Reality TV: Documentary's Bastard Child



Thanks to reality TV Kim Kardashian may have to embrace a life of solitude

Way back when I was in Art school I took every film course that was available... ironically the semester after I graduated NSCAD opened their film school... but that’s another story.

One of the courses I took was on Documentary Film Studies, and a hot topic of discussion at the time was whether or not Reality TV could be considered documentary? Yes, it was obviously the bastard child of documentary film, stealing every documentary technique known – but was it itself documentary?

My prof thought not, and was quite against the thought that it be mistaken for any kind of record of an event because there were too many control factors at play and they were perhaps entirely staged, serving no real social purpose. I on the other hand, having recently fallen in love with the first season of Big Brother (yes, this was some time ago folks) was on the other side of the pole and out to prove reality TV’s validity as a record of the decline in the morality of human kind... at least in North America. Yes elements of reality TV may be contrived, or in the case of Gene Simmon’s Family Jewels entirely staged, but there was still an amount of “reality”there, and perhaps these shows serve as a better record of events then say our history books at school. We all know that history is written by the winner and what we read is just one side’s point of view.

I brought up the fact that documentary films themselves are constructed in such a way as to form a storyline fitting the director’s motive, with leading questions and editing that would take things away from their original context to suit that of the story teller. So what then was so different about reality TV?

We went back and forth, and I’m not sure she ever did see my point, but now, 10 years later with shows like Jersey Shore and the various housewives series, I think my point is all the more valid; our culture’s decline in morals and our acceptance of bad behaviour is now caught on film for the rest of the world and all our descendents going forward to watch and judge. So, as manipulated as reality TV is, is it not a record of an event of a very sad time in our history as a race of materialistic and vain beings?

Speaking of materialistic and vain beings, I myself avoid many of the reality shows out there now (and yes, a great deal of them have become purely entertainment and have very little documentary value), but one show I can’t help but watch is Keeping up with the Kardashians. Yes, it’s true; I too have been taken in by the glitz and glam of this self made modern royal family. To me every episode is a lesson in the value of marketing and the powers of social networking. Yes, I sat through Kim’s 4 hour fairy tale wedding, and yes I placed my bets then and there that her matrimony would be short lived. When you spend each and every day in the spotlight with a camera recording every vapid comment you make I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind would agree to become your rock and source of undying love... unless they have ulterior motives?

Thanks to the bastard child of documentary Kim’s life is now on film forever, for all to judge and criticize and perhaps for some to emulate? We may not like it folks, but these shows serve as a page from our modern history, these people are “real” and like it or not, these are their lives, playing out over and over again in reruns. These shows may happen to be just a small slice of what is going on in the world today, but they are the ones with the bucks and they are getting their word out. These shows glorify consumption and behaving poorly; sadly this is the face America is showing the world, now on record for all time.