Lecture 14: What is This Thing Called Reality?. In This Lecture PART ONE: The Private Goes Public PART TWO: The Shame Game PART THREE: Multiple Realities.

Lecture 14:What is This Thing Called Reality?

In This Lecture

•PART ONE: The Private Goes Public

•PART TWO: The Shame Game

•PART THREE: Multiple Realities

•PART FOUR: The Ritual Return

•The Link: We are the media.

PART ONE: The Private Goes Public

Term: Spectacle

•A remarkable or shocking public display.

New Media = More Spectacle

• Spectacle is digital, needs no narrative set up, compact, perfect to “go viral.”

• Often requires no linguistic translation, can travel around the world instantly.

• Jarring enough to get attention amid a glutted mediascape.

• Is a catalyst for interpretation and thus participation. Add your own narrative and stir.

Types of Media Spectacles

•viral videos

•terrorist attacks

•reality show meltdowns

•tabloid scandals

Man in the Box

•(Please view Man in the Box “Reality TV.” Consider how this webisode parodies the collapse of the private into the public.)

Dominque Mehl:“The Public on the

Television Screen”

• Mehl says audiences are less interested in “expert opinions” and more on displays of lifestyle choices.

• “The public sphere, shaped by the confrontation between the discourse of experts, administrators and intellectuals has undergone a deep change, influenced by a new focus on the discourse of the uninitiated and the account of personal experiences” (Dominique Mehl.)

Term: the public sphere

• Emerged with the advent of the mass-media. A public space outside of the control by the state, where individuals exchange views and knowledge, characterized by dialogue and debate, a check on state power.

Jürgen Habermas

b. 1929

Term: the private sphere

• The domain in which the individual focuses on self-interest and does not have to work cooperatively with others, characterized by sense of autonomy and unhampered by institutional interventions.

• Habermas thinks the boundaries between public and private, the individual and society are deteriorating due to growing intervention of formal systems in our everyday lives: welfare state, corporate capitalism (we might add media rituals such as tabloid culture and reality TV). These trends rationalize widening areas of public life, collapsing the private into the public.

What happens when the private goes

public?• Traditionally social norms are

dictated by dominant forces - top down.

• But in the era of social media, flouting norms can be a form of social empowerment, attracting more Facebook hits and thus more empowerment.

• Does this motivate people to “perform” nonconformity?

• Is this really just another form of conformity?

term: confessional culture•Emerges when

the media rewards people for “confessing” how they were victimized or how they victimized others.

Bitter Harvest:Reaping the Fruits of a Confessional Culture

• Focus shifts from discussing issues to hearing about trauma (daytime talk shows), and witnessing trauma directly (reality TV).

• Audience is placed in superior role, becomes the priest in the confessional offering absolution.

• Confession is not enough. The reality star must have something worth confessing. This means being associated with a significantly compelling “transgression.” Thus the biggest victims and victimizers are rewarded.

Term: transgression

• All compelling narratives require some form of transgression.

• When real life replaces fiction, the same rules apply. We are interested in stories that violate social norms.

• This can lead to social progress (i.e. challenging abuses), but can also create an unhealthy fixation on victimhood and victimization.

PART TWO: The Sh me Game

Shame on James Fry!

•Oprah criticizesJames Fry for falsifying his memoir A Million Little Pieces. Secretly, he was (gasp!) more respectable than he claimed to be.

•One of the few transgressions that cannot be excused. (Huh?)

Contract with the Viewer

• In literature, a “contract with the reader” means a tacit agreement not to violate genre conventions.

• Reality TV is a kind of “meta-genre,” but it, nonetheless, does have a few conventions. For instance, participants are not supposed to keep things from the audience.

• In terms of reality TV, a “contract with the viewer” presumes total disclosure.

Jon and Kate Plus Shame• When word of Jon’s affair

leaked to the press, many viewers felt betrayed.

• Blogged about the public having a “right to know” the truth. Do we?

• Reality Stars often have no conventional talents. They are paid to reveal their lives. If they withhold important revelations (such as an affair) are they in breach of contract?

Questions:

• Are all Public Figures now expected to fulfill a contract with the viewer?

• Do we have a right to know about the affairs Tiger Woods had?

• Is he obliged to seek our forgiveness?

• What is the upside of this? (see Catholic church abuses challenged)

• The downside? (public officials as tabloid stars: see Clinton and Lewinsky, Prince Charles phone sex)

Ethics of Exposure• Rule One: Thou

shalt disclose all.

• Rule Two: Thou shalt self-recriminate.

• Rule Three: Thou shalt accept our forgiveness (and $$$$$.)

• Rule Four: Thou better not be lying about rule number two.

What’s so Pleasurable about a “Guilty Pleasure?”

•Economic argument: reality shows cheap to produce and get ratings. Explains why they are produced, but not why they are popular with viewer/participants.

