The Reality Television Format: How to "Make It Work"

           During the last two decades, reality television has become a popular television genre. Competition is often an important element in reality television shows such as Survivor, American Idol, and Project Runway. [1] We will focus on Project Runway because fashion designers compete with each other on the show in order to win the resources necessary to jumpstart their careers. A contestant is usually eliminated in each episode if the judges feel like he or she did not live up to that week's challenge. Contestants are especially eager to make it to the final three as they will then get the opportunity to show a collection during New York Fashion Week. What started out end of 2004 as an American show for a relatively niche audience has gone on to win a Peabody Award for "using the 'television reality contest' genre to engage, inform, enlighten and entertain."[2] The show has inspired the spin-offs Project Runway: All Stars, Under the Gunn, Project Runway: Junior; and the short-lived Project Accessory and Project Runway: Threads. In addition, Project Runway can be considered a worldwide success as 24 countries all over the world have created their own versions of the show that in essence are the same.

           Jean K. Chalaby writes that a format can be defined as "a show that can generate a distinctive narrative and is licensed outside its country of origin in order to be adapted to local audiences."[3] In addition, the popular format of the skill competition is "a set of rules built around a premise [...] that is then produced locally,"[4] which is less expensive than creating an entirely new show[5] and this is what has happened with Project Runway. This blog post will analyze which elements have made Project Runway a successful television format.

           In order to create a "distinctive narrative dimension" a format has to have an "engine" in order to "create dramatic arcs and produce storylines" and in the case of talent shows, such as Project Runway, "the narrative arc is based on the journey of the contestant."[6] The engine is by some defined as "essentially the rules [of the show]"[7] but this may be a bit too simple. In reality television, the producers and editors of the show are very influential in how the narrative progresses, or at least appears to progress for the viewer.[8] One episode of Project Runway generally has two full days of taping edited down to about an hour long so there are choices being made in what the viewer gets to see. Even though the contestants' mentor Tim Gunn has said that the show wants to portray everyone in the best light possible,[9] this might be hard to believe. This fits with the idea that nowadays "talent shows are reality-skewed" as they "place more emphasis on emotions and the contestants' journeys."[10] Project Runway combines two types of journeys, namely that of self-discovery and their journey into professional fashion design.[11] The designers competing on the show are encouraged to find and develop their personal design aesthetic, which is self-discovery, and in addition, the show gives them the opportunity to start a new career as not all contestants, such as Kelly from the deli from season 14,[12] are already working as designers and have a regular job to pay the bills.

           Of course, the influence of producers and editors does not mean that the show's rules are not instrumental in creating a distinctive narrative dimension. The fact that at the end of each episode a contestant is eliminated by the judges alone is enough to create drama as it can be considered a "trigger moment"[13] and even the episode's climax.[14] This progresses the narrative as the audience - as well as the contestants themselves - gets a new perspective on the competition and is one step closer in finding out who wins the show. In addition to this, the show's rules, such as time constraints also create stress and discomfort that influence the narrative.[15]   

 Each episode is structured in the same manner, with the
aforementioned trigger moment near the end. At the start, the designers get to hear their challenge, they get 30 minutes to sketch, they go somewhere to acquire the necessary materials, and back in the work room they have until 11pm and on set times their mentor comes in for feedback and the models come in for a fitting. The following day they can finish up, send the models to hair and makeup, and then it is time to get judged. Furthermore, the mentor and judges of the show have some standard sayings that they repeat often and have even become memes such as Tim Gunn's "make it work" and Heidi Klum's "one day you're in, the next day you're out" and "auf wiedersehen" to the eliminated contestant. The structure of the show provides the skeleton of the show that cannot be touched by international adaptations[16] and each version actually "performs the same set of action-events in tight, regulated recurrence." [17] However, there is room for local elements as the weekly challenges can be adapted to fit the national culture, such as designing an updated typically British raincoat in the British version and having the designers take inspiration from their own cultures as in this episode of the Vietnamese version where the contestants visited a traditional Vietnamese performance after which they had to design a new look.

           Project Runway has become a successful television format because it has a very clear structure that makes it easy - as well as relatively inexpensive- to adapt the show to international audiences while still leaving room to incorporate elements of the local culture. In addition to this, the show's rules create enough drama and narrative to keep the viewer interested. Tweet: Reality television shows, even when they are about skills and talents, are mainly watched because people enjoy the drama and fights.

