Reality Television

I find myself unmoved by all the fuss about the “death” of the Malcolm Pointon in Paul Watson’s documentary on Alzheimer’s. OK, probably we should all wait till we have seen the programme (Malcolm and Barbara: love’s farewell) before pontificating. But according to the reports, the programme ends with Malcolm closing his eyes and slipping away. The message is pretty clear: he dies. It is only prurience on the part of the viewer to want to know whether we’ve just watched him falling into a coma or really dying.

I should add that I have never imagined that television phone-in competitions were anything other than “fixed”, at some level. And I’ve always known that premium rate phone numbers were making money for someone who was not me. So I am fairly unmoved by that scandal too. I  suppose I was bit taken aback that it went as far as Blue Peter – though, since the revelation that they had done a surreptitious dog-swap in the early 1960s so as not to have to confess to the viewers that “Petra” had actually died, it has been fairly clear that the usual standards apply to them as well.

What I find more surprising is that so many people seem to imagine that television can serve up unmediated “reality”.

As any Media Studies A level student would know (and there’s a good argument here for having more of that much-maligned subject not less) television and radio do not serve up unmediated “reality”. It’s not that they don’t deliver truth, but it’s not – and cant be – the truth of the “real” world.

This is brought home to you pretty strongly if you’ve ever been one of those talking heads on a television documentary. It’s not that you didn’t actually say the things that you are broadcast saying (they are not that clever with the CGI yet) – but you probably didn’t say it in quite that order, or in quite that context.

It often goes a bit like this. You say:  “Of course, ancient sexuality was in all kinds of ways more free and laid back than our own, but what you really have to remember is that it was also governed by rules that we don’t have – so that on balance I’d say that the Romans were actually more ‘repressed’ than we are”

What is broadcast?  “Of course, ancient sexuality was in all kinds of ways more free and laid back than our own.”

I’m not complaining particularly. After all, most of us go into this with our eyes open – and anyway we should probably learn to speak in snappier sound-bites, so that the key second half of our complicated sentences cant just be cut out.

But no more are you getting the literal truth of what Mary Beard said, than you are getting the actual moment of the death of Malcolm Pointon. The question is whether it’s “truthful” in the representational sense of the word?

My gut feeling is that the Pointon film passes that test. That the Queen being shown apparently stomping out, when she was in fact stomping in, doesn’t.

Comments

[Mary]

Anthony... much less 'conventional' than we like to imagine. In fact there is something very disconcerting about the way scholars happily generalize about sexual practice in antiquity (when they know that they could never be so certain about the age in which they themselves live! )

[anthony alcock]

Mary:
on the subject of Roman sexuality, I wonder how "conventional" people's practices were. Even people like artists. You probably know the story in Macrobius (Saturnalia) about the painter who, when asked why his paintings were so beautiful but his children so ugly, replied: "in tenebris enim fingo; luce pingo".

[anthony alcock]

When I used to be a librarian in an Oxford college a while back, a young woman, sent by one of the teaching staff there, came in to get a copy of the Lays of Ancient Rome. She was extremely disappointed to find that it consisted of nothing but the most unutterably turgid poetry.

[dr venables preller]

Hi Mary,

You make the interesting point that the media editing process is becomingly increasingly creative. But probably no more so than the paper based equivalent in selecting and presenting historic evidence to support a thesis.

Although even so-called reality TV is also edited and selectively devised, the interesting aspect of this art form is in its potential for mass group therapy and learning.

The idea of allowing ordinary people and those with a provenance to interact with encouragement to provocative behaviour provides a fine tableau of normally suppressed ideas for wider discussion and criticism.

I wonder how long it will be before party political thoughts start to be inserted in these circuses, along with the glimpses of proprietary food products consumed in a manner reminiscent of the simian snacking observable in zoos. Watchers of this stuff can see for themselves how over eating can be a habit that goes with not having anything productive to occupy the mind or reach the state of flow.

[helen]

Hi Mary,

It seems to me that sometimes when people look at sexual rules or lack of them, problems of 'projection' and 'reflection' arise. To give an example, an aggressive circumstance can make us project a position in response, rather than staying neutral and causing no offence. So, to say "I think he thinks I am fruity.", what does that mean "odd", "nuts", "treated differently", not one of what -certainly stared at as unusual. Is this sexual? Is it straight? Is it abusive? And, to what extent does one actually need to express a opinion on children, for example? And who does? Is it necessary - when and for what? (some thoughts).

[stomping]

Agreed. And the Queen's stomping in and out could be a very able stomp, like an aristocrat stomp, or an aristocratically rooted stomp (or romp) that creates some of the finest musicians which we all enjoy! LoL and say "Hello!" to the Queen when you next see her, Mary, and especially when her finest councellors are telling her not to go hunting and to do some work! Poor old Fergus, I never thought I'd cite him. Dear, dear, dear. We are OLD.

[Max]

They are pretty much that clever with the CGI yet; there'd be some legal problems with faking you though.

[Mary]

Well general gullibility in the public is not that surprising when considered next to the innate human tendency of believing what it wishes to believe, all of this being unconsciously done of course(Gilbert´s Stumbling on Happiness is a good book on that), fact which all television producers, radio people and especially journalists use to their evident benefit.

The fact of laid back rules in classic society is irrevelant to them in all aspects except in their search for validating the overall obsesion with sexual social rules. When in reality, as you rightly pointed out, the degree of sexual freedom or lack of depends on many different culturally based realities.