I am fascinated by reality tv as a genre and its immense popularity growth in the last 10 years. Reality TV used to be seen as a ‘guilty pleasure’ for people, something that they concealed. Today, people openly tweet and make Tik Toks about Love Island or Selling Sunset and it has arguably become a key element of 2010s popular culture
I have previously researched the Docusoap genre using Ritzer’s (2004) theory of McDonaldization, arguing that American-produced docusoaps are an example of the rationalisation of TV and of culture, as they evidence the four pillars of McDonaldization: efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control and promote American neo-liberalism through this (Evans, 2021). However, I didn’t develop the latter part enough, and so in this blog post, I want to develop it further with Adorno and Horkheimer’s theory on the culture industry (2007).
Image: Promotion Picture of Selling Sunset from Netflix
Enlightenment as Mass Deception
Adorno and Horkheimer’s theory (2016) argues that the culture industry is like any other industry, in that it is a capitalist mode of production, meaning the bourgeois class has a monopoly over the culture industry, and over culture. Additionally, “under monopoly all mass culture is identical” (Adorno and Horkheimer 2016, p.80) as the capitalist mode of production favours efficiency and productivity over quality and originality, and so culture becomes standardised to become a mass culture which then becomes popular culture. Due to its efficiency in producing huge quantities, the products are easily consumed by the masses to escape from working life and hardships under an oppressive economic system.
The ‘norm’
As a result, ‘normative standards’ are created as mass culture doesn’t allow for alternatives. A lack of alternatives then results in the masses believing in that only reality, and the authors claim this is thus a way to alienate the masses, which then makes it easier to manipulate them even outside of the cultural realm via mass culture, or 'popular culture'. That sole 'reality' established by the dominant class is what Gramsci coined as ‘cultural hegemony’ (1971).
Image: Promotion Picture of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills from Bravo.
Reality TV
I have already argued that reality tv, namely the Docusoap genre, has undergone McDonaldization (Evans, 2021). I want to explore the implications of this standardisation. The genre’s rationality means that it can be produced in large quantities for less money and is thus favoured by those who own the means of production and seek profit. This has then created a normative standard of TV, which is following the lives of wealthy individuals and often their workplace via docusoaps. Although there are alternative TV genres, and even alternative subgenres under the Reality TV umbrella, those still adopt those same normative standards e.g., rags-to-riches storylines (Redden 2018), attractive and confrontational women flaunting their wealth (Lee and Moscowitz 2013), and competition between contestants. These normative standards and lack of alternatives mean that the viewership believes in those tropes as the only reality. This has more complex implications within this genre, as its name is ‘reality tv’, creating its own discourse on what is real and what we as viewers should aspire to, fitting that idea of cultural hegemony (Gramsci, 1971).
Reality TV as Neoliberal Mouthpiece
I would argue that reality tv is a way of projecting neoliberalism as the only reality, the only option, as an economic system, with the repetition of rags-to-riches storylines and its subject matters centred around financial success and competition (see Selling Sunset or competition reality shows). This is thus a way to manipulate the masses into believing the dominant ideology of the bourgeois class, through TV, achieving cultural hegemony. Not only does it manipulate the viewership, but its content of wealthy, thin and attractive people (but mainly women) creates unattainable beauty standards that cannot be attained without wealth – without owning the means of production. The viewership is alienated from the ‘reality’ presented to them. Then, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, this makes it easier for them to be manipulated. It is far more subtle as it is done through cultural means and not through direct political action. This is further evidenced by the fact that, as I said at the beginning, reality TV has become a staple of 21st-century popular culture.
Bibliography
Adorno, T.W. and Horkheimer, M. 2007. The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception. Stardom and celebrity: A reader (1944), pp. 34–43. doi: 10.4135/9781446269534.n4.
Adorno, T.W. and Horkheimer, M. 2016. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verso. London and New York: Verso.
Evans, C. 2021. ‘Through the lens of McDonaldization choose an example to explain how the American produced docusoap contributes to selling American neoliberalism through its production and its content of hyper-consumption and individualism.’ MLT833: Theorizing Global Cultures. Cardiff University. Unpublished essay.
Gramsci, A. 1971. Prison Notebooks. Hoare, Q. and Smith, G. eds. New York: International Publishers.
Lee, M.J. and Moscowitz, L. 2013. The rich bitch: Class and gender on the Real Housewives of New York City. Feminist Media Studies 13(1), pp. 64–82. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2011.647971.
Redden, G. 2018. Is Reality TV Neoliberal? Television and New Media 19(5), pp. 399–414. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1527476417728377.
Ritzer, G. 2004. The McDonaldization of society. Rev. new c. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Pine Forge Press.
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