Grierson referred to the documentary as a text that has ‘documentary value’(Grierson, 1926). Using this definition as a starting point, discuss whether ‘reality’ TV should be classified as a documentary.
“We take television for granted in the same way as we take everyday life for granted.” (Silverstone, 2000) Reality television, being a mix of the two, is often an over-looked and disrespected television genre, as it can seem worthless and therefore worthy of the term ‘trash TV’. However it appears that reality television has started to take over our screens and is pushing other, more reputable genres out of the schedule. John Grierson is said to be the man who first coined the phrase ‘documentary’ and therefore documentarians often look back to his quotes and theories to be used as the bible for accepting or rejecting television shows into the genre.

Grierson used the quote when he was evaluating Robert Flaherty’s film Moana. Flaherty, producer of Nanook of the North, used actors to portray the characters in the documentary rather than the people themselves, which conflicted with Grierson’s principles, arguing that using the real person in their original environment, “thus taken from the raw” are far better than a fictional alternative. However vague Grierson’s quote may seem, it is clear what he intended by it. The word ‘documentary’ comes from the Latin root ‘docere’, meaning to teach or instruct, however the more modern relation is to ‘document’, which is a factual record of information or instruction. Grierson’s quote simply says that if a programme contains the characteristics and the aims of a documentary then it should be classed as a documentary. The problem with this quote however is that in the 21st Century, technology and therefore creativity has improved significantly and so documentarians are making programmes in completely new ways to before, not only because of the improvements in equipment but also the fact that competition has also therefore risen, so they need to be able to stand out from the rest. These lines between genres has consequently become more and more blurred and it is subsequently made harder to pin-point the genre of some television shows. Documentary as with all other genres “escapes any tight generic specification”, and “what we understand by ‘documentary’ is always dependent on the broader context of the kinds of audiovisual documentation currently in circulation.“ (Corner 2002: p.125) Nevertheless, the majority of documentaries are factually based and aspire to educate the audience about a certain topic that is often talking about political, ethical or social issues. It will usually also aim to ask and answer questions throughout the show and is often a stand-alone piece, or at least has no episodic ‘carry-on’ factor.

Reality television has become extremely popular over the past 10 years with the arrival of large budget talent contests, competition shows as well as the more recent structured reality shows. It may appear bland and basic, but it seems the content that the public like to watch the most involves ‘ordinary’ people. The fact that the audience can relate to them is a clear reason to why this may be; together with the attraction of how simple becoming a celebrity can be with just 15 minutes of fame. Regardless of the context, reality shows always show real people in a real environment and thrives off their different reactions to being put into specific situations. Therefore due to the factuality of it, it is easy to find examples of where the genre fits into that of a documentary. However the genre is incredibly broad, where “at one end of the continuum” between fact and fiction “are informative based programmes such as Animal Hospital, and at the other end are documentary gameshows such as Survivor”; (Hill, p.50) so it is therefore very likely that ‘reality’ will merge with other genres in some way.

Annette Hill describes in her book ‘Reality TV’ how reality television can be split into a number of sub-genres including “infotainment, docusoap, lifestyle, and reality gameshow” (Hill: p.39) with constantly more being added such as the recently popular ‘Structured Reality’ shows. Docusoaps are programmes, which contain a “combination of observational documentary, and character-driven drama” (Hill: p.27). An example of this would be Airline, which follows the daily tasks of certain members of staff who work at Easyjet airline. Through the series we begin to get to know the different characters in the show. The storylines of docusoaps often continue week by week, usually with an episodic roundup at the start of each episode, and a flash-forward to the next episode as a way to entice viewers back week by week. This format is very rarely used in documentaries due to there never being recurring themes or characters. This sounds similar to the more recent ‘structured reality’ programmes but the fact that we are also accompanied with a voice over narration, a characteristic fitting with the observational documentary style, sets it aside. Bill Nichols explains how the observational documentary “affords the viewer the opportunity to look in on and over-hear something of the lived experience of others” (Nichols, 1991: 42), this can certainly be said of the majority of Reality TV shows whether the camera is following the life of the emergency services in Traffic Cops or members of the public in Big Brother. It seems a “primal pleasure” (Baudrillard, 1986) to have this ability to peer into the lives of others whether this is simply sat ‘people watching’ on the train or tuning into daily updates on social networking websites. So the success of reality television is clearly due to encouraging us to continue this guilty pleasure by openly providing us with the content. ‘Docusoaps’ are the main example of how blurred the barrier is between documentary and reality, with large aspects of observational documentary mixed with the reality qualities in the involvement of regular characters, and for this reason it would be difficult to define Airline solely as a documentary.

The ‘infotainment’ sector includes the original style of reality shows that follow the role of the emergency services seen in programmes such as Crimewatch and Traffic Cops. Traffic Cops takes an observational style by following the emergency services in their day-to-day work. John Corner described reality television as having a number of phases, the first where “popular factual television was ‘reality television’, with a focus on the work of police and emergency services” (Corner, 2000: p.687) With Crimewatch being an exception, infotainment shows are predominantly based on location whether that is inside of a police vehicle or in the station, with some sort of Voice-Over narration explaining what is going on in the scene. From time-to-time there are also on-location interviews with the victims or the officers on the scene, which break the observational aspect of the program, and now turns it into a live conversation. Both Crimewatch and Traffic Cops use ‘floating head’ interviews, usually with victims of crime, which take place off-location in a set up environment. These interviews are very similar to what you may see in a documentary such as the BBC’s 7/7: One Day in London which contains testimonials of people who were affected by the London Terrorist attack on July 7th 2005. Together with this, Crimewatch includes reconstruction elements, a technique that you would often see used in historic documentaries, if there is not sufficient actuality footage. Crimewatch uses reconstructions to animate the crimes that they are focusing on for that episode, in a hope it will help to solve the crimes. For this reason Crimewatch has become a public service programme, by also broadcasting its Crimewatch Update follow up, after the BBC News, which informs viewers of any results from the earlier programme. Infotainment has a very clear link to the characteristics of the documentary genre, giving factual information about real people in their real environment, and making the viewer seem as though they are there through the observational documentary style.

