IS IT REALLY REAL OR JUST REAL ENOUGH

All words have meaning. Honestly, they do, I found this weird book called a dictionary, and wow, it had all these definitions ... Who knew?

But words are not just defined by a dictionary. Words are defined by users, over time, across generations. They are changed (for example the word "gay" has many more different connotations now than in the past) and they are sometimes discarded (when was the last time you heard someone use the word "redoubtable")

The word in question today is "reality" Reality as used by TV. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are venturing into the ethical quagmire of reality TV. Be afraid be very afraid.

I have this thing about TV. My thing is, nothing is ever real, if real is spontaneous, unaffected, completely subjective to whomever is experiencing it. That's difficult to do with TV. There's this thing called a camera, and a camera op, and a sound op, and a production assistant, and a producer who's only concern is "how does this look" and "will this get us ratings" Even with the best of intentions I don't know how real people can be in that kind of environment.

Currently, on TV, you can break "reality" shows into a few different categories. First you have the contest type shows, like Survivor or Big Brother or Amazing Race

These are game shows, really, with people competing to win prizes. All game shows have been "reality" shows in that they are unscripted and unrehearsed. We know these more recent style of game shows are a tad different. I don't believe for a second that they are totally spontaneous. The producers of Survivor have admitted that certain scenes have been reinacted (like a long lens overhead shot of competitors swimming) but that these scenes had nothing to do with the outcome of the contest.
Frankly none of that really concerns me. It's a game show, it's not a documentary, I may watch the show but I don't care who wins. All game shows have always had a certain amount of artifice associated with them, I've learned to accept that. Yes, my sense of resignation is powerful, isn't it

The second category of reality TV is the "real world" concept, probably created (at least in North America) by MTV. Be they a bunch of pretty, vapid (and pretty vapid) kids like in Jersey Shore ..

.. or celebrities trying to kick start a flagging career like that of Kiss frontman Gene Simmons ..
.. the actually "reality" in these shows is, at best, specious. The problem is this: From pretty much the beginning of TV, producers have always believed that conflict is what drives entertainment. Certainly true in fictional shows but it's always held true for reality. We all know that what gets a TV news produder's knickers wet is a good war, a great hurricane, or (let's be honest here) a missing child. It's conflict. Then you have these real world shows where, quite frankly, be it celeb or amateur most of the people just aren't that interesting.
On your real world shows like Jersey Show or .. strangely enough ... The Real World or the various Real Housewives, conflicts comes from stocking the show with a bunch of rude, stupid, vapid, shallow people who are willing to do anything to be on TV. And hopefully that "anything" will include getting drunk, showing some skin and verbally attacking each other in the most vile of all possible ways.

On the low rent celeb shows, ramping up the conflict may involve creating situations that the stars can react to. Gene Simmon's show is basically a sitcom. There are many obvious set ups, involving what are clearly actors, that put Gene is a zany situation where hilarity can ensue. Yup, Gene Simmons has become the Lucy of his generation.

The third category of reality shows are what we can term "occupational" shows, that chronicle the lives of people united by some common industry. The grand daddy of these is probably Deadliest Catch, produced by Thom Beers

Beers is certainly the godfather of this category. He has produced not only Deadliest Catch but Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men, Monster House and many others. These particular shows really are documentaries. Yes, they of course fall prey to the subjectivity of the lens but one feels that amount of scripting and "set ups" are held to a minimum. Take Deadliest Catch for example; the point of this show is to profile the men who fish for Alaskan crab, presented as the deadliest of all jobs. The show follows the same group of fishermen who have, essentially, become the cast. Over the years, ships have gone down, men have died, but never those of the cast. Until this past year.

This year Captain Phil, one of the regular cast members died. But he did not die at sea or go down with the ship and let's be honest, like TV news, that would have been a sure ratings getter. So this is close to reality. Sometimes nothing happens Sometimes terrible things happen, but no one seems to be in control of it

From the high of Thom Beers "occupational" reality we go to the low, like L.A. Ink which documents the tattoo shop of Kat Von D
Here is a perfect example of TV needing to create conflict. This show, a spin off of Miami Ink, started off as a chronicle of the shop and featuring the stories behind its customers and the tattoos that they bought. Apparantly not enough conflict. The focus began to shift from the customers to the shop itself, to Kat and her staff. A couple of "new employees" came in and instantly clashed, creating conflict. Turns out that at least one of these employees has a history of being on "reality TV" shows so it really does make me wonder how they ended up working in this tattoo shop

