Building a Bridge of Merit:
Documentary and Reality TV
Aaron Duplantier
Documentary’s truth conversation is predicated on whether documentary film—Robert Flaherty and the
army of documentarians he inspired—ever made some doomed promise to represent reality without mediation in the
first place. Perhaps viewers wanting to believe in a knowable Real, coaxed by the indexicality of the filmed image, are to
blame for this apparent sense of failure. But twenty-first century consumer skepticism, and decades of destabilization
as consequence of the vérité movement, reality television, and digital video production deny this possibility. How to
deal with this problematic became the burden of theorists and filmmakers brave enough to even try and make sense
of a paradoxical thing like “realistic representation.” Michael Renov (1993) has paralleled documentary with narrative
fiction film, something many documentarians take issue with. As Renov writes, with some nuance, “The itinerary of
a truth’s passage [. . .] is, thus, qualitatively akin to that of fiction [. . .] there is nothing inherently less creative about
nonfictional representations, both may create a ‘truth’ of a text” (7). While this may be a liberatory statement for
a documentarian dealing in visual lyricism or more cultural/zeitgestian work that does not have an explicit social
imperative—Terry Zwigoff ’s Crumb (1994), for instance—Renov’s implication that truth value is explicitly fictive in
documentary undermines social and political works, such as Trouble the Water (2008) and Why We Fight (2005). Though
Renov’s assignment of documentary as the “more or less artful reshaping of the historical world” associates it with
a historical context, the idea of reshaping troubles documentary’s prevailing impetus for social impact (11). Renov’s
position is poststructural in that it revels in the decentering of representation from any sense of authentic truth. Yet
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the perceived authenticity of documentary film is often what makes it distinct from fictional narrative cinema and
especially “contrived” reality TV programming. Authenticity is the ultimate denominator for realistic representation.
To be clear, documentary’s value as an authentic medium is only perceived. This perception emanates from
documentary’s broad reputation for social impact, which would ideally see the world changed for the better. At the
very least, this impact would bring one or another issue to people’s attention, as it did with Al Gore’s An Inconvenient
Truth (2008). Social relevance is also fundamental in regard to documentary’s implicit designation as “high culture.”
Yet to weigh the value of documentary by its intended goal is an arbitrary standard, especially in light of the criticisms
the form must withstand. An example of this is Michael Moore’s blue collar treatise Roger & Me (1989), wherein
the iconoclastic filmmaker seeks out former General Motors CEO Roger Smith to grill him about a shuttered auto
production plant in Flint, Michigan. An oft-discussed moment in the documentary, known affectionately as the
“pets or meat” scene, features an impoverished woman who breeds rabbits and sells them for her income, be they
for domestication or nourishment. Moore walks with the woman to the dingy rabbit cages beside her home as she
explains her enterprise. He visibly laughs at her and exhibits disgust. On another visit, she clubs a rabbit to death
in front of the camera and then skins it, to the shock and horror of viewers. Her only explicit connection to the
documentary’s thesis is that her brother, whom Moore never interviews on camera, was a factory worker at the closed
GM plant in Flint. Quite clearly, the woman is included as a “freak show” style character meant to elicit a reaction
from the audience; this is no different than many reality TV participants.
Ostensibly, documentary represents an ethical relationship with reality. Its impetus for social relevance partly
communicates this. And sweating over minutiae such as the “pets or meat” scene is part of that ethic. An intended
message can be impacted by a scene which might betray the markedly good intentions of a filmmaker, yet when those
intentions are punctuated by some explicit desire for social import then the critical blinders go up. Documentary
film is “of greater value” insofar as it survives beyond the multitude of qualifications and caveats made by its
theoreticians, some of which I outline below. Resoundingly, Moore’s transgression in ethical representation is forgiven
because Roger & Me exerts that weighty authenticity quotient of social relevance, and thus merits study and praise
among documentary scholars. But, among filmic and televisual media, documentary has not cornered the market
on social impact, and its typically educated and savvy viewership precludes key demographics, such as adolescents.
MTV’s 16 and Pregnant (2009-ongoing) is a reality TV show which dramatizes teen pregnancy in the U.S. Alongside
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their “smuttier” reality fare, MTV has also produced a slew of more socially impactful programs, such as True Life
(1998-ongoing), that have brought attention to serious issues among young people. 16 and Pregnant was and still is
condemned among many critics for the mere fact of making teenage pregnancy consumable to younger audiences;
this, in their view, glorifies that practice. Yet the show is a somber look at teenage pregnancy, albeit briskly edited and
overlaid with catchy licensed music from MTV’s vast catalog. None of its subjects go on to greatness. They are young
people whose lives are made far worse by their bad choices, so cause and effect is fully conveyed. In the year following
the show’s runaway success, a study conducted by Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine at the National Bureau of
Economic Research found a 5.7 percent reduction among American teen pregnancies (6). But 16 and Pregnant will not
be studied with all the great, socially relevant documentaries of the last twenty years. It is designated as reality TV and
thus axiomatically “lesser.”