The reason why shows like Crimewatch have this reality classification is due to their use of a live studio presenter as well as the audience’s instant access to the programme’s content across various forms of media. The show invites viewers to phone in or visit the website to find out more information about the crimes and to give across any knowledge they have that may help with the investigation. There are “hundreds of reality TV websites devoted to keeping viewers informed about a range of reality programmes” (Hill, 2005: p.5) across all of the sub-genres, especially with talent and game shows which thrive off their presence on social networking sites and advertisement in the press. This live aspect would not be available in documentary, as they are always pre-recorded, so should this mean that reality programmes are simply a ‘live’ form of documentary?

Game shows and talent shows are likely to be the sub-genre that most people associate with ‘reality television’. This is mainly due to programmes such as XFactor and Britain’s Got Talent which have become the largest television shows of the time, bringing in 16.6 and 18.5million viewers respectfully in 2009 and 2010, making them the most watched programme of the year; an award which in the 20 years prior was commonly given to soaps such as Coronation Street or prestigious dramas for example Only Fools and Horses. It is clear that the introduction of social networking and ease of cheap contact has helped tremendously to allow reality programmes to adapt and to become the most popular genre on our screens at the moment. Viewers clearly prefer to have some sort of involvement with the programme rather than simply being a passive observer. By having this participation, they are able to help sculpt and direct the content of the programmes they watch, similarly to television on demand, whether it is voting who stays in week-by-week or by determining who should take part in the daily tasks on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. This aspect is not possible with documentaries and dramas; therefore this may be the reason why infotainment and docusoaps have replaced original documentaries. It seems that “a lot of [reality shows] used to be called documentaries, but people are now just more inventive with them,” (Deans, 2003) with the improvement in technology, documentarians may be producing their documentaries in reality format, meaning that reality should perhaps not be classed as documentary but should be classed as a genre, which has encompassed documentary.

The newest addition to the reality genre is ‘structured reality’ television such as Made in Chelsea. These shows follow a group of friends and acquaintances in their hometown of Chelsea, London. The style of the show is similar to that of a soap opera with the cameras listening in to different conversations and following cast members in their day-to-day lives. There has been a lot of controversy following these scripted reality shows due to viewers being unsure of the ‘reality’ of them. The Only Way Is Essex clearly now displays to its audience how the “tans you see might be fake but the people are all real—although some of what they do has been set up purely for your entertainment.” It is understood that the characters and conversations in these programs are completely unscripted, however the directors will suggest conversation subjects or will set up certain scenarios for the characters to walk in to. This directorial interjection reflects another of Grierson’s quotes, which talks about “Creative Treatment of Actuality” (quoted in Winston, 1995, p.28). Directors commonly have a say in how a documentary will be edited together, and therefore have the ability to easily mould the audience’s view of a certain topic or person. This is similar to Structured reality shows, where the director will purposefully increase the tension of a scene by adding elongated pauses between the characters to add drama and therefore satisfy the viewers. These shows seem as though they are anything but a documentary, however the directorial influence is apparent in a lot of documentaries, namely propagandist films such as Triumph of the Will, which presents the Nazi congress in Nuremburg, and was sent out in order to make the German army seem daunting to the opposition.

Aside from the ‘game show’ genre, these all involve cameras going into real life environments which very much fits the characteristic of any documentary show. The majority of these sub-genres can be very relatable to those of documentaries, especially when filmed in an observational or fly-on-the-wall style. However due to reality being such a broad genre, it is clear that it is now “a term [that] has become something of a catch-all phrase.” (Kilborn 1994: p.423) Reality television clearly links to the factual nature of documentaries by inviting viewers into the lives of others. Some reality shows also contain contributor interviews and narrator voice-overs, which are very common characteristics of any documentary program. So it can very much be argued that reality shows are documentaries, especially when you are “taking the ‘raw’ ingredients of on-screen emergency services” rather than “’cooked’ reality formats such as reality gameshows” (Hill: p.44). However due to gameshows being a part of the reality genre, we cannot classify reality as a whole as documentary, we can simply suggest that some sub-genres contain “Documentary Value”

Baudrillard, J (1986). The Evil Demon of Images. Sydney: Power Institute of Fine Arts.

Corner, J (2000) ‘What Can We Say About ‘Documentary’? Media, Culture and Society

Corner, J (2002) ‘Documentary Values’, in A.Jerslev (ed.) Realism and ‘Reality’ in Film and Media, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press

Deans, J (2003) ‘Reality TV is Here to Stay’. Online. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/jan/27/realitytv.broadcasting (Accessed 8 January 2014)

Hill, A (2005). Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. Abingdon: Routledge. p.5-44.

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Winston, B (1995). Claiming The Real. London: British Film Institute.