Ask the Critic: Robert Lloyd

Question: The Writers Guild of America disclosed recently that it is seeking to unionize the writers (and story-crafting editors) who work on TV’s so-called reality series. Does it undermine the shows’ credibility -- or, at least, their attraction -- to know there are writers at work?

Lloyd: That would depend, of course, on whether you find them credible in the first place. “So-called” is the operative term: It’s hard to imagine, after 15 seasons of “The Real World” and 10 of “Survivor,” that anybody takes such shows as completely “real” -- at least in the ordinary sense of things happening in a way they’d happen if there weren’t producers and casting directors involved, and cameras around and (sometimes) prizes at the end -- or that anyone who liked them would be so disgusted or disillusioned by the revelation that they would stop watching. As long as viewers feel that the game-show reality series are not actually fixed, and continue to be attracted or enjoyably annoyed by the people on screen, they will likely stick around.

Indeed, given that television succeeds by giving people more of the same, right up to the point that they sicken of it, its version of reality requires guidance and control. It’s no surprise that one edition of “The Real World” is very much like the last, or that “The Apprentice” and “The Cut” are for all intents and purposes the same show. Note that the word “documentary” almost never comes into play in discussion of reality TV; the preferred term seems to be “unscripted,” which can also be something of a misnomer, as story arcs may be hopefully plotted beforehand.

At the same time, even straightforward documentaries are subject to processes of selection -- where to point the camera, whom to talk to, what footage to use (and in what order), what to leave out -- so that, in one sense at least, the difference between the most serious, scrupulous documentary and the most contrived reality series is one not of kind but of degree. One might say that the measure of this difference is the lengths to which the producers will go for the desired results, whether this means making people eat bugs or combining unrelated footage or dialogue into a single scene.

The economic utility of reality TV, which is cheap to produce, means that barring a sudden mass defection from the form, it’s not going anywhere soon. The 1950s “quiz show scandal,” fueled by the revelation that Charles van Doren was fed answers by the producers of “Twenty-One,” led to a Senate investigation, but it didn’t kill the genre.

Philosophically speaking, some hold that reality itself is constructed to begin with. But that is a matter for a different class.

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