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218 COMMUNICA TION THEORY
on behalf of those millions of viewers who will never get that chance:
‘Talk shows make sense for many performers, as means of dealing with
their normal “invisibility”. They are, following Thompson, “struggles of
visibility” – a matter of “being seen before the social gaze, before a repre-
sentative sample of the social body”’ (Couldry, 2003: 118). The appearance
of people on talk shows individually overcomes the problem of ‘ordinar-
iness’ that television audiences suffer whilst more generally reinforcing
the division between ordinary and media culture. For the individual
involved, it is ‘less a comment on how trashy they are and more a com-
ment on the exclusiveness of television and the limited access of ordinary
people to media representation’ (Gamson, cited in Couldry, 2003: 118).
But talk shows also provide for, indeed excel in, the spectacle of
shaming – the modern-day confessional box. Couldry (2003) argues that
‘whatever the artificiality and indeed cruelty of such shows and their
attendant ethical problems, part of their significance for performers derives
from the opportunity they represent, against the odds, to be seen before a
public audience, to emerge from invisibility’ (118). Given how much the
modern individual is atomized and physically sequestered from others,
Couldry argues that we become very accepting of ‘action at a distance’
with, or on behalf of, others. But, he suggests, ‘the price of the expansion
of the boundaries of private experience, if indeed that is what is occur-
ring, is to submit that experience to the power dimensions of the media-
tion process’ (116). These power dimensions are shaped by the theme of
the talk show (shaming, celebratory, etc.), the field of recognition that the
host encourages between the guests and the two audiences, the spatial
authority that the guests are given on the stage, and numerous other factors
which the guests have no control over. This careful stage-management in
turn limits the ‘reality effect’ of the show, in relation to which guests are
encouraged to break out of the boundaries of their ‘visibility trap’ (125).
When the guests do this, their actions are not just ‘real’ but are part of the
‘really real’. The ‘really real’, Couldry explains, ‘is the moment when some-
thing “genuinely” uncontrolled happens in the highly controlled setting
of the studio’ (125). Thus, it is the display of emotion, in the form of tears
or violence between confessional subjects of a talk show, that receives its
impact precisely because it is the opposite of the controlled, linear, com-
posed production values of nearly all television formats.
Paradoxically, the communication of ‘emotion’ in this way, as some-
thing that television is otherwise incapable of conveying in its scripted
genres, also appeals to being able to ‘represent’ the emotions of viewers,
whose participation is displaced and metaphoric. But their identification
is potentially far more powerful than that which they may have with a
celebrity. For a start it may be cathartic that, finally, an ‘ordinary person’ is
able to make their feelings known on air. There may be a sense of justice
for the viewer also. Now ‘we can hear our side’ of the story rather than the
envy-sponsored preoccupations of the rich and famous. Then there is
the amplification of the reality effect that results from the fact that, whilst