KH, EH, LD, DL, NS

[1] Jean K. Chalaby (2011), ‘The making of an entertainment revolution: How the TV format trade became a global industry’, in: European Journal of Communication 26 (4), 2011, p. 299.

[2] http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/project-runway

[3] Chalaby, p. 295

[4] Tasha Oren (2013), 'On the Line: Format, Cooking and Competition as Television Values’, in: Critical Studies in Television 8 (2), p. 27.

[5] Chalaby, p. 295

[6] Chalaby, p. 295

[7] Chalaby, p. 294

[8] Leigh H. Edwards (2013), ‘The Triumph of Reality TV: The Revolution in American Television,’ p. 30.

[9] http://www.mylifetime.com/shows/project-runway/video/season-14/episode-15/season-14-reunion-special

[10 Chalaby, p. 301

[11] Chalaby, p. 294

[12] http://www.buzzfeed.com/caseyrackham/kelly-from-the-deli

[13] Chalaby, p.295

[14] Oren, p.30

[15] Oren, p.30

[16] Chalaby, p.295

[17] Oren, p.28

Orphan Black's Clone Club: Redefining the Audience

The Canadian show Orphan Black is stuck somewhere between a cult-show and a global hit. Though it is widely watched in North-America and recently became available on Netflix in the Netherlands, it’s a show that will get you a lot of “I don’t know it, what is it about?” However, trying to explain the show is not so easily done, as the plot is complicated and dense. It is a little bit of sci-fi, mixed with feminism, sexuality, societal pressure and biology. But giving away too much of the plot will ruin the surprise. Orphan Black is a show that you need to watch in order to understand it. And it may be exactly that mystery, which leads Orphan Black into the cult corner. Only if you have seen it, you understand it. Almost like an elite.

An elite that outs itself through a fiercely devoted (online) movement, titled Clone Club. And now we’ll ruin it for you, but in order to understand this essay you need to know: the main characters, all girls, are clones. This blog will look at how Orphan Black challenges traditional audience-text relations in which the  audience as a receiver is the end-point of a message. It will examine how Orphan Black is defined through its fan community and how this community confirms the thesis that cultural scholar Jack Z. Bratich poses in an article called From Audiences to Media Subjectivities: Mutants in the Interregnum, namely that relations between consumers and producers of media texts are being challenged, and thus currently in limbo. Or as Bratich calls it, the interregnum.  

#savedelphine: Audiences as Producers & Gatekeepers

To say passive audiences do no longer exist might be too forward, but as Shayla Thiel-Stern argues in her essay Exploring New Media Audiences and the Limits of Cultural Production, audiences are no longer just audiences.[1] The interactive nature of new media has paved the way for audience interaction, causing them to turn into producers and gatekeepers (deciding what the public sees) next to being consumers.[2] The Orphan Black community provides an excellent example.  

It's crazy, there's such a movement of fans online. They have a community and find a voice to express themselves. I don't think we'd have a show or a second season if not for the fans. They force their parents to watch it; force their friends to watch it. There's fan art on Tumblr. I keep up with it — it's amazing.[3]

Here, Orphan Black’s leading lady Tatiana Maslany points out the role of audiences both as active producers of fan art, but also as gatekeepers for the show. An example of this is that at the end of season two it becomes clear that the show is introducing male clones, something that stirred online uprising from the community who had built their fandom around the face of Tatiana Maslany (who plays all the clones) and were afraid that the introduction of male clones would mean a decline in Maslany-clones. Currently the show is in production for its fourth season, but creators Graeme Manson and John Fawcett ended season three with a huge cliffhanger, which triggered the popular hashtag movement #savedelphine. The character of Delphine is a definite fan-favorite. One of the reasons for this is her key role in the subjects the show is acclaimed for: sexuality and feminism. She is a female scientist who’s supposedly straight but falls for a girl, realizing sexuality may be fluid. The show’s large and loyal (LGBT) following obviously feel that the show’s narrative will change for the worst if she were to be killed off. Even though they have no idea about the overarching narrative the writers are aiming for.

