CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland
Pop-Intimacy Sessions
Organisers: Baris Kilicbay and Mutlu Binark
Pop-Intimacy: Reality-Tv and the Construction of Televisual Identities
Godzic, Wieslaw (The School of Social Psychology, Poland) BIG BROTHER: OUR
ETHNIC PAL
The aim of the paper is to present and discuss a concept of national
identity in a specific socio-technological environment, namely first reality
show in Polish television. East-European societies after the breakthrough of the
1989 experienced very dramatic and dynamic shift to the post-modern stage,
defined by American and West European style of life. The questions raise: how do
this situation challenge Polish society? What did people, journalists and
scholars think about the new television genre and communication method? How do
they perceive the impact of that particular TV program on the social and
religious values? How reality show changes the perception of public and private
sphere within newborn consumer society? I will concentrate on impact of first
run of Big Brother in Poland in 2001. The method of the presentation will base
on qualitative research, although I will deliver a lot of quantitative data.
Kilicbay, Baris and Binark, Mutlu (Gazi University, Turkey) "MEDIA
MONKEYS": REALITY SOAP AND INTERTEXTUALITY IN TURKEY
A new TV form called
Biri Bizi Gozetliyor ("Someone is Watching Us") has appeared in Turkey
since Spring 2001. A version of Taxi Orange, this new TV form has been a
tremendous success among the Turkish audience, combining several different
techniques, genres and narratives including the game show, soap opera and candid
camera. The popularity of the show is maintained by keeping the participants
highly visible not only in Biri Bizi Gozetliyor itself, but also in numerous
other television texts, such as news programs, talk shows, entertainment shows,
television dramas and even other reality soaps promoting voyeurism, such as
Orada Neler Oluyor ("What's Going On Over There?"), an extension of
Biri Bizi Gozetliyor. This "intertextuality", as we call it, is
accompanied by a number of Internet fan groups that integrate the show into the
premises of the broader culture including gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality,
religion and other issues concerning the founding ideology of the nation-state.
In this paper, we will show how the identities ("televisual
identities", as we call them) of the participants are constructed and
reproduced through this intertextuality, how the fan groups interpret these
televisual identities and how they relocate this mediated reality within their
own everyday lives. The term "media monkey" is first used in a talk
show in Turkey while describing the participants of various entertainment shows
who are said to "sell their privacy in return for fame". Participants
of reality soaps who provide the audience with daily amusement and become
objects of controversy among the fan groups are similarly referred to as
"media monkeys". Finally in this paper we will discuss the
construction of "media monkey-ness" in conjunction with the recent
emergence of neo-liberal values in Turkish society.
Wood, Dennis (Edith Cowan University, Australia) (RE)-IMAGIN(EER)ING
COMMUNITY: REALITY TV AND AUSTRALIAN 'BIG BROTHER'
In 2001 the 'Big Brother'
phenomena arrived on Australian shores. As with a number of other countries
where it has been shown it became virtually an over-night success drawing large
audiences every night of the week with an even larger viewer population for the
late night 'adult' episodes and the series finale. It thus became a near
permanent resident in the top ten rated shows with many of the installments
being placed at number one. Many critics put the success of the show down to the
obvious 'titillating' voyeuristic aspects (although there was very little by way
of sexual (mis)behaviour by the 'cast'). Other critics suggested that its appeal
lay in the audiences thirst for backstabbing and bitchiness primed by a
staple diet of soap operas. Still others pointed to the popularity of the game
show genre in Australia and that this was just another, albeit different take on
the genre. However, as the program developed it seemed to me that something
unusual was happening. The program, I suggest, can be read as a document about
Australian community. It seemed, in fact, to be re-imagining or, to borrow a
phrase from Walt Disney, to be re-imagineering the community in the audiences
preferred image. Whilst the program obviously addressed notions of inclusion and
exclusion (with some notable surprises on the way) the imagineering of the
community essentially drew upon and displayed certain longstanding myths and
traditions pertaining to Australian community and even Australian-ness. That
these myths and traditions were witnessed within such a show and that the
audience was the one who was obviously drawing upon these notions to pick the
winner said something about Australian concepts of community. The audience,
initially predominantly women between the ages of 15 and 30, were
re-imagineering an idea of community which was built upon notions of (male)
mateship, the larrikin, the 'battler' and simple ordinariness. It was
interesting that these tropes could still have an obvious resonance in the
contemporary Australian multicultural society. This paper, therefore, traces the
re-imagineering events witnessed in the Australian Big Brother programs and
reveals, with examples from the show, the myths and traditions that this
re-imagineering process remotivates.
