How much of reality TV is real?

How much of reality TV is real?

When we had our class discussion about reality TV, my group (The Amazing race) group had lots of ideas on it. There was one point that I particularly liked but it was not discussed in class. – how much of reality is real? How much of reality TV is set within certain boundaries?

The reason that these shows are called “reality TV” is because they are suppose to portray the most basic, most unaltered side of the show. However, in many reality tv shows (especially ones directed to female audience, like America’s Next Top Model) , these shows like to enlarge the drama to make the show more interesting, when infact the drama actually involved might just be 1/10 of what actually goes on within the set. Reality TV is greatly manipulated to suit consumer’s taste and sponsor’s preferences and present it in the way that it will attract more viewers. Reality TV is not real, nor is it reality. The reason why the fighting and arguing are always enlarged is because we as viewers enjoy mocking their stupidity, we mock the naïve-ness of the participant. – can this be related as Schadenfreude ? The drive of consumption restricts us in another way of being “the real”, not being real or fake, but being “real”. I think that reality TV and consumption demands restricts the notion of people imaging beyond the reality with TV shows as they like give you what you (consumers) like and produce it to feed it exactly the same taste as you favor. So really… reality TV is all fake, its just another “make believe reality”, it’s just another form of TV shows that has different boundaries.