Page 211 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

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REALITY TV

necessarily part of any cultural text by drawing attention to the
verisimilitude of the characters, action, plot, etc., rather than to the
apparatus of its own narration: its rhetorical device is to pretend that
the telling is not there, there is only the tale. By familiarisation and
habituation to realist genres, readerships also contribute to the effect
by agreeing to read within the claims of the convention.
This naturalising process is often understood as ideological, since
realism in fact and fiction alike is assisted by semiotic tricks.
Understanding it as convention moves beyond a fruitless search for a
text’s proximity to the real. Rather, it draws attention to the signs and
techniques that have been employed for the reader to understand the
text as real. In film and television drama these may include the use of a
linear narrative, mode of address and technical aspects such as
continuity and editing. The conventions of genre are also understood
to inform the representation of realism. Science fiction, for example,
through the use of special effects, is able to create its own sense of the
real owing to the rules that govern the genre: it is therefore quite
normal to have ‘realistic’ portrayals of scenarios that everyone knows
are ‘really’ impossible.
Such conventions then become a sort of pact between film-makers
and their audiences. For instance, even though sound cannot travel
through space, it is standard practice to apply sound effects (whooshes,
engine noises) to spacecraft in movies – they are by general agreement
more ‘realistic’ as a result. That realism is as much ideology as
objectivity can be demonstrated by noting that its own conventions
evolve over time, and what was greeted as shockingly realistic in one
decade looks mannerist or kitsch in the next.
Realism is reliant on shared value judgements. What texts are
accepted as belonging to this category will depend on the use of those
conventions that have been accepted as realistic. These conventions are
the signifying aspect of realism.
See also: Aesthetics, Diegesis