Survivor Fan Culture

Neal Gabler’s 1998 book, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, brings up controversial questions about the necessity or unnecessary want of entertainment. Scholars may claim that entertainment breaks family bonds, undermines community, and decreases people’s integrity. Certainly, entertainment in the 21st century in the form of movies, video games, and social media are more widespread than ever. However, not all forms of enjoyment are obscene; sports, television shows, and fan conventions can promote social involvement, reduce stress, and improve collaboration skills.

In Cassie Heidecker’s paper, The Real, the Bad, and the Ugly, she exposes that reality television’s charm is the characters have real, normal lives like the audience’s lives. While the producers’ editing causes regular episodes of reality TV shows to differ from a viewer's normal life, it also generates larger audiences with every episode and the ratings continue to rise. Moreover, the shows follow a predictable formula so that even Heidecker, who regularly watches reality TV, realizes the shows are predictable; yet Heidecker continues to laugh, cry, and enjoy the predictable moves the shows make. Since the ratings of reality TV continue to rise, more people than just Heidecker still enjoy the shows, even though they are predictable. Though the shows are

Audience: The target of this piece is mainly millennials and those interested in Reality TV, however this piece reaches a wide range of viewers from young to old because of the vast audience that reality TV encompasses. Some chapters would be very interesting to people who have experienced and viewed closely the several reality TV generations periods that Kavka outlines in her introduction. The author reaches many audiences through the analysis of reality TV over an extensive timeline. Her intended audience wants to analyze the true definition of reality TV and its many intricacies.

1) In the essay, Visceral Literacy, Mark Andrejevic establishes the voyeuristic facet of Reality TV amidst an age characterized by individuals having an immense, uncertainty in regards to both the creation of public representations and the advent of technologies and methods that promise behind the scene access. For instance, most Reality TV content feeds to the observer, who is recognized as the voyeur. Here, Voyeurism can be described in regards to those sources of entertainment that allow audiences to witness content while simultaneously enabling them to visualize those scenarios which they previously were incapable of doing so. For example, an integral component of voyeurism is prevalent amongst shows that allow us to behold and dwell into

Reality Television is a genre of television programming that documents unscripted situations and actual occurrences. The genre often highlights personal drama and conflict between characters to a much greater extent than other genres. (Lyle, 2008)The paper seeks to analyze the codes and conventions of authenticity used in the TV show American Choppers based in Orange County, New York. This reality-based TV show outlines the lives of Paul Teutul Sr., his son Paul Jr., makers of the universe 's most magnificent, one-off a kind custom chopper built around a specific theme (Mazzarella, 2008). Every scene catches the daily dramatization of this impulsive relationship the father and his son has, who are also a team as they fight impossible due

In the essay, “Getting down to what is really real,” John Sullivan tells us about his thoughts on reality TV and explains why people are attracted to those shows. Some people might not like to admit they watch reality TV but it’s almost impossible to avoid hearing about it if you’re present on social media. We like watching it because it makes our lives look less stressful and drama is fun when you aren’t involved in it. It is easy to get attached to the characters and their unique personalities and most of all, people love the opportunity for easy fame.

The line between television and the Internet seems to be growing more and more blurred as networks and producers learn to adapt to using online media to grow and capture new audiences. A recent article, “Chris Hardwick, King of the Nerds Is Expanding His Empire” by Lorne Manly in the New York Times features a profile of entertainer Chris Hardwick, who is described as the “model of an entertainment brand for a multiscreen generation” (Manly, par. 5). As a fan of both Chris Hardwick and of geek culture, I found this article to be a fascinating profile of how savvy use of media can allow performers to reach a much wider audience than television alone.