The merit of documentary film is such that academics do not hesitate to engage its articulation of reality, even
with the troublesome representational discourse it incurs. Moreover, we take documentary films seriously because
they tell us to take them seriously; in our right minds, this would engender totalizing skepticism. Reality TV, on
the other hand, makes no explicit gesture to serious social or ethical concerns. 16 and Pregnant communicates a
subject-based narrative siphoned from a knowable reality and does not inundate viewers with statistics or makes any
controlling argument. The show upsets critics partly because it does not outwardly condemn its teenaged mothers,
but the statistical impact of its content means that the power of their existential squalor is not lost on its audience.
Further, safely reprehensible shows, such as Fox’s notorious Temptation Island (2001-2003), offer viewers a keen look
into the packaged, salacious version of reality offered via consumer capitalism. To write off reality TV axiomatically
is to miss out on a vivid conveyance of late capitalist, postmodern representation. We should interrogate, analyze, and
deconstruct reality TV the same way documentary film has been privileged. However, this would require taking reality
TV seriously enough in the first place. For academics, reality TV tends to be the punching bag of one or another
discursive end goal. Jennifer L. Pozner’s book Reality Bites Back (2010), for example, discounts the legitimacy of the
reality TV text from the outset, accepting these shows only as vehicles for regressive, outmoded stereotypes. What
those stereotypes speak to far exceeds their on-screen meaning. In treatments like these, reality TV is not the subject
of study but the thing to be criticized so that some point may be made, tangentially related or not. But, as I will make
apparent, documentary complicates realistic representation as well, resting on an uneasy foundation not dissimilar to
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reality TV, a parallel which bolsters reality TV’s formidable merit as a text of study.
Rather than seeking out an unmediated Real, Michael Renov’s core function of documentary is the persuasion
of a particular truth. To achieve this without falling into the stylistic fallacies that have plagued documentary since its
inception, Renov (1993) deploys the “truth claim” which communicates, “Believe me, I’m of this world” (30). This
“truth claim” articulates itself in documentary through the filmmaker’s implication and revelation of the processes
of production. Indeed, Renov (1993) valorizes documentary self-reflexivity by saying, “The film or videotape that
considers its own processes rather than seals over every gap of a never-seamless discourse is more likely to engender
healthy skepticism that begets knowledge, offering itself as a model” (31). Self-reflexivity, in turn, “activates audiences,”
forcing a critical response rather than passive reception (32). And, undoubtedly, the insertion of the filmmaker into
the narrative of modern documentary for the sake of thematic viability is fairly common practice. Though Nick
Broomfield has made an art form out of the exercise, one of his contemporaries, Louis Theroux of the BBC, is equally
accomplished.
In BBC’s The Most Hated Family in America (2007) about the controversial Phelps family, progenitors of the
Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas, Theroux, an atheist, achieves unprecedented access to their facilities and the
family dynamics, outwardly employing his ideological position in interviews and in the composition of the film itself.
Moments of empathy in the film are tempered by their distinct secularism. Theroux taps into the repression of the
Phelps family’s teenage girls, asking them: “Do you have any friends outside this [religious] group?” And rather than
just reply “no” to the question, the eldest daughter emphatically responds, “Nobody we consider our true friend
because friendship with the world is enmity with God,” a deeply rationalized answer. Later in the documentary, as
she and Theroux walk outside the university at which she is enrolled, the same Phelps daughter admits being asked
out for coffee by a fellow male classmate, a social interaction which she readily declined, and the sense of loss in her
recollection conveys a person immeasurably, woefully entrenched in ideology. Theroux, through his direct on-screen
involvement, produces a conversation about ideology rather than one possessed by it, though his ideological position
does ostensibly prevail. And rather than ideological machinations occurring outside the film’s diegesis, they are
embodied by on-screen presences, Theroux and the Phelps family. This, in turn, engenders the variety of ideological
positions Theroux encounters on-screen highly visible; the film is not persuading by any direct means, then, but
instead conveys these beliefs with their skin intact.
