Reality Shows - Are They Real

521 Words3 Pages
“Reality television shows are more ‘show’ than ‘reality.’” I will be covering reality shows which came to be in 1999 with shows like Big brother and Survivor, there are many more types of shows and they go back to the 1950´s. I will argue that reality shows have little to do with reality. Now the ideal reality show is something like this; Take a totally random individual and without him knowing start filming his life 24/7 and hope the uncertainty principal will not apply. This show would have one big flaw, it would suck, no mater how entertaining „The Truman Show“is. Production Reality shows like Survivor, who in my opinion is more real than most reality shows, puts people in difficult situations and tries to capture their reactions. When producing the show most problems are foreseen and expected so they have an outline of how the show will proceed during filming, and they even create obstacles for the contestants to overcome. This has little to do with reality since the idea is to put a person in an unexpected situation and see how they react, the games and tribal council is good television but has nothing to do with reality. Another factor in the production is misleading editing(1) , that is when producers and editors use footage or sounds from different times to carry the made up storyline more chronology. This has been well documented from many reality TV shows. People and cameras The Observer-expectancy effect(2) states that when a human being is observed it will alter their behavior in unmesurable ways. Actors who go into interviews will behave differently for many reasons and real people (i.e not actors) who are not used to the cameras will inenvertably behave like a different person. People will get used to the cameras as the production crawls forward but they can seldom get it totally out of their minds. People react to things in different ways and
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