Fanart & Clonecast: The Audience has an Audience

Orphan Black’s online community shows a very interesting dynamic of what Thiel-Stern described as the audience having an audience, and being aware of that audience.[4] The Clone Club is very active on Tumblr, posting anything from fan-videos, stories, artworks, or they blog about theories and discuss possible outcomes. As Thiel-Stern said, in their production the Clone Clubbers are aware of their audience (fellow Clone Clubbers) and they will conform to their online identity as being part of the Clone Club. Bratich defined fans as being motivated through minor rewards such as social status and recognition,[5] but the motivation of Clone Club goes beyond the awareness and recognition of their peers. They know that those that are responsible for the show are potentially watching them. As Maslany said about fan art “I keep up with it – it’s amazing.” Orphan Black has its own podcast called Clonecast. Clonecast not only recaps and discusses the narrative of the show, but regularly features the show’s actors and producers and always has a segment that is focused on fan art. Next to that, actors and creatives on the show regularly show their awareness and involvement with the fan community by talking about the fan contributions, or engaging with fans on social media. The appreciation by those that create Orphan Black not only adds an extra dimension to the audience being aware of their own audience, but also makes the creators into an audience, because they are viewing fanart and following what is going on within the fandom. It forms an interesting dynamic to think about the fact that the audience of Orphan Black consciously produces content in the realm of the fandom and that this fandom is viewed by the creators of the show, who then are aware of the fandom when producing the show. This forms a vicious circle, in which audiences are inspired by other audiences.

This is an interesting phenomenon when looking at the idea of audiences becoming producers and gatekeepers. In a way, as Tatiana Maslany describes in the video, she becomes a producer by taking ideas and drawing inspiration from the fanart, but she’s also a gatekeeper by continuing to play these characters to which audiences react by producing fan-texts.

The #savedelphine Problematic

As mentioned before, the cliffhanger of season three triggered an online movement against the death of a major character. A website was launched, a petition was started (and got almost 2,500 supporters), and #savedelphine still gets daily mentions on social network platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. It is here that the audience can be reviewed as “an object of concern, […] a ‘problem’ or threat, […] a source of anxiety.”[7] Because the power/knowledge relations have shifted due to online presence and the engagement of the show’s producers with the audience, the audience feels as if they have agency. In other words, the fans feel as if they have a say in the continuation of the show’s narrative, simply because of their (albeit significant) role in the online community. It is almost as if fans feel like they know what is best for the show because they are so passionate about it. And this feeling is fueled by the show’s creatives constantly reaffirming the importance of the Clone Club. We can link this phenomenon back to Bratich’s argument of the interregnum. In his description of fans, Bratich said that, “the ambivalence of fans as media subjects involves the tension between resistance and conformity,”[8] and that there are several types of possible antagonisms between the fan and the creators of the show. He argues that, because fans are depended upon the show’s existence to produce their content, creators keep the agency. But the voice of Clone Club after the season-finale of Orphan Black proves an important point Bratich tries to makes, namely that we are currently in an in-between, or interregnum, in which the relations between producer and the “people formerly known as the audience,”[9] are uncertain and in need of redefinition. And, just like all those waiting for season four of Orphan Black, we’ll just have to see where it goes.

Tweet: Go wild and speculate. Based on Orphan Black's Clone Club, what exactly is the role of the 'audience'? 

EH, DL, NS, LD, KH 

---

[1] Shayla Thiel-Stern, “Beyond the Active Audience: Exploring New Media Audiences and the Limits of Cultural Production,” The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies Volume 6 (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2013), 2.

[2] Shayla Thiel-Stern, “Beyond the Active Audience: Exploring New Media Audiences and the Limits of Cultural Production,” 2.

[3] David Marchese, “Tatiana Maslany Talks Prepping for Orphan Black Season 2,” Rolling Stone, April 15, 2014, accessed November 14, 2015,  http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/tatiana-maslany-talks-prepping-for-orphan-black-season-two-20140415#ixzz3rP1y2Lna

[4] Shayla Thiel-Stern, “Beyond the Active Audience: Exploring New Media Audiences and the Limits of Cultural Production,” 2.

[5] Jack Z. Bratich, “From Audiences to Media Subjectivities: Mutants in the Interregnum,” The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies Volume 6 (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2013), 19.

[6] Ibid, 15

[7] Jack Z. Bratich, “From Audiences to Media Subjectivities: Mutants in the Interregnum,”2.

[8] Ibid, 19.

[9] Ibid, 2.

The Movie Nightcrawler: A Matter of Live Television and Death

!! Disclaimer: This Post hyperlinks to some graphic images, do not click on these links if you wish to not see these graphic images. The blogpost itself will not display graphic content. !!