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Dealing with the apparent failure of documentary film to represent reality, in Renov’s model, means embracing
that failure. For Renov (1993), documentary should be self-contradictory, explosive; this, as he contends, is “poetic”
(33). And while The Most Hated Family in America, under one reading, is socially forthright, this precludes viewers’
acceptance of the initial conceit. Theroux’s obvious distaste for religion in general makes for explosive content, which
is often poetic. This is most evident in his confrontation with the now-deceased head of Westboro Baptist, Fred
Phelps. Yet the social/political imperative might be lost on a viewer who perceives a discursive model which favors
polarities, and an ostensible hierarchy, obviously the fault of Theroux’s inclusion in the narrative. So what about
documentary’s “discourse of sobriety”?1 Renov’s position holds that documentary’s social force be weighed against its
troublesome and undermining relation to fiction, but that action segregates documentary from its unique authentic
relevance. The solution to documentary’s supposed failure is not promoting art in the face of self-defeat, as that
conceptual move does not embolden social change but merely questions institutions and ideologies, often reductively.
This move translates a “hot” message, such as the endemic problem of reactionary Middle American Christianity, into
a “cool” one, the Westboro Baptist Church as idiosyncratic zealots and the noble Theroux as atheist crusader.2
Celebrated documentary theorist Bill Nichols primarily discounts documentary’s relation to fiction, situating
it within a greater mode of social worth. In his Introduction to Documentary (2010), Nichols maintains that documentary
is neither “a fictional invention nor a factual reproduction, [instead] documentary draws on and refers to historical
reality while representing it from a distinct perspective” (6-7). While his definition shares some traits with Renov’s—its
relation to a “historical world,” for instance—Nichols explicitly distinguishes the documentary form from narrative
fiction. Nichols (2010) says that documentary communicates “directly about the historical world rather than allegorically,”
introducing “no new, unverifiable facts” about actual situations, starkly oppositional to Renov’s perception of the
documentary as “poetic” and “self-contradictory” (emphasis added, 7). While Nichols’ position is comparably strict,
he does not exclude self-reflexive documentaries that deviate from his model, though he does question their formal
status as documentary. In other writing, admittedly, Nichols is more flexible regarding his perception of documentary
and other forms of realistic representation: “Documentary, nonfiction, reality television, ethnographic film, argument
1. Bill Nichols’ (2010) successful documentary model works within a “discourse of sobriety,” which “[. . .]speaks directly about social and
historical reality such as science, economics, medicine, military strategy, foreign policy, and educational policy” (emphasis added, 36).
2. Marshall McLuhan’s “hot” media literally fills the consumer up with information, requiring less active mental participation (Film and
Radio), transflated here as deploying a more direct message. But the consumer of “cool” media must mentally compensate for its gaps in
information (Iconographic Cartoons and Telephones). Cool media deploys a message that needs extrapolation/analyzing.
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and evidence in court trials, performative documentary, historical nonfiction, and the genealogy of documentary itself
defy simple definition and resist static identity” (Blurred Boundaries 1994, xiii). Nichols, though, is a taxonomist at his
core, and leaves the evaluative distinctions between one format and another (i.e. documentary vs. reality TV) to the
intimations underlying his definitions and analytics.
Despite his claim that documentary experimentation of the 1980s marked the beginning of a “Golden Age”
of documentary film which “continues unabated,” Nichols’ conclusions ultimately feel underwritten by a nostalgic
impulse, and do not take into account documentary truths which, in late capitalism, are axiomatic, instead asserting
expository documentaries of a bygone stylistic era as optimal (Introduction to Documentary 2010, 1). Documentaries,
Nichols (2010) writes, support an “underlying proposal, assertion, or claim about the historical world” and stimulate
“epistephelia” (a desire to know) in their viewers (23, 40). This assertion does not account for playful documentaries
such as The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007) of which elucidation and education are the least of its formative
worries, but are no less interesting and competent than a documentary where social and educational imperatives are
foregrounded. In Nichols’ schema, documentary may be a little too sober. Reality television, then, is lacking in this
relational standard, as entertainment trumps epistephelia on TV.
From the reflexive standpoint, Louis Theroux and other documentarians who insert themselves in their work
are at odds with Nichols’ model. Indeed, Nichols (2010) takes Michael Moore, notorious for his aggressive presence
in his various documentaries, to task by citing Moore’s “ambush tactics” as risking a breach of an “ethical borderline,”
especially in the case of Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine (2002) (182). Yet this is complicated by Nichols’ tacit
approval of documentaries, such as Jesus Camp (2006), which supposedly let “the audience decide” their interpretation
(Introduction to Documentary 2010, 59). Jesus Camp, which centers on a charismatic Christian summer camp run by the
infamous North Dakota Pentecostal preacher Becky Fisher, hides its processes of production, and keeps its creators—
Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing—behind the camera, who then go on in the documentary’s DVD commentary to
claim their film can be interpreted as either “reverence or revulsion” for its subject matter (Nichols 2010, 59). For this
claim to hold, viewers must excuse the camera which blithely focuses on the gaggle of hopeless children crying in the
audience as Becky Fisher insinuates they are “sinners” in need of repentance early on in the film. Later, one of the
three young children Jesus Camp threads its narrative around, Rachel, who converts to Fundamentalist Christianity at
Fisher’s camp, tries preaching to an unreceptive woman twice her age at a local bowling alley, a cringe-inducing scene.
