Television = Hyper Reality

    This is just a short piece but watching television earlier today just really make me want to write a quick moan about the supposed ‘reality’ of television programs, in particular soaps. As we know television programs try their best to depict reality but yet they can’t seem to do it so they create something called hyper-reality which is just an exaggeration of what is real. I will just look into a few things that I have seen on television that I think will hammer home the point that television cannot simulate or recreate reality.

    Firstly all 15/16 year olds are told to get work experience for the first week of the current academic year they are in, and as we know this is a very difficult process with some people relying on the support staff to get them a placement. Plenty of stuff has to be dealt with such as medical forms and personal details etc before you are guaranteed your placement. When I was this age I knew I wanted to have a work placement at a newspaper for a week because I wanted to gain experience in the journalism field. So what I did was phone up all the newspapers within my area such as the ‘Express & Star’ and asked if they would be willing to let me have work experience with them. Unfortunately I was given a solid “no” from all newspapers which I was very annoyed at. Relating this situation to ‘The Inbetweeners (Series 2, Episode 2)’ we see that Neil is easily accepted – despite being a mistake – into having a placement with a newspaper. I was astonished by the ease at this was done and found myself laughing at the producers depiction of reality. In the current climate back then, nearly everyone I knew who wanted to work at a newspaper for a week was rejected so I knew that what was on screen was just hyper-reality. You can see just how easy it is to recreate reality but it often has its flaws.

    These next two paragraphs relate to soaps but on different topics. In soaps we are made to believe they are a depiction of reality when clearly they aren’t. All soaps are set in a close-knit society such as Walford or Weatherfield where everyone in that area are friends. I’m sorry but in my street I’m not friends with any of my neighbours, yes I probably say the odd “hello” or “alright” but I am not close to them. In soaps they try to represent to us that everyone in a little society are friends with each other and that they all work at the same place, drink at the same pub and go to the same shops. That is not reality, that is hyper-reality, soaps exaggerate the reality of our world which is wrong to do because I don’t know anywhere in ‘reality’ where everyone is close to their neighbours who live two streets away and that work at the same place. Even if you aren’t studying a media related course it is virtually impossible to believe that what we see in soaps is real.

    Another thing that annoys me in soaps is how quickly someone can get a job or recover from serious injuries. There has been countless times on soaps where I have heard the line “can I have a job” and the reply is “yes” but yet they don’t go through any legal procedures and end up working instantly. Can you see what I’m getting at here, this is impossible; forms have to be filled out to allow the employer to employ the employee (bit confusing but used the correct terminology LOL). In soaps it’s just a case of ask for a job and you get to work instantly, this is why I have just given up watching soaps all together, not only do I find them tedious but how they exaggerate reality is beyond unbelievable. This leads me on to how quickly someone recovers from a serious injury, in particular Jack Branning from ‘Eastenders.’ Jack was shot in the head and was hospitalised for about two/three weeks in the program, then came the miraculous recovery spanning over about two weeks, Jack was unable to walk and could just about speak but yet after roughly two weeks he was running round like a headless chicken and was talking for England. How miraculous is that? Shot in the head and then in approximately two weeks he’s fine – as if. This just backs up the point of television exaggerating what is deemed ‘reality.’ If you were lucky to survive a bullet to the head I can safely say that I would take longer than two weeks to recover from such an incident.

    I don’t want to carry on because I could go on forever but it should be now clear that what television does is create hyper-reality to make their program feel more ‘realistic’ but yet to those eagle eyed viewers television programs can’t make the viewer feel that what they are watching is ‘real.’ Viewers can pick up on so many things if they think about it carefully, they can notice stuff like what I have mentioned and many more things such as how quick Peter Barlow recovered from an excessive alcoholic to a tee-total person. There are loads of things exaggerated and you shouldn’t be fooled by what you see, You have to have a suspense of disbelief with television programs due to how they try to recreate ‘reality’ because if you believe what you see on screen you might not be able to depict the difference between what is real and what isn’t (a bit like what happens in Inception – if you have viewed this film).

    Time to end that short debate but I hope you all gained some valuable information about what happens on your television screen and that you will now be able to see what has been exaggerated within a programs narrative.