The author targets those who watch or at least have heard of the new rising stars. It also focuses on the public that uses the media as a source to be part of the “virtual revolution”

Darrin Brown, Sharon Lauricella, Aziz Douai and Arshia Zaidi composed a study focusing on the uses and grats of the aforementioned genre as a means of better understanding the relationship between television and its audiences (Brown, Lauricella, Douai, Zaidi, 2000). Blumber and Katz’s theory on uses and gratifications suggest that audience’s choose to watch certain programs as it satisfies a particular need; in other words, people use a program to gratify or please themselves (Who Watches Crime Dramas and Why?, 2012). They identified four main uses and grats: entertainment and diversion, where there is an idea of escapism; surveillance and information, where people have an urge to become more knowledgeable in a particular area; personal identity, where there is a comparison between the characters and audience members; and finally, personal companionship, where audience’s become involved with characters as if they were real (Who Watches Crime Dramas and Why?, 2012). The uses and Gratification theory assumes that audiences use mass media as an outlet for satisfying certain needs and desires (Brown, et. al, 2000). According to another group of scholars, the gratification individuals get when using such media are both social and psychological in nature (Brown, et. al, 2000). In

When one hears the word “fan” two mental images pop up, one being a grown man dressed up in a costume, or two a preteen young girl who has posters of Justin Bieber all over her room. However, not all fans are like, although the mass majority are neither of those two images of people. I believe that the word “fan” and “fandom” has turned into something negative. Most people believe that fandom are for those who are nerds and do not have a life outside of what they are obsessed with. I believe that those who are not in a fandom right now, join one. Fandoms create a sense of belonging, community, and comfort.

The evolution of television content is currently steadily moving towards reality television shows. The shift from interest in fiction drama series to reality shows has turned the regular television viewers into addicted voyeurs. There have been diverse views on the effect of reality television shows ranging from support to criticism. George Will, in his article “Reality television: oxymoron” believes that reality television is making ordinary people degenerate morally and act stupid in the effort to please a disinterested audience. Reality TV shows are relying heavily on building extraordinary characters or events out of the norm and attract the attention of the audience. Kellner argues that the audience is enticed by “media constructs

While MTV's The Real World places twenty-somethings in unique arrangements in which to live as they would like for several months, CBS's Survivor elicits peculiar behavior from contestants living in unusual circumstances. Despite fundamental differences, the continued success of both The Real World[1] and Survivor[2] illustrates that American viewers love to watch reality television shows with interesting locales, competitions or tasks, and natural personal relations.

The cultural phenomenon ‘Reality Television (TV)’ has become an increasingly popular genre of television since its paroxysm onto the airwaves in 1945. The term ‘Reality Television’ can be defined as the genre of entertainment that documents the lives of ‘ordinary’ individuals through the exhibition of allegedly unscripted real-life scenarios, despite inquisitive inquiries disclosing Reality TV to entail facets of script. The primary objective of Reality TV is purely to entertain the audience. This genre of television is appealing to viewers due to its entertainment principle/value, the audience’s competency to correlate to the characters and their situations, and the contingency it presents for escapism and voyeurism. We can capitalise the Australian appropriation of the American popular dating Reality TV show ‘The Bachelor’ as a tool to further comprehend the purpose and appeal of Reality television. The postulations of media’s obligations to society in contrast to their current actions and media as a mirror to society - the normative theory, can also be utilised as an implement to apprehend Reality TV. Through the strict analysis of ‘ The Bachelor’ and the employment of the normative theory, the purpose and appealing factor of Reality TV can be deeply examined.

In the age of convergence, it is easier than ever to find television shows as well as the knowledge communities surrounding them. In addition, it is also easier than ever to view the conflict between fans and producers In Henry Jenkins’s book, Convergence Culture, he covers the reality TV series, Survivor, as well as the fan community surrounding it. Through his analysis of the Survivor fan community’s reactions to the spoilers that a fan named ChillOne posted to the online community, he attempts to grapple with the concept of “spoilers” and how learning these spoilers shifts how these communities process and evaluate knowledge.

Using this explanation, this essay underlines the matters of how the entertainment industries has taken full control through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Furthermore, it also typifies how such industries emphasis significantly into its logics and practices through its audience and fan participation. Supported Research is justified by various theorists/examples. This includes Prensky, Katz and Blumler, Dan Gilmore, David Gauntlet, Charles Leadbeater and Jenkins himself.