Pop-Intimacy: Mapping Different Forms of Reality-Tv
Mikos, Lothar (Academy of Film and TV
"Konrad Wolf", Germany) BIG BROTHER AS TELEVISION TEXT: FRAMES OF
INTERPRETATION
The fascinating character of the reality show Big Brother attracting the
television audience is the result its specific structure as a television text.
Big Brother can be described as a hybrid television format that borrowed many
elements from other TV genres like game shows, soap operas, docu soaps, talk
shows, and TV tabloids, and also from other media like the webcams of the
internet. Therefore Big Brother can be defined as a behavioural and personality
oriented game show that is screened according to the narrative devices and
dramaturgical structures of soap operas, based within the real-time stage of the
Big Brother game. Part of this game are other games like the daily or weakly
exercises. The game is focussed on the performance of the contestants. The paper
deals with the frames of interpretation set up by this complex televison format.
Wiemker, Markus (Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany) "WAS
NOTHING REAL?": AN INVESTIGATION OF THE FUTURE OF REALITY TV EXEMPLIFIED BY
THE FILM THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998) FROM PETER WEIR
The currently fashionable
television genres "Reality TV" and "Soap Opera" both
dissolve the boundaries between reality and simulation, and the public and
private spheres. Films such as The Truman Show deal with this mixing up and
therewith critically show the contradictions of (post)modern society in regard
to all-enlosing media productions. Here, privacy gets replaced by public
presentation of individuality and it seems that only the leading actor of a
"Reality Soap", like Truman Burbank who is observed day-and-night, has
the possibility to become a "true" man. The film thus raises the
question, similar to the theories of Jean Baudrillard, whether we ever possess
the possibility of checking mass media mediated reality for its validity in
certain situations; is the result not an ever increasing pressure to blindly
trust media or is it already impossible to distinguish reality from mediated
reality?
Biressi, Anita (University of Surrey, United Kingdom) and Nunn, Heather
(Middlesex University, United Kingdom) VIDEO JUSTICE: TESTAMENT AND SPECTACLE IN
REALITY TELEVISION
All I could think about was my little girls and they would
grow up without a father. They ask me everyday, "Daddy why do you have all
those booboos [bullet scars] on your stomach?" And I tell them that's what
the bad man did to me. And they say, "Daddy, why are your crying?" And
I tell 'em that's what the bad man did to me. Store owner talking on Video
Justice. This paper is part of a broader project on recent reality television,
realism and the production of knowledges about the social world. In reality TV
the differently weighted alliances between TV, CCTV and private film footage
produce new configurations of media space which demand that we rethink not only
the economy of the gaze, but also our broader understanding of the relationship
between the public and private spheres. This paper concentrates on the US
programme Video Justice: Crime Caught on Camera (US 1997 Fox Productions) as an
example of programming that raises a number of important questions about media
spectacle, media technologies and media ethics. This controversial true crime
programme chronicles a range of crimes including store robberies, shootings and
street beatings. Its voiceover begins with the statement: "There's a war
going on in America between citizens and criminals, between the violent and the
vulnerable." It was produced through editing together mainly CCTV and
security footage and individuals' recordings, together with film from law
enforcement sources. Here scenes of violence and aggression are anchored by a
voice over and spliced with interviews with witnesses, experts and the surviving
participants. We argue that the appeal of the programme operates on several
levels and in contradictory ways. Viewers are confronted with scenarios of
sudden and unprovoked violence that seemingly confirm public anxiety and fear of
crime. They are also arguably offered a 'safe' and even pleasurable subject
position from which to witness these events. However, the spectacle of crime is
punctured by moments of intimate personal revelation when the victim relates the
trauma of violent experiences. This paper explores that ways in which these
narratives of personal trauma and crisis fracture and undermine the coherence of
the programme as 'entertainment' and consequently reveal a more complex and
ambiguous relationship between audience and text.
Hajimichael, Mike (Intercollege, Cyprus) UNEARTHING NAPA- EXPLORING THE
IMPACT OF REALITY TV SHOW TECHNIQUES ON AYIA NAPA
Over the last 3 years various
British TV companies have created programs relating to the Cyprus tourist
resort, Ayia Napa. While the overall effort has been to illustrate a very 'happy
go lucky' 'fun' kind of clubbing resort (often compared to Ibiza as the 'new
dance Mecca of Europe) what has occurred is a dialogic exchange between text and
audiences. The reality TV show element of these kinds of shows, through 'fly on
the wall' and docu/drama production techniques has had an impact on the way
people understand, interpret and consume the resort. These processes do not
simply make members of the viewing audience into passive consumers nor do they
simply represent TV forms of cultural imperialism. What has emerged is a series
of interpretations which vary from forms of resistance and negociation to
acceptance and consensus.
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