I confess to being a big consumer of reality TV. I also admit that I have sometimes invested myself in it in such a way that I have come to experience emotions worthy of a clinical case or to express unhappy opinions about participants. My laziness alone kept me from expressing my moods on social networks.
Hana Kimura was a Japanese wrestler. She also took part in the reality show Terrace House, in 2020, which I considered for a time as the apotheosis of the genre. Hana Kimura committed suicide while on the show. The Japanese authorities blamed her sad fate on the hateful comments she received online, after the broadcast of a particularly strong episode.
This means that, had it not been for my indolence, I could have been one of those who vilified Hana in front of their screen, then on social networks and, finally, on her social networks.
I could have killed her.
I came to the conclusion that Terrace House and I had a fallacious relationship; that there was, so to speak, a sort of misunderstanding between us, and that it arose with me from a problem of fictionalization. I was not the only one responsible. The technical or stylistic procedures used by the program (and, as such, most reality shows of the same genre, called “community life”: OD, Big Brother, etc.) had encouraged me to change my reading of the product it offers, to the point of making me take an inadequate posture in front of it. […]
What was she? Come to think of it, far from finding in this program a “fascinating tool for sociological study”, I have to admit that I rather found there the pleasures of the romantic soap opera, or, more appropriately as far as I am concerned, the pleasures of its most successful contemporary incarnation, the K-drama. To be brief, I had unconsciously come to confuse my two entertainments and treat reality TV like South Korean melodrama.
If I tasted before Terrace House pleasures similar to those granted to me by K-drama, to the point of fueling my confusion, it is, as I said, that this type of reality TV uses its codes extensively. Among others:
1. A spread over time allowing the development of a wide range of characters, as well as the insertion of floating moments, useless to the story, but suitable to create the attachment of the audience (Terrace House lasts one year; a Korean series spans many cinematic episodes).
2. A cut to the fictional invoice, betraying the setting up of a narration. Well-placed flashbacks come to provide us with information until then deliberately omitted by the production; close-ups of candidates’ faces orient our perception of the action, etc. […]
3. A variety of tones mixed in one episode, going from tragic to salacious, to comical, etc.
4. An almost systematic use of the love triangle (in reality TV, when there is none, we try to create it through activities or impromptu pairings).
5. Recourse to cliffhanger, often followed by the cut “in the next episode…”.
6. The plating of actantial schemes worthy of Greimas, aided by a judicious casting, on the participants: protagonists / antagonists with matching quests (promoting the cause of, finding love…), adjuvants / opponents; various triggers, etc. Or, if we focus on the more precise actantial cells of the K-drama: the clown on duty, the villain redeemed, the traitor, the bitch, rejection with unsuspected capacities, etc. These “roles” can be triturated by the production, over the broadcast, according to the feedback from the viewers.
No wonder, therefore, that I could have misunderstood the nature of the product offered. The participants had become for me characters of melodrama, whom I could adore or despise at leisure. I was doing my catharsis on their backs, my emotions towards them being trapped between those I felt for the protagonist of My Mister or the heiress of Crash Landing on You. […]
Recognizing the source of my confusion allowed me to come back to this simple fact: reality TV is a hybrid creature. Despite all the fictionalizing scrubs used by it, its participants are not locked into the fictional framework thus encouraged. They exist. If I can comment on their actions on the internet […], they can become aware of my statements and be directly reached. This theater does not have a fourth wall.
In short, my posture veiled the real character of reality TV, to keep only the “K-dramatic” aspect. Everything was allowed to me. How many of those who had abused Hana, like me, deluded themselves with a soap opera, misled by deceptive procedures that invalidated, behind the character, the very real tears and the irreducibly human anxieties of a young woman wishing to be accepted by her comrades (universal desire if there is one)?
The Ancient Greeks promoted fiction as a tool for catharsis. […] In front of the beings of flesh thatDouble occupation costume soon on my screen, I’ll try to limit my outbursts – never to get them out of my living room. To rediscover, so to speak, a little of this ancient discretion of the viewer.
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