Spectacular melodrama: the drama of

Spectacular melodrama: the drama of the moment
In terms that echo some of the larger socio-political shifts outlined above, commentators have been concerned with the overall transformation of documentary television into ‘staging the real’ (Kilborn 2003) in a ‘postdocumentary culture’ (Corner 2002) in which ‘the real’ is constituted through a contrived set of scenarios produced for entertainment, rather than any socially realist argumentation of benefit to public culture. Bill Nichols (1991) suggests programming that focuses on the personal and spectacular renders them inert as socio-political phenomena: ‘Spectacle is more properly an aborted or foreclosed form of identification where emotional engagement does not extend as far as concern but remains arrested at the level of sensation’ (p. 234). The characteristic motifs of depthless ‘spectacles of particularity’ in Nichols’s presumption, however, fail to account for how political processes work at the level of sensation and emotion (see Deleuze 2003; Ahmed 2004), a process highly evident in our audience responses. But here we want to consider how the operation of spectacle in ‘reality’ television generates emotional engagement through melodramatic techniques.

By telling intimate stories ‘reality’ television draws on traditions of melodrama, as well as documentary. David Singer (2001) defines melodrama as a ‘cluster concept’ with different configurations of constitutive factors, including pathos; overwrought emotion; dramatic intensity without the pathos (all characters expressing anger, frustration, resentment, disappointment, etc.) moral polarization; non-classical narrative structure and sensationalism. Our textual analysis suggests that dramatic intensity is regularly produced through what we have called ‘the judgement shot’, where, after crisis and chaos, expert advice is given or negative voiceover commentary provided and the participant is held in facial close-up.

Often this is followed by a poignant symbolic image with ironic music, or the repeating and reselecting of various montage shots so that the dramatic significance is intensified. The long-held close-up is the modern equivalent of the theatrical melodramatic tableau – where the stillness and the silence of the actors enable the suspension of action and all attention is given to contemplation of the drama previously enacted. Once we started examining our material in detail for ‘melodramatic moments’ we became aware of the ubiquity of the use of the ‘judgement shot’ to produce dramatic tension. In this sense ‘reality’ television’s relation to ‘reality’ is often more closely linked with ‘emotional realism’ (Ang 1985) where participants take part in what Helen Piper (2004) usefully calls a new category of ‘improvised drama’ more typically allied with the fictive traditions of melodrama than documentary. The use of melodramatic techniques to produce sensation should not surprise us; it is a tried and tested method for making the domestic and everyday more interesting. Peter Brooks maintains that:
The melodramas that matter most convince us that the dramaturgy of excess and overstatement corresponds to and evokes confrontations and choices that are of heightened importance, because in them we put our lives – however trivial and constricted – on the line. (1995: ix)

These techniques follow a long tradition of ‘women’s television’, as Rachel Moseley (2000) notes:
Makeover shows ask the audience to draw on our repertoire of personal skills, our ability to search faces and discern reactions (facilitated by the close-up) from the smallest details – the twitch of a muscle, an expression in the eye – a competence suggested by Tania Modleski as key to the pleasure of soap opera’s melodramatic form. These programmes showcase the threatening excessiveness of the ordinary . . . These are, precisely, instances of powerful spectacular ‘über-ordinariness’: an excess of the ordinary. (p. 314)

Thus the forms of excess and heightened drama, which according to Nichols (1991) in documentary forms generate a distancing effect, limiting modes of engagement, instead on ‘reality’ television offer resonance with our own intimate lives. Bringing together realism with melodrama, Christine Gledhill (1987, 2000) maintains, enables the techniques of film and television to increasingly intervene in ‘private’ life for the moral good of the nation. As ‘reality’ television uses documentary techniques to open out ‘real’ relationships, intimacy, and domesticity, it draws upon melodramatic traditions that give significance to and make daily lives sensational and intense, hence potentially more interesting to watch. Thomas Elsaesser (1987) notes in relation to these traditions, ‘Even if the situations and sentiments defied all categories of verisimilitude and were totally unlike anything in real life, the structure had a truth and life of its own’ (p. 64).

