goody it actually provides the path to a longer stint in that role.

The intense desire to be recognised, to be a celebrity, to become a 


contestant, is not
primarily about the money that comes with success, although that is surely something that is in
the front of people¶s minds. Rather it is the desire to escape the drudgery of anonymous,
alienated toil in which one counts for nothing. It is the desire to be recognised as somebody
unique and distinctive by a wider circle than one¶s immediate family and friends. The dream of
celebrity is more than a magical escape from the constraints of relative poverty and the drudgery
of routine labour. It is also, and most importantly, a magical attempt to transcend alienated
labour, not by expropriating the expropriators but by evading the reality of being  the
repository of labour power.

For the audience, too, the attraction of 


is that it provides a site on which it is possible
to discuss openly and without social discomfort the fascinations of the personal. The fact that
what is normally private and guarded is displayed, indeed flaunted, in front of millions of us, not
with the distancing conventions of drama but with the rhetoric of authenticity, provides a
powerful stimulus to discussion and reflection about personal life in the modern age. It also
provides an arena in which moral judgements about behaviour can be explored. The audience, as
one of the production team put it, are µvery moral. They reward good behaviour and punish bad
behaviour¶.46 One of the fascinations of the process is that it allows us to make celebrities out of
people we believe have acted well and to punish those, like Jade Goody, who transgress what we
believe should be the boundaries of proper behaviour. The people who win in 

are the
people the audience think deserve to become celebrities.

’s we saw, these judgements depend on a balance between the µreal person¶ and their
performance. The instability of the form, what is often called its µferal¶ character, threatens this
moral economy even as the producers are driven to extremes in order to sustain ratings. The shift
towards more eccentric performers is not in itself a threat: after all an eccentric is merely a
personality who does not fit into recognised social patterns and thus is very often a challenge to
the smooth running of capitalism. However, the combination of eccentricity and humiliation
detaches the performers from any universe with which the audience can identify, and this is a
threat. It can still give pleasure to millions, but it is a different pleasure. ’s the audience
recognises, it is shifting from an arena of moral exploration to a gladiatorial contest. Like the
latter, it is a compelling spectacle, but it gives a guilty pleasure.

O
Reality TV in all its versions, but particularly in its reality gameshow format, represents, from
the producers¶ and broadcasters¶ side, an attempt to respond to the changing economics of
contemporary television. It is relatively cheap to make and it reliably garners an audience in the
right numbers and with the right composition to sell to advertisers. 

and some other
similar game shows are firmly within this category, although they have additional elements that
make them distinct both in their audience and in their appeal.

The fact that 


gains such a large and enthusiastic audience of young people tells us
something about life in modern capitalism. We cannot assume, as do so many populist
commentators in media and cultural studies, that just because lots of working class people enjoy
a particular artefact it is therefore in some sense progressive or oppositional. The reality is much
more complex. ’ show such as 

offers no challenge at all to capitalism, and indeed
its structure reproduces some of the most pernicious effects of capitalism²human energy and
initiative are ruthlessly exploited in order to make money. On the other hand, it does represent, in
a weird and utterly unrealistic way, a dream of escaping from capitalism, of transcending
alienated labour, escaping from conformity and flowering as an individual. Being a contestant
makes you a celebrity for the duration, and you have a fighting chance of continuing in the role
afterwards.

The fact that this dream of a better and fuller life is embodied in a game show rather than a
political organisation is a sad but characteristic reflection of contemporary reality. When there is
no obvious alternative that can provide a focus for mass discontent, all sorts of more or less
magical solutions to the anger and frustration that mar millions of lives are seized almost in
despair. The chances of winning on the National Lottery are tiny, but millions still buy tickets.
The chances of becoming a 

contestant are much bigger. Of those who become
contestants, a celebrity career is a small possibility, but thousands are still prepared to try to
make it.
0 
1: Christians, for example can find their answers in Di ’rcher, Caroline Putnis and Tony
Watkins, Π

 #+, 
? (Bletchley, 2001).

