For many viewers, the struggle is all too recognizable. It is a script that the modern workplace and family are founded upon battling to be first but staying popular. Contestants are not just playing with each other, but with the very nature of living in a world dominated by the emotions, language and images coined by the mass media. With it has come a new kind of celebrity. Graduates from the school of 24-hour surveillance such as Holland s Bart Spring and U.S. Survivor victor Richard Hatch, a gay corporate trainer, have soared into fame s dizzy heights Spring has even launched his own logoed clothing range.
Reality TV appears to be under viewers control even as it trumpets media power.
Any given success is overproduced like mad by imitators, says Todd Gitlin, a leading thinker on the media from New York University. All harmless, say the show s producers. No blood is spilt, and no-one ends up poorer. Yet the loops connecting television and society are difficult to untangle. I suspect that the greatest flavoring of life that comes from these shows is a kind of knowing cynicism, says Gitlin, an embrace of the idea that everything is staged, that feelings are shallow, that the difference between life and simulation is insignificant.