TELEVISION REALITIES

INTRODUCTION

Realism defines as the aim for representations to reproduce reality faithfully, and the ways this is done.

One meaning focuses on what is represented: the actual scenes, places and people are represented rather than imagined or fictional ones.

Also, referring to television’s representation of recognizable and often contemporary experience, such as in the representation of characters in whom the audience can believe or apparently likely chains of events.

The meaning of realism relies on the familiarity of the forms and conventions, the codes that represent a reality.

There are 3 central questions on the issue of representation.

The questions stems from an initial assumption that TV has connections with the real world of culture and society in which it exists.

In TV Studies, television is approached as something that is actively made by someone, using particular textual forms to communicate some meaning and not others.

Meanings that are not simply delivered to the audience but that are appropriate and used by them in complex ways.

Factual Television

Non-fiction programme fit into the category of ‘factual’ television.

Category includes programmes which feature non-actors on screen:

1. Documentary2. Drama-documentary (docudrama)3. Docusoap4. Reality TV

Programmes such as these aim to represent reality, to dramatise events which occurred in the past, or denote real people in the continuing serial.

E.g: documentary 102 Minutes that Changed America, in which sequences shot on Sept 11, 2001 were assembled to document the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

Amateur footage captured a moment when pedestrians in Times Square in NY stood watching live pictures of one of the Twin Tower burning.

Conveys immediacy of a real event and the responses of those who were in Manhattan on that day.

Many programmes that appear to be factual cross into the territory of fictional entertainemnt because they are based in situations designed for TV.

E.g: Big Brother, a ‘reality TV’ programme where members of the public are chosen to appear, in a house specifically built for the programme and are aware that they are being recorded 24 hours a day.

E.g: The Biggest Loser America (or Asia), Survivor

Some programmes aim to reconstruct events which are actually happened, such as the crimes reconstructed in Crimewatch in UK.

Using actors performing scripted dialogue and action to do this.

Real events in TV programmes become performances, some performances are designed to be equivalent to real events.

TV realism is a flexible category; the spectrum news footage which claims to document events occurring independently of the fact they are being recorded.

Drama entertainment programmes which claim to be realistic but are constructed for TV.

TV realism is a matter of both of content and of the conventions or codes which structure the representation seen on the screen .

TV has a ‘language of realism’ which programme-makers and audience share.

TV audience are invited to experience the lives of others through mediation of TV documentary forms, so that TV realism carries an assumption of social responsibility

It aims both to mirror society to itself and to show the diversity that exists within a society which is assumed to have an overall unity

TV realism constructs a sense of an organic and unified culture, partly by exhibiting the complexity and diversity of culture

Also, consists of a negotiation between ideas of unity and difference, familiar and unfamiliar, and thus performs an ideological role in shaping the norms of society.

REALISM & TV TECHNOLOGIES

TV programmes are coded as transcription of the real world, but they are assembled from the different discourses of image and sound that are available in TV.

TV realism is reinforced by the combination of sound and image, each providing references to and ‘evidence’ of smooth unity of the TV text as a transcription of reality.

This is the separation between the objects or people which are recorded and the recording itself.

TV uses technologies of recording images that seem to transcribe realities ‘objectively’ or in semiotic terminology ‘denotatively’, therefore TV images acquire the status of evidence.

They are representations of realities rather than realities themselves, TV representation are ideological: they encode social points of view that condense, displace or forget social relationship.

TV images are ‘copies’ of reality not in a sense that they are fake, but they are the result of a mechanical process and circulate remotely from the physical body of their producer.

The interpretation of TV images is not controlled by these contexts and social relationship. 3 of the effects of this are:

1. TV images seem to float free of the frameworks which determine them

2. TV images circulate in culture as commodities3. TV images are separated from the people, places and

events which were recorded.

NEWS & LIVENESS

One of the uses of photography has been for military surveillance.

Modern uses of satellite surveillance and computer enhancement of images continue this aim to provide a superior and powerful vision of space and detail beyond the capacity of the human eye.

the broadcasting of such images is controlled by military institutions by allowing or withholding access to the action

Also by exercising powers to censor information or by encouraging TV crews to self-censor the images they acquire.

War and conflict are the occasions when TV’s power to show reality is most evident, but also when it is most subject to attempts to control it.

TV audience have become increasingly accustomed to seeing TV images of events almost at the same time as they occur.

The excitement of live TV derives not only from the sense of participation and presence at an event which live broadcasting provides but also from the assumption that what we can see and hear in live broadcasting is unmediated, uncontaminated and accurate.

Live events are those that are assumed to have a universal importance for society

E.g: National remembrance ceremony for MH17 in 2014 and Sultan Johor’s coronation on 23 March 2015

Live TV gives the audience access to an ‘other’ space and also to an alternative time: the viewer’s present and the present experience of others in a distant place are equivalent but different.

The caption ‘live’ is significant in itself, for it means ‘alive’, connoting that a living reality of other people is being shown and is open to the audience’s involvement.

DOCUMENTARY MODE

Factual programmes denote society, inform and educate the audience both about aspects of life with which they are familiar, and aspects signified as unfamiliar.

Factual programmes make the ‘other’ into familiar, and make the familiar seem ‘other’ by denoting it in unfamiliar ways.

John Corner (2006), draws attention to what he calls an ‘economy of intensity’ in documentary:

The regularity of such material is often a key requirement and it may vary in its nature from scenes of violence through angry interaction and verbal abuse to scenes of celebration and joy (e.g, the moment of arrival of good news; the reunion). It may close down entirely around personal testimony, the intensity of a ‘speech event’, perhaps a personal revelation or other form of disclosure or difficult recollection.

These kinds of moments in documentaries are dramatic.

According to Corner, this mixes together two things of the word drama; 1) something that is sensational or surprising, 2) something that is scripted by the programme-maker.

Surprising or intense moments can be introduced in documentary by the use of surveillance footage that shows something shocking happening.

To produce the impression of realism in TV docu, several very unnatural procedures have to be carried out.

The documentary subject almost always be aware that he/she is being recorded, witnessed or even pursued by the camera operator (often also by sound recordist).

When the footage has been gathered, the documentary-maker will edit the footage together in order to produce a narrative.

There is a tension between producing a documentary that is representative and ‘accurate’ and providing the audience with a programne that conforms to the conventions of an argument or storytelling.

The assumption of accuracy that always accompanies the documentary mode brings with it the danger or claims of misrepresentation.

To attract TV audience and guide their understanding, story has always been important to documentary.

According to Corner (2006), it can be created in a range of ways. Re-enactment can show the unfolding of events that occurred in reality in the past and were not observed by the camera.

A voice-over commentary can describe, explain or make an argument that has a sequence and a story-like flow.

The inclusion of supporting narration, testimony or expert commentary provides an impression of reality in TV documentary.

These devices make links with other factual genre, where: The authority of a narrator coherence and continuity Testimony of members of the public supports the authenticity

of the programme Expert commentary provides backing for the assertions and

arguments of the programme-maker or the figures appearing the programme

These can be found in sports programmes, science and nature programmes and current affairs.

Some documentary conventions connote unmediated reality – hand-held camera, ‘natural’ rather than expressive lighting and imperfect sound.

While other conventions connote drama, argument and interpretation such as voice-over, narrative structure and contrastive editing.