2: Peter Bazalgette,  - 

,: ) #
 .
/×G %
#
  (London, 2005), p101.

3: Even the coming of Channel 4 did not alter this immediately. For the first decade from 1982
the ITV companies sold advertising on both their own channel and Channel 4, paying a levy on
their total revenue to support the minority broadcaster. This changed only in the 1990
Broadcasting ’ct, which gave Channel 4 the duty of selling its own advertising from 1993
onwards, and thus introduced real economic competition into UK terrestrial television for the
first time.

4: Colin Sparks, µIndependent Production: Unions and Casualisastion¶, in Stuart Hood (ed),


: #

 %

#
 0
(London, 1994), pp133-
154. This model of production was pioneered by Channel 4, which produces virtually none of its
own programmes.

5: ’ format is the key component of a show and, unlike an idea, can be copyrighted and thus
sold.

6: ’nnette Hill, .#+ (London, 2005), p6.

7: 

had originally been developed in the UK, but had first been shown to work in
Sweden. It was that success that convinced CBS it was worth developing²Chris Jordan,
µMarketing ³Reality´ to the World: Survivor, Post-Fordism, and Reality Television¶, in David
Escoffery (ed), ) .
.#+? $


 .

 #
 (Jefferson, NC,
2006), pp78-96.

8: Johnathan Bignell, 


: .#+1&
×
 (London, 2005), pp53-58.

9: Jean Ritchie, 


: #*%%

 (London, 2000), p9.

10: Hasan Suroor, µShilpa Wins 


Contest¶, #), 30 January 2006.

11: ’nnette Hill, as above, p4.

12: ’round 90 percent of applicants are described as white or European²Jean Ritchie, 



(:  ×
M

 (London, 2003).

13: Peter Bazalgette, as above, p152.

14: Jean Ritchie, 2



: , (London, 2002), p32; and Jean
Ritchie, 

(, as above, p11.
15: Details online (accessed 16 February 2007)
www.channel4.com/bigbrother/auditions/openauditions.html

16: There are guides as to how to succeed at this process, for example Jack Benza,   
Œ .#+ (New York, 2005), p68. He remarks, µThere is nothing real about reality
TV. Why? Producers« Producers will always manipulate people in a certain direction for the
betterment of the show. They will lie, create non-existing stories, and stir up feelings among
competitors all to create drama, which producers believe is better TV.¶

17: Quoted in Jean Ritchie, 


, as above, p26.

18: Toni Johnson-Woods, 


(St Lucia, Queensland, 2002) pp130-131.

19: The programme makers µhad to watch a drunken encounter between two house-mates, the
controversial Jade and a trainee solicitor, PJ« In fact, in tabloidese, whether PJ had had a BJ
was by no means clear, the couple having been under the bed covers. But when the covers fell
away briefly, what was clear was PJ¶s proud erection being vigorously manipulated by Jade. This
much was edited out right away¶²Peter Bazalgette, as above, p231. You can buy DVDs of the
µbits they couldn¶t show on TV¶ for many of the series at the fan sites, for example:
www.bigbrotheronline.co.uk/shop.htm

20: ’nnette Hill, as above, p32, provides the rating figures for series 1-4.

21: Jean Ritchie, 


(, as above, p11.

22: Phil Edgar-Jones, quoted in Paul Flynn, 


: 



(London, 2005), p96.

23: Big Brother 7 gets µmore twisted¶.

24: Some commentators question these claims. Hill and Palmer write, µ’ sensitivity to the sort of
coverage that excites the media became a determining factor in contestant selection. Producers
soon learned that an exhibitionist streak was a useful factor in retaining viewers. Thus worldwide
a series of strippers, dancers, and other flamboyant figures were installed in the houses with the
hoped-for on-screen action. ’nd so it proved with many European contestants doing away with
the subtleties of flirting to engage in sexual congress at the soonest opportunity¶²’nnette Hill
and Gareth Palmer, editorial in #
 0 , volume 3, number 3 (2002), p252.

25: Peter Bazalgette, as above, p245.

26: Ian Bickerton, µ


Row Could Help Endemol¶, G#
, 23 January 2007.