Over the decades, ever since the growing popularity of the computer, or more specifically the implementation of Internet, the media landscape has undergone massive changes. One of the most important developments in relationship with regards to media content and the internet is the increasing role of the consumer. As Folker Hanusch puts it in his article Representing Death in the Online Age: "The average person with an Internet connection can now be a journalist."^[1] It is no longer merely the media that monopolizes the content. Today consumers largely dictate what is shown and what gets traction. Next to that consumers produce a large amount of the content. In disastrous or crisis situations, citizen journalism (so the production of content by citizens) has become an important player in the media coverage during or after these situations.^[2] Hunusch’s article focuses on the way death is present in the public sphere and how the role of the Internet has affected the way it is represented. This blogpost will use Nightcrawler to analyze the media’s fascination with violence and death. Also, we will focus on real-life examples of the representation of death in the media nowadays.

A recent example on the depiction of death in the media can be found with the shooting of two journalists in Virginia, on August 26, 2015.^[3] The shooter filmed his act of violence and posted it to his Facebook page before killing himself. While most mainstream media outlets didn’t publish the entire video, many of them showed screenshots and mentioned it,^[4] which made their audience aware of its existence. Those who were curious could actively search for the video online, while the media outlets could leave the responsibility letting people see such violent footage to the audience.^[5] We can see here that, even though the media tries to control the degree of violence that is shown publicly, the Internet cannot be controlled and can thus show a larger degree of violence to a bigger audience, as the Internet is a global phenomenon.^[6]

           
The display of graphic images online has little to no boundaries, as long as the consumer seeks hard enough. While established media websites may still censor graphic content, other digital platforms often show the uncensored images. What is the reason for this? Do people want the opportunity to witness such an event themselves? Or is watching executions or other violent deaths just another form of thrill seeking by the online audiences, causing it to have a large viewership? Probably a little bit of everything. As put in the movie Nightcrawler: "If it bleeds, it leads."

The narrative of Nightcrawler is based on the real-life story of the Raishbrook brothers. They are ‘stringers’. A stringer is someone who listens to police reports and goes to violent scenes in order to record them, mostly for local news broadcasts. Nightcrawler follows a stringer named  Louis Bloom, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Louis becomes a stringer after witnessing an accident on a highway, and meeting a stringer who records the event. Here he is told: "If it bleeds, it leads," or: the more violent a scene the more people want to watch it. Because people want to watch these violent images, they become commodities.^[7] Nightcrawler thus works on two levels. On the one hand it gives audiences the violence they are seemingly craving,^[8] while at the same time giving insight into why news media provide their audience with images of violence, and how that process works.

Raishbrook Brothers

It is interesting to note that the more violent or shocking a scene is, the more Bloom gets paid for them. The movie follows Bloom as "he blurs the line between observer and participant to become the star of his own story."^[9] He is also risking his own life while chasing news reports. In an interview with ABC News’ Nightline about the movie, Jake Gyllenhaal interestingly describes his character as follows: "He’s part of a generation of people looking for jobs in a world where jobs are redefining themselves."^[10] Even though his character takes on the job out of pure necessity, he eventually becomes extremely good at it and is not afraid to even break the law to obtain the best footage possible. Nowadays, stringers have even more competition to cope with, since almost everybody has a mobile phone with camera and the possibility to spread the images they film on the internet. Even though the quality of those images is less professional than those of professional stringers, "the Internet is challenging the mainstream media’s control over images, because many news organizations use the work of citizens as journalists as well."^[11] These images are often offered to media platforms for free, which gives the professionals competition that may be deemed unfair. Some news outlets actively ask citizens to send them anything that they deem newsworthy.^[12]

What is it that attracts people to look at this kind of footage? David Trend gives several examples in his article ‘But We Can Understand It: Beyond Polemics in the Media Violence debate’. Even though he mainly focuses on publishing and video games, there are several similarities with the viewing of violent scenes on television and Internet as well. One of them is the fact that "as with online pornography, the internet allows people to view hate materials in the privacy of their homes."^[13]

Do we really like to see other humans in immense pain or agony? Not necessarily, because we "take pleasure in media violence because it is no longer real," and media is presented in such an aesthetic way that it may even become something beautiful.^[14] The two examples that were given above show that there is only a thin line between what is real and what is not real anymore. It is very difficult for the established media, or governments, to have control over all the graphic images of death that are widely spread on the Internet. They function less as intermediaries, which shows that ‘Internet has eliminated distance in the reporting of news of death.^[15] What Nightcrawler shows us, that, in order for news platforms to stay relative, they need to engage in showing graphic content to a certain extent, even if the content is still censored. If they would refrain from showing this kind of footage, they are often easily classified as offering incomplete coverage, which hurts their credibility. Consumers of news can then decide for themselves if they want to see the uncensored version online. Of course this opens up a different, complicated discussion on whether or not established media should censor the truthfulness that these graphic uncensored images show.

