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Marii Rojas English 1103 Ms. Caruso October 21, 2012 Reality Television: The Lies about the Truth. Channel One: People eating roaches and drinking dirty water for a chance to win a million dollars. Channel Two: Males competing for a chance to go on a date with whom they believe is the girl of their dreams. Channel Three: A group of friends at a club in Italy, drunk out of their minds and the guys start to fight. Channel Four: eight females in a house arguing over whose turn it is to clean, who used the others hair products, and who stole the others wine. Channel Five: Four sixteen year old girls with kids complaining about their lives. This day in age, that is all there ever is on television, reality shows. Why? The most important reason for the rise of reality television is strictly financial- the shows are relatively inexpensive to produce (artzygal). The ability for producers to generate a television show that a majority of the public is interested in for a low price is the reason for the lack of diversity on television. The general public believes that reality television is a show that incorporates real life events. Ironically, a majority of the scenes and situations are not real. In every reality television show the same language, behaviors, clothing (or lack thereof) is very consistent. The language in these shows put sailors to shame; every other word in the sentence is bleeped out because all the actors do is curse. If they are not cursing, then they are making some kind of promiscuous innuendo or participating in some R-rated scene. The people
Comment [M1]: I was not able to change the channel number to the actual channel numbers, because in reality they usually all play on the same channel.

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on these shows usually cannot control their behaviors, under the influence or completely sober. It seems like in every episode of The Bad Girls Club, there is at least one girl who fails to keep her hands to herself. The clothing is always the same; the shorts females wear are excessively short, and the tops are beyond revealing. But the apple does not fall too far from the tree; the guys usually have a great taste in pants and shoes yet lack sufficient funds to wear shirts. For example, there has not been one full episode on the jersey shore where J-Wow is covering her cleavage or Mike The Situation keeps a shirt on. Going from one reality television show to another, there rarely is any diversity what-so-ever. Another thing that a majority of these reality television shows have in common is that they tend to lack the real aspect of reality. All of these situations then pose the question, how does one try to produce reality yet fall so far from actual reality? How does one take normal people and create a show that is so far from the norm? Is reality television scripted, in the sense that it tells its actors what to say? Is it severely edited, do they have amazing editors that completely change the situation? Is it staged, in the sense that producers purposely put their actors in situations in which they know the craziest things are going to happen? Is it overly exaggerated? Does Hollywood take situations and exaggerate them to make them dramatic, or is that how some people in America truly act: completely and truly irrational? Contrary to the misled popular belief, reality television shows do tend to be scripted, edited, staged, and overly exaggerated. The idea for scripts being present in a reality television show does sound completely outrageous and they actually do not exist. Producers do not tell their actors what to do or what to say; however, they are masters of manipulation. Winfred Fordham Metz explain in his article, How Reality TV Works that producers use what is called a shooting script or an outline that
Comment [M2]: New Conclusion.

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details parts of the television show. Shooting scripts are used primarily in shows like Survivor or The Real World in which they set up challenges or pair specific people and put them in a scenario in which they know drama will unfold. Not only are shooting scripts used, In extreme cases, a shooting script might include a storyboard -- a visual representation of the concept that physically illustrates what will occur in a scene (Metz 2012). Producers use these aspects to create a nonrealistic reality television show that will unfold the way they wanted. One of reality TVs strongest claims to being real is when it represents the reality of an increasingly sponsored, branded, and mediated life (Deery 2). By pairing strangers together, the producers try to inflate the idea that they had no control of the way things would develop. However, Producers strategically pick these strangers. In a personal interview, 21 year old Irene Manthi auditioned to be on The Bad Girls Club but got turned away because producers said she seemed too nice and was not what they were looking for. Ms. Manthi serves as proof that producers are indirectly scripting these so called reality television shows. While it certainly varies from show to show, consider this: All of the concepts were created by someone (usually the producer), the people who populate the show were auditioned or hired in some way, and, while the footage may be real, it is usually extremely edited (Metz 2012). Really good editors play a major role in reality television. They have the ability to take footage from one day up to a year, edit it and create a nail biting television show. For example, the first season of MTV's "The Real World" was shot over a three-month period, ostensibly 24 hours a day -- this would add up to about 2,160 hours of footage. But only 13 half-hour episodes aired (technically, each episode was 22 minutes plus commercials), or approximately six and a half hours (Metz 2012). An editor can also use frankenbiting, the ability to edit together conversations, to create completely new ones just by taking bits and pieces of completely