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Not soon after, Rachel tells the camera she has been “teased several times” for her preaching. This scene work is
antithetical to Louis Theroux opening up a conversation about ideology; Jesus Camp is ideology’s machinations made
purposely and effectively invisible. In this instance, when praising one documentary format despite another, Nichols
neglects the global truth problematic in documentary.
Supposing Jesus Camp is an exception to the rule, a “discourse of sobriety” does lend certain documentaries
an authority they might not otherwise possess. Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line (1988), while not exemplifying
Nichols’ expository ideal due to moments of dramatization, persuades viewers by using traditional documentary
mechanics, keeping the filmmaker out of its direct articulation, and maintaining some of the illusory aspects of
the form in order to serve a “high culture” social imperative. Juxtaposing personal accounts of a crime taken from
filmed interviews conducted by Morris, viewers can grasp explicit disparity between the stories of the accused and
those of the repressive apparatus enforcing the law. This effect is achieved without intrusive on-screen titles, without
an overbearing filmmaker presence, with just the candid interviews of its subjects cut next to each other within the
narrative. Randall Dale Adams, later found to be falsely implicated in the murder of a police officer, recalls being
threatened at gunpoint by a Dallas area detective to sign a confession, one Adams had not made: “I don’t like looking
down the barrel of a gun, and I don’t like being threatened,” he tells Morris on camera. In the documentary, that
detective’s account of their confrontation follows directly after Adams’, and the tonal incongruity is startling: “I had
what I call a casual, friendly conversation [with Adams].” Though Morris intersperses these interviews with some
graphical flourish and stylized reenactment footage, interview responses are left virtually untouched within the filmic
space. And yet Morris is not laying claim to objectivity, as Grady and Ewing do with Jesus Camp; there is a bias on the
part of Adams’ innocence, not an absolute one, but one that the diegesis cannot help but relay. The Thin Blue Line led
to Adams’ exoneration, which has to be the ideal end goal for documentaries within a mode of social merit. A similar
material outcome from Morgan Spurlock’s social experiment/neo-documentary, Super Size Me (2004), saw fast-food
chain McDonald’s eventually removing the “super size” option from their combination meals. Morris and Spurlock,
in differing ways, prove that social merit and documentary have much to do with the external reality foregrounding
and proceeding their films’ diegeses.
Nichols’ definition for documentaries which defy his ethical standard is “performative,” though his other
term, “reflexive,” means essentially the same thing. Both these documentary taxonomies draw attention to filmic
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constructedness, and both effectively destabilize any sense of authenticity within their conveyance. Nichols holds that
“reflexive” documentary is more honest and relevant than “performative,” which says more about his arbitrary quality
standards than documentary film universally.3 Documentaries in the performative mode “reject notions of objectivity
for evocation and affect,” to which Nichols (2010) claims Waltz with Bashir (2008) belongs (32). Bashir, which primarily
employs digital animation rather than live-action, depicts the 1982 Lebanon War from the perspective of Ari Folman,
its director and former soldier in the Israeli armed forces. Some of the film’s actors, such as Yehezkel Lazarov, are
subbed for actual, historical people being represented by the film. An impressive degree of production goes into
flashbacks of the war, and dream sequences are peppered throughout, all of which are accompanied by non-diegetic
period music and a thumping electronic score. The visuals are lyrical and vibrant; slow motion is repeatedly employed
for dramatic effect, as naked teenage soldiers languidly climb out the sea and elsewhere duck to avoid enemy rockets.
At first glance, Bashir appears as an archetypal “performative” documentary, a film possibly not even in a documentary
mode, but the film is no less socially impactful than The Thin Blue Line, even if Bashir will never exonerate a soul. Of
special interest are the last minutes of Folman’s piece, which, instead of animation, is raw, live-action footage—shot
in a vérité, handy cam style—of the aftermath of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut. The consequent effect of
dreamy animation dissolving into immediate, visceral footage is something that stirs viewers from any removed sense
of passive reception. Of course Bashir is aesthetically “evocative,” but not because it has nothing objective to say; it
absolutely has a tangible underlying assertion about the historical world to communicate, about war and nationalism
and the capriciousness of religious fervor (Nichols 2010, 32).
