Reality Tv Scripted or Unscripted
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Reality TV scripted or unscripted?
Is Reality TV scripted or not? That is the question asked by viewers worldwide. While Reality TV producers deny if their shows are scripted, viewers still wonder. MTVs Reality TV shows seem to be the most questionable shows such as The Real World, Laguna Beach, The Hills, and Jersey Shore. There are many other shows that raise questions on if they are actually reality or not, but those four stand out in many magazines and news articles questioning the all of the shows credibility.
Reality TV shows are suppose to be documentations on certain individuals everyday lives, that give the impression to make the viewer feel as they are a person passing by. Though these TV shows are being viewed more as just for entertainment purposes to bring in more ratings and viewers. What gives away most reality shows in the casts wording, the things they just isnt what a person in a real life situation would come up with on the spot. “The words the people say in these shows may not be scripted, but the people themselves are cast to conform to various types and meet unspoken expectations.” (Bianculli) Producers of Reality TV make the shows so they are likeable by their TV audience, and the say they are real inactments of an individuals real life.
MTVs Reality show The Real World has been around since 1992. The is based on seven young strangers who are chosen to live together, while cameras document their lives for three months. The show not only became one of the first reality shows on American television, it also broke ground by dealing with issues that had often been taboo for scripted network TV, like homosexuality, alcoholism and HIV (Eby). The shows producer continues to defend the show, denying all rumors and questions on the “realness” of the show (Eby). A lot of rumors on the Real World being real seem to have started after the shows third season. The show began as a social experiment, and portrayed real life issues. Then a couple years later what began as a social experiment changed. The faces of the cast began to change they started coming off as actor/actress wannabes (Hughes). The Real World is no longer a show in which the audience are voyeurs watching real people live real lives. “The new groups are sheltered, controlled, without books, television, radio, newspapers, or jobs. Some are college graduates, or college students, but theres little of this side of their lives depicted on the program.” (Hughes)
There were many contoversys over Laguna Beach, an MTV reality show. The show was based on a group of high school juniors and senior that lived in Laguna Beach, California. A lot of the controversy was on because how the show made highschool seem; they never focused on the students education or school it was about partys and gossip. There is so much more to high school than that. “High school is not a soap opera or made-for-TV movie designed to make money for its advertisers/sponsors. It is a delicate ecosystem in which teenagers take their first steps toward maturity and adulthood. It is a time of critical learning, along with significant physical, personal and social development. To extract the shallowest elements of this experience for commercialization is both degrading and detestable.” (Klinger) The show was always suspected of being scripted but no real facts were proven that it actually was.
Another MTV reality series was The Hills, which was a spin off of Laguna Beach. The show was based on a girl who was going out to Los Angeles, California to start a fashion career. This show would be known as one of the most questioned on it actual reality put into the show. It is obvious from the very beginning because the Lauren Conrad, the main cast member, was going out to Los Angeles to start this fashion career with very little experience in the fashion world. She landed a internship at Teen Vogue with very little to no experiece, it is obvious that the editors are interested in the publicity for their magazine and the show sees it as a plot for their new reality show. (Morrow) The biggest controversy with the show was it finale episode in July 2010. At the end of the finale, they showed two the cast mates Kristen Cavallari and Brody Jenner who were in and on and off relationship throughout the show. In the end you see them go their separate ways, both not wanting to say goodbye as Cavallari packed her bags to leave town. At the end the producers did something that was not expected to happen when the two cast mates were saying goodbye,