User:Niek Hilkmann/Reading, Writing & Research Methodologies 2012/2013/Synopsis - Oulette & Hay - Better living through reality TV

Oulette & Hay - Better living through reality TV
Chapter 2: TV Constitutions of citizenship This chapter considers reality TV as a resource for constituting households, neighbourhoods and other spheres of everyday government. The term ‘constitution’ is used to refer to television’s role in enacting and shaping spaces and populations. The text focuses on programs that stress the multiplicity and diversity of private constitutions through which governance is made rational and administered. Oulette & Hay describe several models, strategies and constitutions of group government. The chapter considers how “technologies of the self” or “self-constitution” are about the rules and techniques for becoming a good member of a group.

The two basic elements that make up Reality TV concerning these matters are social/behavioural experiments and the trial of particular subjects. In programs with and “experimental” basis the concept of group governance is reinvented and the ingredients of good, active and effective citizenship are reformulated. This can happen for instance, through the interaction between various populations, “value-subcultures” and lifestyle-clusters. When the program is “trial”-orientated, the subject of the show is exposed to “a rite of passage” in which he or she is forced to reconsider and exercise abilities and responsibilities in relation to rules, so as to become a good citizen. Personally constituted rules by “domestic managers” are being reconsidered.

When a competing element is added to the show self-reliant citizenship (meaning the most self-actualizing subject) is often rewarded. This brings about a paradox of self-interest in relation to team playing. The “winner” needs to be a leader rather than a dependent onlooker, though clearly, the game’s objective is also to underscore that only one player can be selected to lead the other “citizens”. In that way freedom is reinstituted as the “natural condition” of man at the cost of participating socially in a group.