By Ayva Strauss
In the pilot episode of Netflix’s “The Ultimatum,” Madeline deadpans to the camera, with zero qualms, to millions of viewers: “The only thing I’m more afraid of than losing Colby… is being married to Colby.” Colby is, of course, her devoted boyfriend of two years who wanted desperately to marry her. When Madeline made her confession, the audience, or at least the one I was a part of, burst out laughing, partly at her honesty and partly at her flagrant derision of him, a trend she would hilariously continue throughout the season, until (spoiler alert) she marries Colby in the finale. Madeline’s monologues about despising, then later loving, Colby were far from the most dramatic moments of the series, which was woven together by threads of sexual tension, genuine heartbreak, and plain insanity. My friends and I often quote Madeline with one another, and more than that, I think about the series and all of its shiny production like a complex piece of art that tells an incredibly human story in a compelling way.
At first, it feels silly to consider the filming of mean-spirited comments and explosive lovers’ spats as art, but “The Ultimatum” pilot episode is just one of thousands of iconic reality TV moments that have become a part of the cultural zeitgeist (think “Make it work!” or “Kim, there are people dying.”). It seems like these shows deserve some sort of reverence; they are undeniably excellent at grabbing and keeping our attention and have become part of our collective thinking about celebrities, the world of the ultra-rich, and even the imagery of romance. Could we, or rather should we consider reality TV a form of art?
It seems like defining “art” would be the best way to start this discussion. If we have parameters for what constitutes art, then we can clearly see whether or not the documentation of Madeline and Colby’s love story meets the criteria. Adam Manuel writes in his article “Is Reality Television a Legitimate Art Form?”:“We all have our own definition of what constitutes art; therefore, the question ‘what is art’ isn’t really worth answering.” Manuel suggests that what qualifies as art is personalized, such that we only know it when we see it. So, instead of trying to wrangle it into words, I thought I would examine the question of “is reality TV art?” by examining the places where it meaningfully differs from or notably mimics work that we universally accept as art, to see if it fits the bill.
The very conception of most shows in the genre are incredibly creative works of fiction. How many times have you, in your day-to-day life, known a woman who is looking to get married and has thirty well-dressed, eligible men line up at her door and audition to be her husband over the next several months? I would also guess you have never systematically voted people out of your classes week by week until only one remains and wins a million dollar prize. At least, I should hope you would not do such a thing without the supervision of Jeff Probst.
Thus, we see that shows like “The Bachelorette” and “Survivor” are entirely fictitious, based on the imagination of some visionary executive. Many reality shows are based on absurd but nevertheless interesting, high-stake what-if questions about how people would react in specific situations. They are imagined situations meant to manufacture drama and entertainment, and that kind of vision seems to be the same thing that some fiction writers engage with. Perhaps Suzanne Collin’s what-if question (what if the United States was divided into twelve districts forced to participate in a dystopian “Hunger Games”?) strikes you as much richer than the what-if questions that reality TV asks and then answers (what if we put sixteen super attractive, sexually active young people on an island together and offered them cash not to touch one another?). But the line of thinking to create imaginary worlds where interesting interactions might happen is remarkably similar, and it is undeniably creative, which perhaps pushes it into the space of art.
A meaningful difference between these works of fiction, of course, is that Collins gets to control the people in her fictional world, while executive producers and editors must compete with the fact that their characters have minds, emotions and plot aspirations of their own. But if we consider these characters for a moment, I think we will find that the production process of reality TV contacts not just the world of fictitious world-building, but other works of art, like theater and film. Part of what makes reality shows so fun to watch is that the people on them act on urges that you, the average person, never would, and that is not a coincidence. In “Are Actors Really Real in Reality TV?: The changing face of performativity in Reality Television,” Bruce Gater and Jasmine B. McDonald write that casting for these reality shows look for people that are willing to act in a way that will create interesting conflicts. “In many cases competitors need not have explicit talents but clearly perform an identity that producers believe will play a significant role in creating an engaging narrative,” they write. Thus, in the casting process, producers do, in a way, get to select their characters, as in a fiction novel.
Furthermore, there is some suggestion that reality stars are playing a role, rather than behaving entirely as they would if the cameras were not around. Gater and McDonald quote a contestant of “Masterchef” as saying, “The role of a reality TV contestant is a complex one, combining elements of performance and genuine emotion in a contrived environment.” If reality TV stars are indeed encouraged to perform as a highly dramaticized version of themselves, then perhaps we could even draw a parallel between the homes of the “Real Housewives” and the film sets which we recognize as part of the artistic world.