Regardless, consumers of graphic images easily forget they are looking at images of other human beings. It’s easy to distantiate ourselves from an image, which is an interesting dynamic, since the Internet brings us closer to the violence, but at the same time removes us from it since we no longer easily shocked. It is only when a crisis hits close to home we realize the awfulness of graphic depictions of disaster. It is thus so very important that we do not lose the thing that differentiates us from the technologies that enable these graphic stories, namely human compassion. We must remember this in our craving of violence.

Should established media inform their audience about the existence of explicit material of an event, or neglect that information altogether?

Works Cited

Hanusch, Folkert. “Representing Death in the Online Age.” In Representing Death in the News: Journalism, Media and    Mortality. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Trend, David. “But We Can Understand It: Beyond Polemics in the Media Violence Debate.” In The Myth of Media  Violence: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.

Lewis, Paul. “ Virginia TV journalists shot dead on air in attack staged by former colleague.” The Guardian. August 26,   2015. Accessed November 5, 2015,  http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/virginia-gunman-kills-                       reporter-cameraman.

Wheatstone, Richard. “Virginia Shooter films himself gunning down TV reporter - then posts horrific footage on Facebook.” The Mirror. August 27, 2015. Accessed November 5, 2015, http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/virginia-shooter-films-himself-gunning-6325156.

“Nightcrawler.” Imbd.com. 2014, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2872718/.

Pitts, Bryon. “How a Coyote and Real-Life News Stringer Helped Jake Gyllenhaal Prepare for‘Nightcrawler’ Role." Abcnews.com. October 27, 2010. Accessed November 5, 2015, http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/coyote-real-life-news-stringer-helped-jake-gyllenhaal/story?id=26487325.

Saikat Basu. “Top 7 News Outlets that Accept Your Newsworthy Pictures and Videos.” makeuseof.com. March 17, 2014. Accessed November 15, 2015, http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-7-tv-news-outlets-accept-newsworthy-pictures-videos/.

---

^[1] Folker Hanusch, “Representing Death in the Online Age,” in Representing Death in the News: Journalism, Media and Mortality (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 147.

^[2] Ibid, 148.

^[3] Paul Lewis, “ Virginia TV journalists shot dead on air in attack staged by former colleague,” The Guardian, August 26, 2015, accessed November 5, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/26/virginia-gunman-kills-reporter-cameraman.

^[4] Richard Wheatstone, “Virginia Shooter films himself gunning down TV reporter - then posts horrific footage on Facebook,” The Mirror, August 27, 2015, accessed November 5, 2015, http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/virginia-shooter-films-himself-gunning-6325156.

^[5] Folker Hanusch, “Representing Death in the Online Age,” 149.

^[6] Ibid.

^[7] Folker Hanusch, “Representing Death in the Online Age,” 118.                                                        

^[8] David Trend, “But We Can Understand It: Beyond Polemics in the Media Violence Debate,” in The Myth of Media Violence: A Critical Introduction. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 117.

^[9]  “Nightcrawler,” imbd.com, 2014, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2872718/.

^[10] Bryon Pitts, “How a Coyote and Real-Life News Stringer Helped Jake Gyllenhaal Prepare for ‘Nightcrawler’ Role,” abcnews.com, October 27, 2010, accessed November 5, 2015, http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/coyote-real-life-news-stringer-helped-jake-gyllenhaal/story?id=26487325.

^[11] Folker Hanusch, “Representing Death in the Online Age,”  152.

^[12] Saikat Basu, “Top 7 News Outlets that Accept Your Newsworthy Pictures and Videos,” makeuseof.com, March 17, 2014, accessed November 15, 2015, http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-7-tv-news-outlets-accept-newsworthy-pictures-videos/.

^[13] David Trend, “But We Can Understand It: Beyond Polemics in the Media Violence Debate,” 116.

^[14]  Ibid, 117.

^[15] Folker Hanusch, “Representing Death in the Online Age,” 149.