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.