If we further slice open the guts of reality TV, we find perhaps the most compelling reason to consider it a work of art—the craft happening behind editing room doors. Katherine Griffin is an Emmy-winning producer of reality TV that has worked on shows like “Project Runway,” “Bachelor in Paradise,” and “Keeping up with the Kardashians.” In an interview for an article titled “An Insider’s Guide to What Makes Good Reality TV,” she describes the editor’s job as adjacent to storytelling. “More than any other genre, it truly is editor-driven. One of the things I find so fascinating about Reality TV is that if the same roadmap and footage was given to three different editors, you really would have three very different shows,” Griffin says. She goes on to describe that on the shows she has worked on, she has been given “hundreds of hours of footage ” that have “no natural beginning, middle, or end” and asked to create comprehensible narrative arcs, to carve out plotlines that the audience can follow. Griffin sees her job as a creative craft, and I am inclined to agree with her. It takes some sort of brilliance to take hundreds of hours of footage and make a story that viewers will care about, to depict very complex people such that we understand their motivations and come to feel strongly about them, and to find plotlines that resolve themselves in satisfying ways.
Griffin also highlights that editors are the ones who add in the dramatic crescendos that punctuate tense moments and the upbeat guitar strums that tell us our favorite on-screen character has reached a triumphant moment. Viewed from behind the curtain, reality TV seems to become a living and breathing beast that has all these creative components that come together to create a story, much like a film without a script. The production process also brings us to the conclusion that reality TV is not an authorless work; it has creative minds behind it that pour over it. If we are to call it art, editors like Griffin are the artists.
In my opinion, the editing process makes reality TV seem like legitimate art because it allows us to draw parallels to theater and film production. But editing also brings to light a point where it seriously diverges from other art—its dishonesty. Reality TV, by its very nature, is pretending to be something it is not, in a way that other art does not. Suzanne Collins is not trying to convince anyone that Katniss Everdeen is real, but the Real Housewives and their editors are telling us that what we see on screen is their actual life, and this is how they normally act, which is indisputably false. Katherine Griffin describes that during the editing process, she often uses “tricks”: “Like cheating lines from an entirely different scene or using interviews to punctuate a moment.” In doing so, she is manipulating reality, which may not initially seem like a problem. Fiction writers do that on a much bigger scale, after all. The issue is that producers are taking crazy sentences out of context and then selling it to us as though that is what actually happened. Griffin suggests it is their explicit goal to make it “come together seamlessly,” so that no one can tell that the scene they are watching was falsified. This sort of disingenuity seems like it might not exist on this scale in other art we consider legitimate.
But then, the editors are only lying to their audience if we believed them to be telling a truthful story in the first place. And if we wanted that, we would watch a documentary instead. As Althea G. McGlaughlin writes in “The Psychology of Reality TV,” we do not watch reality television because we want raw, contextualized, truthful human stories. “Reality television provides viewers with an opportunity to escape the monotony of their own lives, escape the problems and burdens of their own circumstances, and offers opportunities for emotional release,” she writes. We’re looking for an opportunity to escape—to be entertained by the problems of billionaires or the interpersonal conflicts that occur when two truly off-the-wall people are forced into a trial marriage (and it helps that they are usually attractive). And isn’t that what a lot of other art aims to do, too? Certainly, one reason artists might create is to entertain, and this industry is doing just that, and doing it quite well. In addition, as McGlaughlin notes, “…it has become common knowledge that reality television is actually ‘scripted’.” Are we really being lied to if it is common knowledge that what is unfolding in front of us is not likely to be the actual form of events?
I think reality TV is art if you allow it to be. If you come home from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and then watch an episode of “The Real Housewives” and expect to feel the same profundity or see truths about human nature exposed, you might be inclined to say that reality TV does not deserve to be called art. But if you watch the same program as though it were a movie, with characters performing their given roles, and then a team crafting a storyline, adding the music, asking provocative questions in interviews, leading to teary monologues, taking sentences out of context, all with the knowledge that this was created by a team of innovative professionals—then maybe it seems a lot more like your favorite fiction book or romance film.
