By Kate Connor (she/her)

Whether watching or partaking, there is no questioning the allure of Reality TV. According to statistics, about 40% of people watch reali­ty TV of some form. Whether your poison is the hot, steamy drama of Love Island, the competitive rival­ry of Big Brother, or the shocking twists of The Ultimatum, there can be no denying the influence of reali­ty TV on today’s culture.

Reality TV became an offi­cially recognised genre of television at the end of the 20th century, but traces of the genre have existed, in some form, since the late 1940s with Queen For a Day. Nowadays, reali­ty TV encompasses a wide range of types of shows – Queer Eye, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and The Traitors, to name a few.

Despite the popularity of the genre, it is not without its lim­itations and flaws. On many oc­casions, reality TV is the furthest thing from ‘real’. Shows like Love Island and RuPaul’s Drag Race have recently received backlash due to being “rigged” by producers, whilst the drama-filled Real House­wives of Beverly Hills and Keeping Up With the Kardashians are known to be staged in some way. So, why do we continue to watch them knowing they are, by nature, an oxymoron?

There are many reasons why reality TV is so enjoyable – the So­cial Comparison Theory indicates that these shows make viewers feel better about their own lives, in com­parison. The audience gets to laugh at romantic failings whilst watching dating shows like The Bachelor or Love Is Blind, and have the chance to act like secondary judges by voting on competition shows like Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor.

In disability theory, there is something known as ‘Body Gen­res’. This is the experience of having bodily reactions while watching a movie, and many genres have spe­cific body genres, such as horror movies encouraging the viewer to be scared. Reality TV also has its own body genres, as it creates a space for people to observe and “experience” different types of lives and peo­ple. While watching these shows, viewers are allowed – and encour­aged – to be nosy, picking apart the contestants’ lives and decisions.

Contrary to the Social Comparison Theory, it’s not hard to see how the comparison between viewers’ lived experiences and watching the “real­ity” in these shows has instead neg­atively impacted viewers’ lives. The popularity of TikTok and the grow­ing number of influencers and Get- Ready-With-Me (GRWM) videos also, I think, contribute to this new comparison.

Watching “normal” people become famous almost overnight on social media is similar to watching someone unknown rise to stardom as a result of a reality show. What both scenarios have in common is that what goes on behind the scenes is often very different to what we, as viewers, get to see.

The oversaturated, fake realness present has begun to overtake lived experience, making reality begin to appear boring. There are so many over-dramatized moments in these shows that hail their “realness”, and when this same quality is not reflect­ed in our own lives, we feel as though we’re not doing things “right”.

This is not to say that reality TV cannot still be enjoyable, in fact, it very much is. There wouldn’t be a new season of Love Island or Big Brother every year if there weren’t people to watch it. Like everything, in moderation, it’s not all bad.

Kate Connor

Fourth year English and Creative Writing Student.