The idea that some qualification be made regarding the content of one documentary or another, either Renov’s
poetic or Nichols’ performative, speaks to the flimsy evaluative superiority of documentary in general. Representing lived
reality is an ethical question whether that version of reality is formatively meant to be ethical or not. Nichols has
vacillated on his position regarding documentary film’s epistephelic standard, and making room for experimentation
and play should not be a matter of indecisiveness in postmodernity. Reality TV’s exclusion from these capable
3. Reflexive documentary “calls attention to the assumptions and conventions that govern documentary filmmaking—increases awareness of
the constructedness of the film’s representation of reality.” And performative documentary “emphasizes the subjective or expressive aspect of the
filmmaker’s own involvement with a subject, strives to heighten the audience’s responsiveness to this involvement. [Reflexive documentary] rejects
notions of objectivity in favor of evocation and affect” (emphasis added, Nichols 2010, 31-32). The problem here is that Nichols defines
“reflexive” purely within a documentary filmmaking model, which makes it an unusually inflexible taxonomy. Clearly, The Gleaners and I
(2000) is reflexive, as Agnès Varda brings a conversation about digital cameras into her diegesis, but, for whatever reason, Nichols (2010)
claims the film is performative instead (152).
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theorists’ academic repertoire is arbitrary; consumer capitalism’s version of reality is of great cultural interest in a
globalized age where international audiences have embraced all the packaged forms or everyday life highly regarded
by Americans through the latter of the twentieth century into today. And, certainly, the same sort of qualification
regarding one version of produced reality versus another’s goes on within the reality TV critical conversation. For
instance, competitive reality shows, such as Survivor (2000-ongoing) or The Amazing Race (2001-ongoing), are considered
far more mediational and subject to more producorial chicanery than slice-of-life programs such as Fox’s Cops (1989ongoing) or the Duggar family’s numerous shows and specials on TLC. Indeed, different reality shows are met by a
variety of mediational nuances. Consumable reality carries a built-in sense of subjective qualification, the same we
bring to our own off-screen, everyday experiences.
Nichols and Renov, in differing ways, build their suppositions in relation to a nonexistent “pure documentary,”
one which is “uncontaminated by the subjective vagaries of representation,” as Stella Bruzzi (2006) asserts in New
Documentary: A Critical Introduction (6). For Nichols, contemporary and postmodern documentary have muddied the
waters of the ostensibly “pure” documentary of yore, to which Bill Nichols is beholden. For Renov, documentary
“becomes what you do when you have failed” (Bruzzi 2006, 6). Both theorists write from a locality of loss, when they
should accept that “a documentary will never [could never] be reality nor will it erase or invalidate that reality by being
representational […]” (Bruzzi 2006, 10). Indeed, both Nichols and Renov belong to a generation of documentary
criticism dependent on failure, taxonomy, and truth. Assessing documentary within a Performance lens, Bruzzi
destabilizes both Renov and Nichols by positioning the two within an old-fashioned artistic aesthetic—that art or film
should explicitly be this and not this; that there be a supposedly “correct” way of creating an artistic object. Documentaries
are fundamentally unstable, from inception to contemporary articulation, in Bruzzi’s view, and the Real cannot be
unsettled by any claims they might make on it. “Documentaries,” Bruzzi (2006) writes, “are performative acts whose
truth comes into being only at the moment of filming,” which troubles both Nichols’ “documentary ethics” and Renov’s
documentary ideal of poetic self-contradiction between reality and its representation (emphasis added, 10). Bruzzi’s
model considers axiomatic a high degree of producer intrusion and mechanical mediation. This model productively
engages the documentaries of today. And in Bruzzi’s schema, Waltz with Bashir is not disparaged or impeded by her
performance taxonomy, but instead is freed from the compositional shackles Nichols ascribes. However, realistic
representation as a self-contained and/or self-producing truth gives equal credence to documentary’s disparaged step-
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sibling, reality TV, a truism Bruzzi begrudgingly acknowledges in her writing.
