The Cultural Phenomenon Of Reality Television

While reading the journal Reality Bites: An Investigation of the Genre of Reality Television and Its Relationship to Viewers’ Body Image researchers utilized a unique methodological approach, this study investigated subtypes of reality television (RTV) to study the influence of exposure to RTV on body image (body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness) as compared a more traditional weekly report of RTV viewing. Young adults (N ¼ 472) completed online surveys measuring their exposure to Reality TV and perceptions of their own body image. Four types of RTV were uncovered. Regression analyses using these 4 factors demonstrated that exposure to competition-based RTV shows (e.g., Dancing with the Stars) predicted increased body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness. On the other hand, the weekly self-report of RTV viewing did not reveal any relationships between weekly exposure to RTV and body image. These findings underline the need for cultivation-based media studies that include program-based measures of genre-specific media exposure, especially when seeking to capture media effects related to RTV.

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

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

Television is one of the most accessible sources available to citizens. And with reality T.V, it changed the television industry forever. In today 's society, Reality Television plays an important role in people 's everyday lives. Jeremy W. Peters, the author of “When Reality TV Gets Too Real” argued that there should be a limit for how far an reality T.V should go. While James Poniewozik the author of “Why Reality TV Is Good for Us” said that reality T.V was the best thing to happen to television. Some might say television is bad for the society, and some might disagree with that, but reality T.V has proven to be the best thing that ever happened to television.

In the media, reality TV stars like Snooki and Kim Kardashian are on the rise. Most channels on television have at least one reality show, from following housewives to remodeling homes of real life families. However, there are some reality programs that display bad examples, especially for young audiences that are keeping up with each episode. On MTV people see girls being drunk in public, addicts doing drugs, and young girls raising babies at young ages; these are situations seen on reality TV shows. Jeremy W. Peters’ “When Reality TV Gets Too Real” and James Poniewozik’s “Why Reality TV is Good for us” inform readers about what the general public can view on television and how it affects the minds of children. Reality TV shows such as

Do you know the guiltiest pleasure of the American public? Two simple words reveal all—reality TV. This new segment of the TV industry began with pioneering shows like MTV’s The Real World and CBS’s Survivor. Switch on primetime television nowadays, and you will become bombarded by and addicted to numerous shows all based on “real” life. There are the heartwarming tales of childbirth on TLC, melodramas of second-rate celebrities on Celebrity Mole, and a look into a completely dysfunctional family on The Osbornes. Yet, out of all these entertaining reality shows arises the newest low for popular culture, a program based on the idea of a rich man or woman in search of

Today while watching a movie or television show on cable, there were four to five minute breaks of commercials. Most of these commercials consisted of new reality shows. If they were not new, then it was the dates for when they old shows would make a comeback and start another season. Reality television has been in our lives since the 1940s. Although, the shows that were on years ago were much less vulgar than they seem to be now. It appears reality television continues to go down the wrong road. It is seen in many popular reality shows where the characters are almost getting praised for the bad behavior that they show on camera. This is important to know because it is has become a very popular thing for many people to watch, especially young teens. This gives the people in the shows the opportunity to be a role model for teens who might be looking elsewhere other than parents or peers for someone to look up to. It has also been shown that more teens would be interested in signing up to be on a reality show for the chance to gain fame by just about living their life. Reality television has done more harm than good to our society. For the most part, the shows today are showing more things that effects our teens in a more negative way. This left me with the question on does reality television really affect us? There are positives and negative effects on its viewers as well as the effect is has had on the culture of today’s society.

Reality TV burst onto the television scene in the early 2000s’s. Shows such as, The Bachelor, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and American Idol are just a few of the hundreds of reality TV shows that are capturing the hearts of Americans on a weekly basis. The effects go unnoticed by the viewers, but as these shows are watched, they begin to take over the personality of the audience and are changing the way people perceive the world today.

modern era, highlighting shifts in masculine gender identity, the negative social impact of reality television

This research will focus on the negative impact of reality TV and analyse facts and examples of influence from reality TV shows. The information provided and studies are referred from year 2000 till present hence it will be based on most recent popular reality TV shows.

In his article, ‘In Defense of Reality TV: Reality TV as a Documentary’, Erik Fritts makes the eager argument that reality TV is a medium of Documentary film by focusing on the theme of director’s perspective and the documentation of human events. It is clear, however, that he leans against the usage of deductive reasoning as he glues together minor similarities between reality TV and Documentaries. By the same token, he also uses the Rogerian approach as he seemingly ricochets between his argument in favor of reality TV and the common belief that the genre is “...sometimes uncouth and uncultured…”(Fritts). Albeit, his use of the Rogerian model when approaching a generally one-sided topic is very clever because it grapples for the

For close to a decade, the ethics behind the existence of reality TV have been questioned. While there are ardent viewers of reality TV, researchers and other scholars disapprove them, and claim that the world would have been in a better place. Reality TV shows, especially in America, are extremely profitable to media owners, and this has increased their popularity in the recent years. The main target audience for these shows are teenagers and women, who spend a lot of time discussing about them, even hours after the shows. Most of the reality shows in America and other parts of the world have common ideas. The most fundamental aspect of most reality TV shows is that they display people who go through embarrassing, painful and humiliating ordeals. This is what the reality shows expect their audiences to be entertained, and presumably laugh at the situations the people go through. For this reason and many more, it has been found that they are more detrimental than entertaining to the society, and therefore, the world would be in a better place without them (Pozner 89-91).

To quote Matt Philbin, managing editor of the MRC Culture & Media Institute, “the problem with much of reality TV is that it isn’t about real people or reality at all. These are highly scripted, performed shows, ‘written’ like a piece of fiction and as such they need the classic conflict-driven characters and soap opera melodrama.”

1. Most girls will do whatever it takes to be skinny and look like the stars that weigh 100 pounds "...the media influence on the cultural phenomenon of dieting and the perfect body. “Commercials and reality TV shows make you feel bad about yourself so you buy into the fad," Cohn said. The diet industry earns $50 billion each year on diet pills, and $8.4 billion is spent every year on cosmetic surgery. Women -- and men, Cohn stressed -- want to be thin, because large men and women are ridiculed" (Demmel). Eating disorders continues to be problem among young girls because of their role models. Girls on reality TV shows have that 'perfect' body and girls what to be everything like them.

There has been a huge increase in “reality” based television over the last few years. From Survivor to Big Brother it seems that we are constantly being bombarded with a new type of reality television program. But why do people watch these shows? What makes these shows so interesting? One theory brought up in an article in Psychology Today by Steven Reiss Ph.D. and James Wiltz, a Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State University, is that, “reality television allows Americans to fantasize about gaining status through automatic fame” (Reiss and Wiltz, 2001). This is the American dream, acquiring fame with little to no work at all. And what better way to do it than on television?