technical images and linear text

Voltaire once commented that the Holy Roman Empire — now known as more-or-less Germany — was “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.”

How is this the case? Well, this might have been the first recorded and recognized instance of the Big Lie technique of propaganda, wherein an enormous lie is passed off as truth, to blind the receiver to its falsehood, and the myriad smaller falsehoods that surround it. As the most infamous propagandist of the twentieth century remarked: “in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously” (Hitler 134).

In the case of the Holy Roman Empire, then, its name is clearly designed to surreptitiously contain a normative judgment. The citizen of the medieval era (who did not happen to be Voltaire) would be apt as not to assume that this Empire was both Holy and Roman; how could one lie in the name of a place itself? Since in our daily lived experiences we have no reason to question the honesty of naming, why should we assume that the name of a concept is not a faithful description?

What could this medieval political entity possibly have to tell us about reality television, though?

The fact is, ‘reality television’ is an archetypal Big Lie. This so-called ‘reality’ is perhaps even less real than the fictional offerings of television. At least in the televised drama or comedy we have some faint nod to that first order of simulacra, “founded on the image, on imitation and counterfeit” (Baudrillard SS 121). Such fictions, after all, only ’speak’ to us if they offer us some representation of a ‘real’ situation, if we can somehow ‘relate.’ And yet with ‘reality television’ we are not asked to relate, but merely to observe. The simulacrum of the reality show is of the third order, “founded on information, the model, the cybernetic game — total operationality, hyperreality, aim of total control” (Baudrillard SS 121). Consider, for instance, the tasks participants are asked to accomplish in such offerings as Survivor or The Apprentice. On such a show, participants are not asked to really survive, or to conduct business, but rather, to act out for the camera an abstraction of survival, or a virtualized representation of ‘business’ (business being in itself founded on the simulacrum). Nor are they asked to even pantomime the reactions of a real person, as would be an actor. Rather, they are goaded by the camera, advised by ‘consultants’ (Zizek 226), and selectively edited to define their televised persona in whatever fashion suits the show’s producers.

Thus, the televised subject in ‘reality television’ is suspended between being-themselves and acting-themselves, to the point that it is no longer clear which is the ‘real’ self, and which the televised, simulacrum of self. As Zizek puts it, “the distinction real life and acted life is thus ‘deconstructed’: in a way, the two coincide, since people act their ‘real life’ itself, i.e., they literally play themselves in their screen-roles” (226). The term ‘reality TV’ is therefore itself an obvious lie; yet, what else are we to call this peculiar phenomenon? We are left to work with the names given us by our society. The truth, however, is that ‘reality TV’ is neither reality, nor television, but is rather acted reality, reality made digital and the simulacrum made palatable. The paradox here is that even as this cultural form proceeds further from the ‘Real,’ it arrives closer to the lived reality of our society. Reality TV can only function because of the fact that we already live in a TV reality.

Reality TV is therefore the hyperreal simulacrum which obscures the poverty of our actual reality. As Baudrillard writes, with reality TV, “television has managed a fantastic operation of orchestrated consensus-making, a genuine coup de force, a takeover bid on society as a whole, a kidnapping — formidably achieved in the way of a complete telemorphosis of society” (TM 481). The purpose of a reality-television which continually shoves its unreality in the face of the viewer is for it to be recognized as unreal. Like Disneyland, we can look upon the reality television show as a humorous example of how poorly television represents reality, whereupon we return to a comfortable certainty of the realness of our own reality. Reality television “signifies the elevation of an entire society to the parodic stage of a complete farce, of an implacable return-image cashed in on its own reality” (Baudrillard TM 481-482). We laugh at the falsehood and pretense inherent to the reality-show character because we cannot laugh at our own.

And what of the poor souls who actively seek out being-simulated, those who ‘apply’ to act out the role of themselves for the camera’s gaze? They represent the most faithful communicants in the society of the simulacrum…those who wish to distance themselves ever-further from the frightening territory of the real, into the comfortable embrace of endless re-presentation.