And reality TV and documentary do reflect or, at the very least, are in communication with each other. The
two realistic representational forms have seen a coevolutionary dynamic in that they replicate each other’s production
imperatives and stylistic mechanics. Reality TV, as of the late ‘80s into the 1990s and what Americans and Europeans
understand it as nowadays, owes much to American Direct Cinema (“fly on the wall”) documentary production
coming out of the ‘60s by the Maysles brothers and Frederick Wiseman (McCreadie 2008, 38). Employing handheld
equipment and sync sound, the Maysles brought an unprecedented level of immediacy and indexicality to their work,
as they hover around voyeuristically in a subject’s bedroom, filming door-to-door with a Bible salesman. Key here,
the processes of production are mostly mysterious under the Maysles production style. An occasional hiccup in the
Maysles’ filming might have resulted in a traumatic moment for the finished documentary, but the observational
illusion in their work is dogmatically maintained. An American Family (1973), considered by many the ur-reality TV
text, aired on PBS in the early ‘70s and employed Direct Cinema tactics to capture the fall of the suburban Loud
family. The show follows them through divorce and their son’s coming out. No level of invasiveness was too much,
and allegations of exploitation echoed from the frothing mouths of critics eager to condemn the experimental new
form. While ethical condemnation made television producers wary of stylistically observational reality projects, the
Maysles were undeterred because Direct Cinema documentaries were impervious to criticism that a “lesser” medium
like television could not withstand. In the wake of An American Family, the Maysles 1976 documentary, Grey Gardens,
though not stylistically dissimilar to their previous endeavors, feels uniquely exploitative; its subjects, Big and Little
Edie, appear as particularly senile and enigmatic personas, dancing before the camera and indulging the distinct
whimsy of social ineptitude. The Maysles brothers do not need to explicitly intrude in the narrative to point out Big
and Little Edie’s aberration because they found subjects who do all the speaking for them. This sort of exploitative
flavor is not unlike contemporary reality TV, on which producers often select their subjects exclusively by their degree
of exploitation value.
From the narrative standpoint, there has been a gradual shift in documentary to emphasizing unique subjects
or characters rather than any explicit social or political theme, according to Bruzzi. As the Maysles found particular
characters useful for grounding their narratives, as in Grey Gardens, often so does reality TV. Bruzzi (2006) even
maintains that “character” is “central to the appeal of reality television” (122). These characters, though, are especially
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different from their viewership and consequently issue a “freak show” style appeal. Michael Moore smartly keeps
himself as the central ‘character’ of his documentaries; Moore can be funny, obnoxious, and sanctimonious, and when
he exploits his interview subjects, it is him doing it and not in any overt fashion the film itself. This keeps Moore’s
social imperative intact. However, other documentaries have emphasized character with purely exploitative results.
Terry Zwigoff ’s Crumb (1994) captures the elusive cartoonist Robert Crumb in sometimes unbearably intimate spaces,
and Zwigoff ’s subject has gone on to condemn the documentary as inaccurate. Crumb also features an interview with
one of the cartoonist’s mentally disturbed siblings, Charles Jr., who alludes to his impending death while on camera.
Zwigoff makes a point to note, before the credits, that Charles Jr. eventually did commit suicide one year after his
interview, making for a traumatic moment, as if Zwigoff wanted to invigorate some sense of guilt in any viewer who
perceived the Crumb family as a parade of freaks. The problem, though, is that Terry Zwigoff explicitly designed the
documentary to be just that, as he draws viewers deep into the aberrant sex lives of the Crumbs and baits his interview
subjects. Crumb operates as a thematic Catch-22 in that sense, a trap for viewers who might attain schadenfreude by
means of Zwigoff ’s “characters.”
But to contend that documentary infringes on its characters to the degree that reality TV does is a bit of
stretch. Since the early 1990s, televisual realistic representation has quite effectively exploited its excitable on-screen
personalities. Arguably, this began in 1992 with MTV’s The Real World (1992-ongoing), which regularly stages a hick
versus gay youth ideological battle each season, and continues into the 2010s with TLC’s now-canceled Here Comes
Honey Boo Boo (2012-2014) and MTV’s controversial Buckwild (2013). While airing, TLC came under fire by critics
for Honey Boo Boo, a blatantly exploitative look into the lives of overweight, rural ignoramuses from Georgia. The
central character of the show (the eponymous “Honey Boo Boo”) was a seven-year-old girl clearly incognizant of
her extended relationship with the camera. The problem here is not, as it may seem, exploitation in and of itself—
the camera exploits even the suspecting because viewers, as voyeurs, can consume images with any and all harmful
prerogative—but whether these filmed subjects are aware of the conditions of production, or, to put it plainly,
whether they are in on the joke. On shows such as Bravo’s The Real Housewives... (2006-ongoing), there is a degree
of reflexivity insofar as those shows’ “characters” understand they are a part of a larger reality TV conversation.
In reunion specials, the housewives accuse each other of self-promotion, inauthenticity, performance, and other
critical buzzwords already part of the reality TV lexicon. Honey Boo Boo, on the other hand, offended critics because
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its characters did not engage the already-established skepticism implicit to all twenty-first century televisual realism.
And though Honey Boo Boo “don’t care,” as she repeatedly tells the camera in confessionals, a mimed sentiment
frequently spewed by her pernicious mother, she may well care when she is old enough to do so.