Historically the heroes and heroines of melodrama were not exceptional subjects but characters operating within social norms, making visible and sensational the differences between good and evil. The icon of the ‘good home’, for instance, has long been used to establish the ‘space of innocence’ and its virtuous victims. Melodrama was, and, we assert, still is, one of the main dramatic devices for making moral values visible across many domains of social life. For Brooks (1995) it represents the ‘reaffirmation of society’ of ‘decent people’. Linda Williams (2001) proposes that melodrama has been insufficiently understood as a major force of moral reasoning that is not just limited to women’s films or the domestic sphere but structures our understandings of the power of the nation more generally, generating a ‘moral structure of feeling’ (p. 26). In particular, and central to our argument, the reduction of morality to an individual dramatic performance enables social relations to be visualized and known through the psychologisation of character.

Ian Goode (2003) argues that it is the ‘proximity to, and observation of behavior and character . . . that drives the performative formats of “reality” television’ (p. 108). In particular the construction of time on ‘reality’ television generates a sense of ‘actuality’, its reconstruction of time as an ontological claim to ‘nowness’ and possibly also ‘hereness’, rather than an epistemological claim to truth (Kavka and West 2004). This immediacy is part of the ahistorical emphasis that many critics of ‘reality’ television describe, its depthlessness apparently giving it no purchase on ‘real’ social issues.

However, we would argue that it is exactly the lack of sociological understanding that repeats how the working class have been continually decontextualised, rerouting social problems to the level of the individual/psyche.

There are two important structural features of ‘reality’ television which are central to the way in which self formation now appears on television. First, by bringing together melodrama and realism, ‘reality’ television works with an aesthetics of depth below the surface (a variant of realism) where underlying forces govern surface phenomena which the characters will reveal: things happen to people which are beyond their own control.
The realism expressed is a form of ‘we are all governed by forces of happenstance’, which relates in particular, Elsaesser (1987) argues, to working-class life. Yet at the same time we have noticed a shift in the subject positions offered to participants. Elsaesser’s characters in melodrama are subject to forces beyond their control. But in ‘reality’ television, whilst participants are also subject to the unknowable, they are simultaneously faced with the impossible task of accounting for ‘happenstance’ (through the reiteration of reflexive talk to camera) and held responsible for the social positions they occupy. ‘Reality’ television thus retains a structural modicum of melodramatic fatalism whilst also effecting a shift into the individualised responsible self.

In this vein, many of the dramatic techniques used on ‘reality’ television rely on placing people in situations that are unfamiliar, in which they are likely to lack control, such as transformations through: swaps (wife, house, village, etc.), ‘new lives in strange places’ (Get A New Life, No Going Back), ‘new’ relationships (What The Butler Saw), ‘new’ jobs (Faking It, The Apprentice), ‘new’ clothes (What Not to Wear), ‘new’ culture (Ladette to Lady, ASBO Teen to Beauty Queen), all designed to generate insecurity, discomfort and humour for dramatic effect as we watch how the participant copes. Celia Lury (1998) identifies these techniques in consumer culture more broadly as evidence of ‘prosthetic’ culture, in which two central processes – indifferentiation (the disappearance of the distance between cause and effect) and outcontextualisation (where contexts are multiplied and rendered a matter of choice) encourage experimental individualism, in which the subject is increasingly asked to lay claim to features of the context or environment as if they were the outcome of the testing of his or her personal capacities. ‘Reality’ television visualizes the impossibility of an ontological contradiction: we are rarely able to completely control events, but we are expected to do so as a measure of self-worth.

