What does it mean to talk about “reality” television?

Abstract

One of the theses of the conceptual system that I have been developing, for some fifteen years now, in order to analyze television, is that television genres can be interpreted on the basis of three worlds: the real world, the fictional world and the recreational world [Jost, 1999] (2007). While these last two, the most difficult to define, have given rise only to a few comments, on the contrary, the first one, the most evident in appearance, carried sometimes to misunderstandings on the part of my listeners or readers. A recurring one, expresses, in the best of cases, a philosophical position perfectly identifiable, and at worst, a lack of knowledge of the philosophical questioning. In essence, the criticism that they make is this: you say that certain genres are anchored in the real world or in reality, but reality does not exist, it varies according to points of view. Taking seriously this objection, this article propose to answer the question posed in its title in two parts: the first one, attempts to define how the question of reality should be posed as regards to television; the second, aims to define what it means, for television and tv professionals, the promises made by different attitudes regarding the real world.