Another formal similarity between contemporary documentary and reality TV is what Bruzzi (2006) calls
“crisis structure,” in which the narrative crescendos toward an engaging moment of conflict, keeping viewers hooked
till the arrival of that pivotal scene (130). This is clearly a nod to fictional cinema, which supports Renov’s fictive
documentary model, and even dead serious works such as Waltz with Bashir propose an accelerating problematic with
the footage of the massacre serving as the climax or revelatory moment. Michael Moore establishes a number of
his documentaries as a “quest” to seek out mythic capitalistic/political figures, such as Charlton Heston in Bowling
for Columbine. Not coincidentally, Moore’s confrontation with the aging actor and then-NRA president appears near
the end of its narrative. Entire seasons of reality TV are set within a crisis structure, and distinctly controversial and
volatile moments are teased in promos before and during an individual season to keep viewers coming back for that
promised payoff. MTV’s reality show Jersey Shore (2009-2012) perfected this approach; key dynamic-changing fist fights
between housemates appear further into each season, and are usually teased heavily in marketing campaigns.4 This
is not a conspiratorial accusation, however, implying that these fights are shifted from where they actually occurred
prior to editing. Rising tensions in the Jersey Shore house, aided by inflated egos (these “characters”) and the intensity
of twenty-four hour surveillance, give way to a crisis structure that articulates enigmatically within the interactions of
the Jersey Shore housemates. No direct prodding is required as the mediated environment itself facilitates the necessary
drama.
Bruzzi, despite seemingly providing reality TV’s validation, is ultimately dismissive of the form. In her schema,
she values documentary over reality TV, even when pointing out their similarities, and this after documentary’s
irreconcilable destabilization in her performative frame. Bruzzi (2006) argues that, unlike documentary film, no
“extended ideological message is extrapolated” from the more popular and populist reality programming. Ideological
problems, of course, do take place, but are not milked by oppressive voice-over or a self-conscious thesis; supposedly a
4. Much of Jersey Shore’s critical disdain can be attributed to its promotional style rather than the actual content of the show, which at the
time of airing differed little from VH1 and Oxygen reality programs containing equal and greater amounts of domestic violence but did
not induce the same level of ire. Jersey Shore, through its constant repetition of violence against women in its promos, sensationalized and
glorified that content. Even disclaimers that appeared before offending episodes could not detract from the show’s unrepentant and cheap
advertising.
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“curious ambivalence” to serious issues takes place on reality TV (139). And to juxtapose reality TV with observational
(“fly on the wall”) documentary, reality TV’s closest documentary relative, Bruzzi (2006) asserts that Direct Cinema
retains a “keen sense of off-screen space, an existence that will not be terminated when the cameras are switched off,”
whereas reality TV manufactures its diegesis, drawing little from the external reality represented, and its off-screen
space is “if not empty, then not the predecessor or an adjunct of its on-screen counterpart” (136). Bruzzi’s distinction
here implies that observational or Direct Cinema documentaries inform their content through their means of
production, mechanically and otherwise, to a lesser degree than reality TV. While Jersey Shore and other surveillanceoriented, fishbowl style shows such as The Real World exemplify on-screen realities with no off-screen adjunct, Bruzzi’s
position is nevertheless hinged upon an exceptional artistic outlook given the contemporary media climate.
This is not to say that Bruzzi is entirely wrong in her assessment. Consumer entertainment is not universally
meaningful. And reality TV is often not consumed from a critical perspective and does internally produce much of
its on-screen content, but Bruzzi’s stance does not take a nuanced perspective on the form and as such subjugates
reality TV in relation to the academic and critical vantage point. Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy (2004-2007), a
Fox reality venture, is a show with ample critical potential, for instance. Trading Spouses’ most infamous “character” is
one cheekily referred to as the “God Warrior,” a proud Louisiana Christian named Marguerite Perrin who appeared
on a 2006 episode. The conceit of Trading Spouses, as the title suggests, is two mothers from separate families spend a
prescribed amount of time with that other family and decide on how they should spend an allotted $50,000 provided
by the show for their participation. Typically, the two families have some clear ideological differences, and conflict most
assuredly grows out of that difference. Often, as a consequence, the visiting mothers make controversial decisions
about how the money should be spent, which is met by some delectable on-screen hostility. In Perrin’s episode, she
spends time with a family that practices what they call “New Age religion,” and her response is nothing short of
maniacal; much of the episode features Perrin crying and gagging as she dispenses willy-nilly judgment on the family.
She damns them as “dark-sided.” And the New Age family is dumbfounded by Perrin’s extreme reaction to their
religious practices, which they do not take very seriously in the first place. As the New Agers host an event for the
summer solstice, organized with a distinct nonchalance, the festivities appear on-screen very far from any religious
ceremony. These are just beatniks of the Kumbaya variety, drinking and playing instruments. When Perrin finally
travels back home to Louisiana, even her own family has no clue how to react to her antics. Perrin throws the Fox film
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crew out of her house, rejects their “tainted” money, and tears up the letter from the New Age mom stating how they
would have spent that money. Perrin indulges a remarkable level of theatrics, assuredly instigated by the presence of
cameras and the reality show conceit that planted her in what she perceived as an oppositional environment.