The second key structural feature to ‘reality’ television makes this contradiction even more intense, not just by the decontextualised immanent nature of much of the drama, but also by the way that the temporal version of ‘everyday life’ presented does not allow space for the type of modern self-reflexivity that Tony Bennett (2003) argues is necessary for the demonstration of depth and moral understanding. In discussing the literary construction of everyday life Bennett identifies two different architectures of the self

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Spectacular melodrama: the drama of the momentIn terms that echo some of the larger socio-political shifts outlined above, commentators have been concerned with the overall transformation of documentary television into ‘staging the real’ (Kilborn 2003) in a ‘postdocumentary culture’ (Corner 2002) in which ‘the real’ is constituted through a contrived set of scenarios produced for entertainment, rather than any socially realist argumentation of benefit to public culture. Bill Nichols (1991) suggests programming that focuses on the personal and spectacular renders them inert as socio-political phenomena: ‘Spectacle is more properly an aborted or foreclosed form of identification where emotional engagement does not extend as far as concern but remains arrested at the level of sensation’ (p. 234). The characteristic motifs of depthless ‘spectacles of particularity’ in Nichols’s presumption, however, fail to account for how political processes work at the level of sensation and emotion (see Deleuze 2003; Ahmed 2004), a process highly evident in our audience responses. But here we want to consider how the operation of spectacle in ‘reality’ television generates emotional engagement through melodramatic techniques.Oleh menceritakan kisah-kisah yang intim 'realitas' televisi menarik pada tradisi melodrama, serta film dokumenter. David Singer (2001) mendefinisikan melodrama sebagai sebuah 'konsep cluster' dengan konfigurasi yang berbeda konstitutif faktor, termasuk pathos; terlalu tegang emosi; intensitas dramatis tanpa pathos (semua karakter mengekspresikan kemarahan, frustrasi, dendam, kekecewaan, dll) polarisasi moral; struktur narasi non-klasik dan sensasi. Analisis tekstual kami menunjukkan bahwa intensitas dramatis secara teratur diproduksi melalui apa kita sebut 'tembakan penilaian', di mana, setelah krisis dan kekacauan, ahli saran yang diberikan atau disediakan komentar negatif sulih suara dan peserta diadakan di close-up wajah.Often this is followed by a poignant symbolic image with ironic music, or the repeating and reselecting of various montage shots so that the dramatic significance is intensified. The long-held close-up is the modern equivalent of the theatrical melodramatic tableau – where the stillness and the silence of the actors enable the suspension of action and all attention is given to contemplation of the drama previously enacted. Once we started examining our material in detail for ‘melodramatic moments’ we became aware of the ubiquity of the use of the ‘judgement shot’ to produce dramatic tension. In this sense ‘reality’ television’s relation to ‘reality’ is often more closely linked with ‘emotional realism’ (Ang 1985) where participants take part in what Helen Piper (2004) usefully calls a new category of ‘improvised drama’ more typically allied with the fictive traditions of melodrama than documentary. The use of melodramatic techniques to produce sensation should not surprise us; it is a tried and tested method for making the domestic and everyday more interesting. Peter Brooks maintains that:The melodramas that matter most convince us that the dramaturgy of excess and overstatement corresponds to and evokes confrontations and choices that are of heightened importance, because in them we put our lives – however trivial and constricted – on the line. (1995: ix)These techniques follow a long tradition of ‘women’s television’, as Rachel Moseley (2000) notes:Makeover shows ask the audience to draw on our repertoire of personal skills, our ability to search faces and discern reactions (facilitated by the close-up) from the smallest details – the twitch of a muscle, an expression in the eye – a competence suggested by Tania Modleski as key to the pleasure of soap opera’s melodramatic form. These programmes showcase the threatening excessiveness of the ordinary . . . These are, precisely, instances of powerful spectacular ‘über-ordinariness’: an excess of the ordinary. (p. 314)Thus the forms of excess and heightened drama, which according to Nichols (1991) in documentary forms generate a distancing effect, limiting modes of engagement, instead on ‘reality’ television offer resonance with our own intimate lives. Bringing together realism with melodrama, Christine Gledhill (1987, 2000) maintains, enables the techniques of film and television to increasingly intervene in ‘private’ life for the moral good of the nation. As ‘reality’ television uses documentary techniques to open out ‘real’ relationships, intimacy, and domesticity, it draws upon melodramatic traditions that give significance to and make daily lives sensational and intense, hence potentially