The Different Types of Reality Television

The term "reality television" covers a vast variety of different types of shows. One of those types include the reality television shows created for educational purposes. These types of shows are considered reality although they do have a documentary component. Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska wrote an article called Frontier House: Reality Television and the Historical Experience which examines one of these educational reality shows. In the show Frontier House, participants have to live similarly to the way frontier settlers did in the 1880s. This is interesting to viewers because they get to see the family struggling to adjust to this new lifestyle. At the same time though, the audience is learning what life was like during that time.

In the article The Moral Economy of Person Production: The Class Relations of Self-Performance on Reality Television by Beverley Skeggs, Skeggs notes four major techniques used in reality filmmaking. One technique is social mobility through self-performance. The Frontier House would fall into this group. With this technique, people are taken from their everyday ordinary lives and placed into a new situation where they have to try and adjust. Drama is created by watching all of the people struggle as they let go of their old lives and try to survive in this new one. Another technique is called "measuring bodies, quantifying value". With this technique, the filmmaker tries to educate the participant on how to make their body healthier and how that will effect their everyday life. The audience gets to see the participant trying to do away with their bad unhealthy habits. To go along with "measuring bodies, quantifying value", comes another technique in which shame and guilt is used. The show tries to make the participant feel bad about themselves so that they are motivated to change. The fourth technique involves rules and advice. The filmmaker shows the participant what he or she is doing wrong and then tells them how to try and fix the problem.

In all these different types of reality television, the participant has to go through some type of change. The struggles of going through that creates conflict and drama making it appealing for viewers to watch.