Beyond Schadenfreude

• Audiences do enjoy watching reality stars suffer, but is this mere sadism?

• Reality stars symbolize cultural obsessions.

• They are barometers indicating what the culture values and how far some people will go in pursuit of those values.

• Our reactions to their behavior reflects an attempts to grapple with these same values.

Term: Anomie

•American society creates unrealistic goals without adequate means of achieving them. This encourages disruptive, anti-social behavior. The process is called “social anomie.”

Robert Merton

(1910-2003)

Innovators and Ritualists

•Innovators: those striving for social mobility, not always via “legitimate” means.

•Ritualists: those accepting the status quo and wanting others to do the same.

Judge Lest ye be JudgedJudging American Idol

• The overt narrative: heroic individual.

• The covert narrative: anomie on trial.

• We enjoy seeing social anomie punished because this excuses our own fears and inaction.

• Less about sadism. More about self-justification and even self-protection (ego defense against being judged lazy and/or fearful.)

• The show is called American Idol, but the harshest critic is a Brit. Why?

•(Please view The Moment of Truth. Do you find watching this Fox reality-game show pleasurable? Is so, why?)

Anomie Today: End or Means?

• Merton describes anomie as an unfortunate end result created by striving for unrealistic goals.

• In the age of reality TV, can anomie itself be a means of achieving goals?

• Do we now reward anomie for its own sake?

• Old view: transgress for success, but don’t get caught.

• New view: transgress for success, and be sure to get caught.

Affordances

•A quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action.

James J. Gibson(1904-1979)

Affordances vs. Effects

•Cause and Effects arguments (media effects) often ignore individual motives and specific social contexts.

•Affordances - objective values acted on by people with subjective aims.

What do Reality Shows “afford?”

• Media visibility for the anonymous. (note: not the same as fame. Do reality stars have “fans?”)

• Increased invisibility for the marginally famous.

• Self-justification and escapism for audience/participants.

What do Reality Rituals “demand?”

•Self-disclosure (more required from less talented and/or attractive)

•Transgression (more required from less talented and/or attractive)

“The Cocktail Party Effect”

(Or “Affordance”?)

•The media as a loud cocktail party. To be heard, we are motivated to transgress.

•Note: not everyone does so, and those who do, act in different ways.

Neal Gabler

Affordances and Anomiesocial transgressions that “afford” media

visibility

• Sexual display (Keeping up with the Kardashians)

• Intoxication (Taradise, The Anna Nicole Show, The Surreal Life)

• Heightened Emotionalism (Breaking Bonaduce)

• Betrayal (Survivor)

• Humiliation (American Idol)

PART THREE: Multiple Realities

term:

FrankenbitePieces of footage recut to create alternate narratives.

Reality TV Editing

•(Please view Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, “Reality TV Editing.” Consider how very different narrative can be derived from the same bits of footage.)

Term: soft scripted

Partly scripted scenarios, less spontaneous, more contrived. Closer to amateur improv theater.

PART FOUR: The Ritual Return

Why don’t people dress up in team colors to go to the

theater?

•Sporting events invite ritual because outcomes are uncertain.

term: Practical Magic

•"Theory of the gap" - magic serves to reduce anxiety, to fill the void of the unknown. Bronislaw

Malinowski(1884-1942)

Ritual Blindness

•They have “beliefs.” We have the “truth.”

•They have “rituals.” We have “reality.”

Reality Rituals• Audiences become highly invested in reality shows because

the outcomes are uncertain.

• This inspires them to become more than audience members. They become ritual participants, seeking to influence the outcome via ritual acts (voting, blogging, cheering)

• The soap opera is almost extinct. Why?

Term: prosumption

•In the age of interactive media, media users are both producers and consumers.

Alvin Toffler (b. 1928)

rituals vs. signs• The written word created 4

distinct categories that did not exist in earlier ritual-based cultures: text, author, actor and audience.

• The ritual return once again collapses text, author, actor and audience into one figure, the ritual actor, or “medium.”

• Thinking in terms of ritual acts, rather than textual signs, allows us to more effectively conceptualize media in the age of prosumption.

Why rituals?•textual analysis -

focus on textual signs.

•ethnography - focus on social interaction.

•ritual studies - focus on symbolic action.

For us or on us?

•Rituals are beliefs in action.

•They affirm our assumptions and justify our beliefs (production.)

•They also constrain and guide our actions (consumption.)

•They perform for us, but also perform on us.

MY THESIS:

Becoming the Medium

•Because rituals work two ways (for us and on us), they are the appropriate means of conceptualizing media in the age of prosumption.

We Are the Media

•The media is not only what we consume or produce; it’s who we are and who we want to be.

Next Time:What Is This Thing Called Quality? (The Comedic & Dramatic Versions)