more interesting to watch. Thomas Elsaesser (1987) notes in relation to these traditions, ‘Even if the situations and sentiments defied all categories of verisimilitude and were totally unlike anything in real life, the structure had a truth and life of its own’ (p. 64).Historically the heroes and heroines of melodrama were not exceptional subjects but characters operating within social norms, making visible and sensational the differences between good and evil. The icon of the ‘good home’, for instance, has long been used to establish the ‘space of innocence’ and its virtuous victims. Melodrama was, and, we assert, still is, one of the main dramatic devices for making moral values visible across many domains of social life. For Brooks (1995) it represents the ‘reaffirmation of society’ of ‘decent people’. Linda Williams (2001) proposes that melodrama has been insufficiently understood as a major force of moral reasoning that is not just limited to women’s films or the domestic sphere but structures our understandings of the power of the nation more generally, generating a ‘moral structure of feeling’ (p. 26). In particular, and central to our argument, the reduction of morality to an individual dramatic performance enables social relations to be visualized and known through the psychologisation of character.Ian Goode (2003) argues that it is the ‘proximity to, and observation of behavior and character . . . that drives the performative formats of “reality” television’ (p. 108). In particular the construction of time on ‘reality’ television generates a sense of ‘actuality’, its reconstruction of time as an ontological claim to ‘nowness’ and possibly also ‘hereness’, rather than an epistemological claim to truth (Kavka and West 2004). This immediacy is part of the ahistorical emphasis that many critics of ‘reality’ television describe, its depthlessness apparently giving it no purchase on ‘real’ social issues.However, we would argue that it is exactly the lack of sociological understanding that repeats how the working class have been continually decontextualised, rerouting social problems to the level of the individual/psyche.There are two important structural features of ‘reality’ television which are central to the way in which self formation now appears on television. First, by bringing together melodrama and realism, ‘reality’ television works with an aesthetics of depth below the surface (a variant of realism) where underlying forces govern surface phenomena which the characters will reveal: things happen to people which are beyond their own control.The realism expressed is a form of ‘we are all governed by forces of happenstance’, which relates in particular, Elsaesser (1987) argues, to working-class life. Yet at the same time we have noticed a shift in the subject positions offered to participants. Elsaesser’s characters in melodrama are subject to forces beyond their control. But in ‘reality’ television, whilst participants are also subject to the unknowable, they are simultaneously faced with the impossible task of accounting for ‘happenstance’ (through the reiteration of reflexive talk to camera) and held responsible for the social positions they occupy. ‘Reality’ television thus retains a structural modicum of melodramatic fatalism whilst also effecting a shift into the individualised responsible self.
In this vein, many of the dramatic techniques used on ‘reality’ television rely on placing people in situations that are unfamiliar, in which they are likely to lack control, such as transformations through: swaps (wife, house, village, etc.), ‘new lives in strange places’ (Get A New Life, No Going Back), ‘new’ relationships (What The Butler Saw), ‘new’ jobs (Faking It, The Apprentice), ‘new’ clothes (What Not to Wear), ‘new’ culture (Ladette to Lady, ASBO Teen to Beauty Queen), all designed to generate insecurity, discomfort and humour for dramatic effect as we watch how the participant copes. Celia Lury (1998) identifies these techniques in consumer culture more broadly as evidence of ‘prosthetic’ culture, in which two central processes – indifferentiation (the disappearance of the distance between cause and effect) and outcontextualisation (where contexts are multiplied and rendered a matter of choice) encourage experimental individualism, in which the subject is increasingly asked to lay claim to features of the context or environment as if they were the outcome of the testing of his or her personal capacities. ‘Reality’ television visualizes the impossibility of an ontological contradiction: we are rarely able to completely control events, but we are expected to do so as a measure of self-worth.

The second key structural feature to ‘reality’ television makes this contradiction even more intense, not just by the decontextualised immanent nature of much of the drama, but also by the way that the temporal version of ‘everyday life’ presented does not allow space for the type of modern self-reflexivity that Tony Bennett (2003) argues is necessary for the demonstration of depth and moral understanding. In discussing the literary construction of everyday life Bennett identifies two different architectures of the self