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different discussions. Often, frankenbiting- along with a good editor- is the reason for any crushes, fights, relationships, or even friendships without the actors knowledge of it. For example, on The Jersey Shore, a majority of the conversations that the cast has during the scenes are happening are previously recorded and shown to one another to instigate more dramatic experiences. The editors cannot take all the props when it comes to an overdramatic scene; some that credit is also given to the producers because of how they staged the show. Since producers cannot incorporate a script into reality television shows, they have to find their own ways of adding extra spice into a situation, and as a producer, you are going to do whatever it takes to get a hefty check at the end of the month. There have been different scenarios that have proven that producers instigate situations in order to add drama into their show. In his article, Metz explained that in 2001, first-season "Survivor" contestant Stacey Stillman filed a lawsuit against producer Mark Burnett and CBS, because she believed that Burnett rigged the show by talking two other contestants into voting her off the island. Stillman claims that Burnett did so because he wanted to keep 72-year-old contestant Rudy Boesch on the island to maintain an older viewing demographic. There was another staged incident including Jersey Shore television star Nicole Snooki Polizzi getting punched in the face by high school gym teacher, Brad Ferro. In season one; episode four of the Jersey Shore, the group goes to a bar which leads to Snooki being assaulted by Mr. Ferro. However, Dan Ferro, Brads father released a statement to CBS in which he said that a woman who worked for the Jersey Shore cast provoked his son into doing something very stupid. All the staging that producers do, then create the perfect overexaggerated scene that MTV needs to raise their viewer ratings.
Comment [M3]: Example of frankenbiting entered.

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Not only was the Snooki-Ferro incident staged, it was also completely over-exaggerated, as are all the other men-hitting-women scenes on the Jersey Shore. In season six; episode four, there was a scene including Jennifer J-Woww Farley and Roger Matthews in which he pushed her while they were in a bar. In the actual episode, one could see that Roger was in the middle of a bar fight when J-Woww got in his face trying to end it. He then proceeded to push her out of the way, but did not mean to harm her. J-Woww, just as any over dramatic television star would, over-exaggerated the situation when she told the other girls that Roger hit her, and failed to apologize. This then adds to the number of scenes in which an innocent female on the Jersey Shore got abused and assaulted by a drunk male. However, the exaggeration in scenes is not always in The Jersey Shore. A number of contestants on shows like "The Apprentice," "The Bachelor" and "Joe Millionaire" have claimed that their actions were taken out of context and presented in misleading ways (Metz). Producers also exaggerate when it comes to the previews for the next episode. On numerous occasions they take the dramatic part of one scene and put it on the preview to persuade the audience into believing that a different situation will unfold. Dan Ferro said it best when he said: when you get a bunch of people in a situation with alcohol and instigate, someone's going to do something stupid, and that's obviously what MTV wants (Ferro). The exaggeration, staging, editing, and scripting that the producers put into their reality television show are the appealing factors. These reality television shows are somewhat real life situations, unlike a synthetic life show that includes a plot, script, normal characters, etc. As Susan Murray explained: real life is vastly more exciting than synthetic life, and this is real-life drama with audience participation (57). The next time that you find yourself watching a reality television show against your will, consider this: as nail-biting and attention grabbing as it is, it is

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not real. While watching the show, look for the shooting script; try to figure out what is going to happen next. Identify the situations in which Hollywood turns a tap on the shoulder into a slap in the face. Do research, figure out why producers put those people in that location, and do not forget that there was at least one thousand hours of footage that was cut. Realize that reality television is actually not real at all.

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WORKS CITED. Artzygal911, Editor. Youtube. N.P, December 6, 2010. Sept 22, 2012. Deery, June. Consuming Reality: The commercialization of Factual Entertainment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Metz, Winfred. How Stuff Works. Discovery. How Reality TV Works. October 21, 2012. Manthi, Irene. Personal Interview. October 12, 2012. Murray, Susan. Ouellette, Laurie. Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2004.