I also call into question the editing on this show. There are many, many scenes, where we have dialogue between two characters so you have the standard cutting back and forth between close ups. What bothers me is that the audio does not follow the video. In other words, as Kat is speaking we are on a close up of shop manager Aubrey. When Aubrey responds we are on a close up of Kat's face or an extreme close up of her hands or something. This makes my Spidey sense tingle. Yes, it is standard practise to overlap audio and video exhanges; as Kat talks you will see a shot of Aubrey's eyes as a reaction ... but not in every single scene or during every single exchange. The whole thing looks very heavily edited to me, I begin to wonder where these cutaway shots have come from, a few times the lighting of one shot doesn't match up with that of another ... as if that cutaway comes from an entirely different scene altogether. I wonder why. What is being left out, or what is being added.

Um, did I ever mention I edit videos for a living?

Now we get to the point of this post .. yes, there is a point. I guess I slept well last night. Anyway ...

There is a new show running on History Channel and it sort of falls into the occupational mode yet it strays from that and the perspective is definitely skewed and it may be deliberate and it may be a bit of pirandello or it may be something entirely different ...

Chasing Mummies is a show that follows the exploits of Dr Zahi Hawass, maybe the most famous archaeologist of our time and head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. This guy is real. And powerful. And real powerful. If you've watched any shows on mummies on the History Channel over the last several years, you've seen this guy

Now, a History Channel show on this guy is nothing new, you can tell fairly quickly that although he is certainly the read deal, Dr Hawass doesn't mind the camera. He seems to love it. But he is more than just an archaeologist, he is the spokesman for the antiquities of his nation and therefore, being on camera is part of his job.

But Chasting Mummies is giving us something different. It's not the typical documentary or occupational TV series where cameras and crew are largely hidden. Here, the producer and his crew are front and center. The show is as much about making the show as it is about Hawass. This has a lot to do with our hero's temperment; he is a tyrant, with temper to match. He is constantly at loggerheads with the film crew, treating them like worrisome gnats chewing away on ancient Egyptian muslin.

Oooh can we fell the conflict building?

Well apparantly, a man for whom we are supposed to have respect berating and insulting people hired to help promote him is not conflict enough. The show also unleashes Hawass on a group of archaeological fellows from universities in North America

What I find interesting about this, is that there was an open casting call for students who wanted to fill these roles. Yes, I call them roles. It isn't Hawass selecting these students to learn from him, it was the producers of the TV show. Hold on, I feel reality bending just a little bit.

Then we have the show itself. It has been edited and packaged as combination action series/real world reality show. Each episode starts in media res, which means putting you in the middle of the action, like a camera man lost in a pyramid at night, then using flashbacks to reveal how he got there

What's that Lassie? There's a cameraman stuck in the pyramid? Well, let's call Dr Hawass!

Yes folks, let's watch Dr Hawass rescue a poor female student from the pyramid, guide a group on foot through the dessert after their vehicles break down, admonish and berate a young woman because she peed inside of pyramid .. This last one is not a metaphor. In one of the episodes, one of the female students wets herself deep inside a pyramid. Of course, Dr Hawass totally humiliates and berates her and the camera lingers on her face to capture her shame and in one incredible tabloid-like moment, we actually see a close up of the girl's soiled crotch ...

Yeh, this is archaeology and science at its finest.

So let's say, for sake of argument, that the "cast" is genuine and all the "situations" are unscripted and spontaneous. There is still the added element of the involvement of the production crew and they are very involved, the producer becomes one of the principle characters in the story.

Is this pirandello? To wit: We know this is TV, we know that TV "real" may not be reality, so why not acknowledge that bring us all in on the joke while at the same time documenting what is real ..

Or is it all one big ruse. Does it matter? Well History Channel is not normally known for this kind of reality show. Dr Hawass has been on the channel many times and although it is difficult to ignore his abrasive personality, here it is front and center. Hell's Kitchen is a contest-style reality series that is more about Chef Gordon Ramsey abusing the contestants than about the contest itself

I've already seen that Dr Hawass may be an older, gender altered Laura Croft, rescuing his charges from certain doom .. and perhaps in the morning he will whip them all up a nice eggs benedict.