Reality TV and the Myth of the Anti-Hero
One of the things that’s always so prominent about reality television is how the shows always give us stars who we love to hate. Bravo’s newest iteration in the Real Housewife franchise, Salt Lake City, has been torn on this conversation: some who see individuals who are terrible individuals and therefore don’t want to watch, and others who see them as terrible people and therefore love to watch. Essentially, the one thing that people who hate reality tv and people who love reality tv can agree on is that it’s centred around terrible people.
Most opponents to reality television inevitably ask the question of why an audience is so interested in watching horrendous people. The answer is a bit more complicated than simple hate watching. To get to the heart of what is really occurring, we’ll need to talk about the myth of the anti-hero.
Anti-heroes are defined entirely by heroes. In most colloquial understandings of heroes, heroes are defined by their morality, idealism and courageousness. But this is a very contemporary and Western idea of a hero. Mythology, historically, has had some shady heroes. Gilgamesh was egotistical, and Oedipus married a woman whose husband he had just killed. Mythology is full of terrible people whose stories we tell and retell over and over and over again. A lot of times, this is due to changing conceptions of morality. Oedipus’s marriage to a women he directly widowed would not have been considered as questionable several hundred years ago in the way that it is now, for example.
Our conceptions of morality and what makes a person the ideal person is something that alters over time. As stories alter through re-tellings, and what makes an individual a hero or not is also altered - our sense of morality shifts. I mentioned this briefly in my review of the developments of a legend in my earlier post about the Legend of Zelda. Robin Hood’s placement as someone who supports the poor is something that developed over time. As storytellers, we are in control of what we portray as positive or negative traits, and these can be emphasized, de-emphasized or even completely removed through a teller’s variants and time.
Similarly, the storytellers of our contemporary mythology have control over the traits which can be emphasized or de-emphasized. In scripted entertainment, these elements can be controlled by writers, actors and directors. Traits which are considered un-heroic can be portrayed in negative lights. For example, the character Jay in Modern Family is constantly depicted as a positive role model in the position of business man, but as a father his failings are also displayed as full failings, including his light homophobia toward his own son. Even though these traits are portrayed, the way they are dealt with is to demonstrate that they are less than ideal.
The success or failure of a scripted show is based on its writing. A reality show’s success or failure is in its editing. Where traits can be emphasized, de-emphasized, or addressed in particular ways through the writing for scripted shows like Modern Family, reality television has editing to suit its needs. For a recent example, lets look to the Bachelor. The most recent season of the Bachelor hosted a woman by the name of Victoria, whose spoiled nature led to a great degree of bullying and terror to rain down on the other women. While putting these women in this position in the first place can be questionable, we know that the producers in no way condone what Victoria is doing due to the editing.
Not only does the editing take every measure to show the most horrid renditions of her breakdowns, but the makeup artists leave her looking overly oily in comparison to the airbrushed look of the other women. In every way the production has control over, their portrayal of Victoria demonstrates how much they do not condone her actions.
Real Housewives of New Jersey also had a masterful pull of editing which was only possible due to the way they needed to control the narrative over prevailing queen of the franchise Teresa Giudice. The beginning half of the season featured a physical altercation between two of the women (neither being Teresa). Teresa sided with the aggressor, much to the surprise of the rest of the women. The very last episode of the season, however, featured a sudden shift: it turns out that Teresa had told the aggressor to pull the other woman’s hair. The production, at this point, shows previously unshown footage of Teresa doing this.
Having her actions be the great unveiling is actually a better turn of events - it leads the audience to constantly question Teresa’s alliance, constantly unsure if its due to friendship or something else. This uncertainty comes to a head in the final episode where the editing now unveils the true reason, and the audience can now turn against her.
But the editors have a secondary move for audience feelings on Teresa, which shifts her, again, from villain to anti-hero. The season finale ends with the cameras following Teresa to Italy, where her children are once again re-united with her husband, separated due to his arrest.
Editors on reality shows have the ability to control the audience’s emotions toward particular figures through their editing. In this same way, heroes - in the sense of their ability to demonstrate a positive side to a community - is also shown as a hero through editing. Ru Paul’s Drag Race, for instance, always does its best to give us heroes in the LGBT+ community through the production’s insistence on competitors talking about issues in the communities while they put on their drag makeup.
Reality television shows us how fickle the concept of the hero is. Colloquial Western understandings of the hero has someone who upholds ideals and morality is something which is often just a matter of perspective. Reality television is a medium through which the very fine line between hero and anti-hero is properly explored. It is, of course, just a matter of editing.