27: ’nnette Hill, µ


: The Real ’udience¶, in #
 0 , volume 3,
number 3 (2002), p327.
28: Janet Megan Jones, µShow your Real Face: a fan Study of the UK 

Transmissions
(2000, 2001, 2002). Investigating the Boundaries Between Notions of Consumers and Producers
of Factual Television¶, in 0  , volume 5, number 3 (2002), p406.

29: ’nnette Hill, 


, as above, p331.

30: ’nnette Hill, .#+, as above, p62.

31: ’s above, p173.

32: Writing of the audience in the US, Crew states, µMembers of the sample group know that


producers control what they see through the manipulation of activities, editing, and
casting decisions. Viewers accepted the manipulation of the narrative as necessary to make


an entertaining one-hour programme¶²Richard Crew, µViewer Interpretations of
Reality Television: How Real is 

for its Viewers?¶, in David Escoffery (ed), as above,
pp68-69.

33: Janet Megan Jones, as above, p408.

34: ’nnette Hill, .#+, as above, p70.

35: ’nnette Hill, G#+, forthcoming (2007), from chapter 7 of the manuscript.

36: One line of thought is that the 


version of surveillance differs radically from the
classical Benthamite model prison, in which the few guards observe the many prisoners, because
the television version reverses those proportions and the audience of many watch the few
participants. This, it is suggested, leads to a rudimentary form of subversion of, or even
resistance to, the pervasiveness of surveillance in the outside world²John McGrath, 3 


(London, 2004), p206. ’ more orthodox line of reasoning is that a show like 


µvalidates the pervasive surveillance of the rhythm of day to day life as a contemporary
commonplace²a form of convenience and entertainment¶²Mark ’ndrejevic, µThe Kinder,
Gentler Gaze of 

4, in 0  , volume 4, number 2 (2002), p267.

37: Stephen Coleman, ) *

)%+ 
: 

+

1 ",

$ , (London, 2006). It turns out that regular viewers are just as likely to vote in general
elections as anyone else, but they believe that an electoral system modelled on the kind of
detailed exposure participants in the house experience would give a better insight into political
choices than do current forms of publicity. More extreme claims are made for the impact of
audience participation in non-democratic societies. The voting in the Chinese  

 contest
(modelled on Thames TV¶s M 2 ) provoked a long debate about whether it constituted the
first step towards Chinese democracy. See the articles collected at
www.zonaeuropa.com/20050829_1.htm

38: This is the reason why Nick Couldry¶s 2006 denunciation of 

as embedding the
success criteria of neoliberal labour is slightly mistaken. .#+,

#
 %
0 -

, available online.
39: For the more developed versions of Karl Marx¶s account, see the Chapter on Capital in
Grundrisse (London, 1973), and also chapter one, section 4 of Capital, volume one (Moscow,
1965). Lukács¶s essay is in his History and Class Consciousness (London, 1971), pp83-222.

40: ’s the young Marx put it, µThis relation [of labour to the act of production within the labour
process] is the relation of the worker to his own activity as an alien activity not belonging to him;
it is activity as suffering, strength as weakness, begetting as emasculating, the worker¶s own
physical and mental energy, his personal life«as an activity turned against him, independent of
him and not belonging to him¶²Karl Marx, Collected Works, volume 3 (Moscow, 1975), p275,
available online.

41: ’s above, p274.

42: For the µinnocence¶ of those who volunteered for a first series, see the interviews with the
participants in the first Finnish production cited in Ninna ’slama, µTwelve Truths ’bout Big
Brother Finland. Researching Participants¶ Experiences of Reality Television¶, unpublished
paper.

43: Dean O¶Loughlin, who was a runner up in the second series, wrote a thoughtful book in part
reflecting on the experience of becoming a (minor) celebrity²3 5: 

.#+ (Birmingham, 2004).

44: Jean Ritchie, 2



, as above, p29.

45: Perhaps the man with the pogo stick ought to try auditioning again.

46: Quoted in Paul Flynn, as above, p96.