Jade Goody and Unreal "Reality"

The highly imaginative season of 100 Ideas continues at the South Bank in London.

Tonight was a panel debate entitled: Reality TV – The New Reality?

Interesting panel, although incredibly biased in favour of reality television: George Galloway and Jade Goody,  Tim Hincks from Endamol the production company behind Big Brother and Layla Smith from ITV’s “alternative programming.”

This was one of the problems – what the evening really needed were some forceful characters arguing strongly against reality TV, what you had instead was the very nice but slightly ineffectual Rev Richard Moy, though flanked as he was in between Jade and George maybe it’s not surprising that he was the quiet one. He did make a good point though when someone pointed out that he was the only one not in favour of the Big Brother type of Reality TV, he simply answered that he was the only one not to have personally made money out of reality television.

Fair enough.

There were some good discussions up-front: The question of agreeing the definition of reality TV, if it is content that is unscripted, “characters in search of a story”, then does that includes real life documentaries, and actually should we say that reality TV started in the 1970s with Paul Watson’s controversial documentary of working class life, The Family?

The critical role that digital technology plays in the production of something like Big Brother was not something that I had thought about before, but it makes total sense. The way in which production teams can take 24 hours worth of cotent into an hours worth of programming literally overnight is something that 10 years ago I am not sure if it could simply have been done?

Though interesting to hear about Jade and George's experience of life post Big Brother and the fact that their experiences with ordinary people were markedly different from the way that they were portrayed in the mainstream media, it was actually not that unexpected or illuminating. It was also fairly predictable that ITV and Endamol would keep coming back to the fact that in their opinion Reality TV is the ultimate form of democratic television and anyone who thinks that Big Brother is lowest common denominator television is "under-estimating the British people." I wish Matthew Wright ,who was chairing, asked tougher more probing questions. They needed a proper chair, a Paxman type who really would have got the gory heart of the subject.

The evening became more interesting when it moved away from the panel and to the floor as tougher questions were being asked: is Big Brother simply the modern day equivalent of the Victorian freak show? (to which Jade took enormous offence); Does Big Brother normalise freaks and encourage children to believe that  orange-tanned women with enormous fake plastic tits are the route to success in life? Why is it that Tim is happy to produce and encourage people to participate in his reality shows, but he would be really upset if either of his daughters became reality TV stars? These were actually the questions that the panel could not really bring themselves to answer properly.

Of course it's all entertainment the TV guys argued but "you can't predict it,  you can only produce it" but doesn't that defeat the purpose of "reality" TV? If Big Brother is an artificial construct, filled with people specifically chosen to create the most sparks possible, then content is edited and produced by a team behind the scenes, is there actually anything "real" left?

Ben at Noisy Decent Graphics was behind the beautiful website and blog. There was so much discussion that was cut off due to timing issues that I hope that some people went to the blog to comment and continue the debate. I did.

Funny, as we left the Purcell Room a gang of 4 fat paparazzi swarmed around cameras at the ready hoping that we were famous. Happily we were of no interest to them whatsoever and we scooted back to South London to a dinner of red wine and fat burgers.

Comments

[beeker]

cool. i would love to hear about dawkins too. was it worth a post?

[A Viewer Trust me]

Hello,
I was also present maybe Jade could have been replaced by someone like Tim Gardiner, who says Big Brother has become darker from when he launched it in 2000.

Remy Blumenfeld who introduced the panel founded Brighter Pictures that makes Big Brother as part of Endemol. Remy has now set up Amaze TV (who organised the event) to make 'provocative' programmes. Matthew Wright's agent is John Noel
who also has Jade Goody on its books, as is Davina McColl, Dermot O'Leary and Russell Brand. John Noel has also signed Big Brother housemates, in recent times Pete, Nikki and Chantelle.

That combination may have had a bearing on the panel and the way thge event was conducted.

Reality shows have become product placement shows, the product being the contestant. There is an interdependence between the program makers, contestants, their agents, pr machines and the media.

To me Tim Hincks came across as a slime ball. Jeremy Paxman could have asked him 200 times why he would not like his children to be reality stars and not get an answer.

Layla Smith (ITV) came across as as more honest person. Tim's assertion that he produces game shows for entertainment seems at odds with recent events.

Being trivial like Tim, when on Countdown has a contestant fleed the country as a result of appearing on the quiz or been so traumatized they were unable to see their children and went into rehab or needed 24 hour medical supervision and attempted suicide?

Tim and others refered to having trust in the audience and that they were sophisticated. It may have interesting to know how the panel interpeted votes. For example where the sophisticated trusted audience saying Jade was a bully and acted racist when they elected to eject her rather than Shilpa?

At the time the sophisticated and trusted audience were told there was no bullying and no overt racism.

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I'm sure the audience would say they weren't controlled last night and told what to say or do but....when the lights were dimmed they went silent.

[Amelia]

A Viewer Trust Me, thank you so much for your comments. I agree with much of what you said, this moved from being a debate about the blurring and commercialization of Reality to the singing the praises of Big Brother. A missed opportunity I think.

Beeker (happy easter!), the Dawkins debate, and to be fair there was also Hitchens, Grayling, Rabbi Julia Nueburger so not just the Dawkins debate really, was interesting. It was part of a series of debates by an organization called Intelligence Squared and this was so popular that thay had to change venues.
I guess that my problem with the whole debate is that too quickly is reverts to - the magic of Renaissance art Vs the horrors inflicted on humans by other humans in the name of religion. The issue that it seemed that we ended up discussing was one of Fundamentalism rather than Religion.

Couple of questions which made me think - have women and gays ever been better off in very religious societies?

Also people talk about buddhism being an example of a religion that is not about violence but instead preaches tolerance and understanding, but actually buddhism is not a religion it is a philosophy.

Intelligence Squared do before and after votes at their debates, and although the proponents of the motion "The World Would Be Better Off Without Religions" saw the numbers voting for them decrease, they still comfortably won the debate.

I think that the proponents of the debtate were much the stronger side, but then again I went in with strong opinions which they expressed brillianty.

Francois on the other hand, went in dis-agreeing with the motion and came away with the feeling that the opponents were the stronger ones.

There is an interesting one coming up about Lord Reith and the founding of the BBC and whether the beeb is living up to its mandate.

[beeker]

thanks for this. only just found your reply. it's interesting...i'm starting to think we are all guilty of being too adversarial and insecure in making things like religion and politics into either/or debates. and then again if they are going to be like that, they're often more fun with people you know than between strangers or 'experts'.