Page 172 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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Banality TV: the democratization of celebrity 157
1 The fascination it generates is a dumb fascination much more akin to
McLuhan’s notion of narcosis than Benjamin’s hopes of empowerment. In
authentically seductive and symbolically rich forms of exchange,
social meaning is derived from the interplay of unpredictable
interactions. Unlike the pre-encoded nature of the culture indus-
try’s products, empowered play is indeterminate and truly fasci-
nating. In Banality TV, open-ended and unpredictable outcomes
are expunged from culture (just as Benjamin described aura
being ‘pumped out like water from a sinking ship’) by the
combined effects of the dumb narcotic fascination of the screen
and the formulaic nature of the content: ‘Any system that is
totally complicit in its own absorption such that signs no longer
make sense, will exercise a remarkable power of fascination’
1
(Baudrillard 1990a: 77) .
2 The banality of non-symbolic media content seeps into areas of social life
traditionally devoted to more substantial symbolic cultural practices.
Critical resistance is increasingly replaced by uncritical engage-
ment with Reality TV as a defining and normalizing frame of
reference. Examples of this include: Reality TV-influenced aca-
demic studies of parliamentary and television voting behaviour ,
2
and a selection model for the granting of Western university
scholarships to students from the developing world – Scholar
3
Hunt: Destination UK .
For critical purposes, Kracauer’s crucial phrase is his claim that
‘urgent human concerns’ are avoided by ‘dragging the exotic into
daily life rather than searching for the exotic within the quotidian’.
In today’s mediascape his comment pertains to:
Chat Shows – the appearance of celebrities drags the exotic into
daily life. Their star status is displayed in a highly structured and
staged demonstration of how they are both like us with their
everyday, down-to-earth nature, but also part of a lifestyle that the
rest of us can only dream about. Non-celebrities provide the flip-side
of this made-for-admiration exoticism. ‘Trailer-trash’ with their
bizarre personal problems and family situations are presented for
judgement by ‘normal standards’ (hence the ritualistically aggressive
questioning by members of the audience and the typically strong
moral judgments made by the presenter).
Reality TV – the exotic is found within the quotidian but in a
pre-packaged manner. Celebrities/celetoids are created from the ‘ordi-
nary’ masses and Reality TV formats are part of a systematized
approach that ensures that ‘urgent human concerns’ either still
remain unaddressed or distorted through the simplifying lens of the
Reality TV paradigm.
Lifestyle TV – the exotic is dragged into everyday life in various
simultaneously instructional and aspirational programmes dealing

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