Marguerite Perrin was met with some notoriety for her memorable stint on Trading Spouses, even appearing on
The Tonight Show at its height. Was she in on the joke? That is debatable. What is not, though, is the conversation about
contemporary American religious practices and middle class sensibilities engaged by Perrin’s episode. While viewers
are not let to decide which on-screen ideology to favor—Perrin is antagonist par excellence—what they can see is
the dissemination of some very clear polarities, and this says something firstly about popular media and secondly
about an exterior social world that shaped these subjectivities before they appeared on camera. Bruzzi is under the
impression that off-screen space “does not precede” reality TV’s articulation; quite the opposite is true. While Trading
Spouses functions more as a social experiment than an actual representation of reality, it is still undeniably informed by
an external social and political milieu. The formal structure of the show explicates this fact. The show is divided into
two separate forty-four minute episodes to cover each spousal trade, an unnecessary amount of time to dedicate to
each which results in undue emphasis on the inane. The show which Trading Spouses imitates, ABC’s Wife Swap (2004ongoing), is a punchier version of an identical premise and manages to achieve the same basic end goal in half the
running time, with the help of some voice-over.5 So why did Trading Spouses focus on just two wives, why not more?
The screen time was there, assuredly, and the presence of more than two disparate worldviews might have brought
some needed texture to the series. The reason is because a polarized political/ideological Western world informs the
formal textual structure of Trading Spouses itself, and this Western world precedes the show and continues on well
after the credits roll. While this may not be readily available to the passive consumer unable to extract an “extended
ideological message,” they can, at the very least, see the distinct differences between the two ideologies Trading Spouses
juxtaposes, which is not a “curious ambivalence” to serious issues as Bruzzi suggests.
Trading Spouses aside, reality television is not always communicating directly about social issues, such as
documentary, but it is a medium that has something to say about contemporary consumer culture. Mark Andrejevic
(2004), a reality TV theorist, considers reality programming unusually suited to convey “how mediated appearances
are constructed by the apparatus of the culture industry,” and that it “accurately portrays the reality of contrivance in
5. Reality television is highly postmodern in that its imitation and pastiche are infinite in execution. ABC’s Wife Swap is actually based off a
UK show of the same name, to which Trading Spouses is indebted. A system of textual replication is endemic to the form.
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contemporary society” (16, 17). This has something to do with the troublesome designation of “reality” television,
as if the format actually made some authentic claim on the Real. In the moniker’s very utterance, reality TV is selfcontradictory, which means every show within the reality genre is foregrounded by twenty-first century skepticism
that it has no qualms engaging. Paradoxically, reality TV works best when viewers do not believe what they see and
question the text. Many savvy viewers’ singular pleasure is to point out what is and is not contrived on reality TV.
Though this can have an adverse effect, what Andrejevic (2004) posits as “a strategy for protecting artifice while
exposing it,” I contend that this side effect is not as detrimental as Andrejevic figures (16). Rather, savvy consumption
disseminates acute awareness in viewers for the machinations of consumer media and its producers. Reality TV is
an emblematic capitalist text. Its structure and content extol the sort of uncanny version of reality savvy viewers
instinctively resist. These viewers are isolating toxic capitalist interventions which have reconfigured our lived reality for
the living room. Assuredly, when consumer capitalism mediates reality, there are distinct moments of epistephelia
wherein viewers witness the prevailing forces of contemporary society folding in on themselves.
MTV’s Buckwild exemplifies this sort of epistephelia. Airing for only one ratings bonanza of a season, the show’s
visible intent was to shed light on the youth of an underrepresented American state, West Virginia. Its characters were
a mishmash of willfully ignorant, college-aged kids whose view of the world was distinct insofar as the “country”
way of life is distinct. Furthering an earlier idea, reality TV targets these rural types because their relationship to
represented reality is more pure than people from urban or high income areas, whose reflexive relationship with the
camera instantiates a built-in rejection of its operations (a la Bravo’s The Real Housewives…). This is not to say rural
people are uninformed of the whole reality televisual enterprise, just that they seem convinced their particular way
of life impedes the chicanery of producers. And this is true of the Buckwild cast, who insist: “West Virginia is a place
founded on freedom […] that means the freedom to do whatever the fuck we want!” Spoken during the show’s
opening credits, this brazen sentiment establishes the ominous nature of the show, as one of its main participants,
the now-deceased Shain Gandee, proved to be its representational tipping point. Twenty-one-year-old Gandee, a
lifelong resident of Wolfpen holler in Sissonville, functioned as the show’s in-house daredevil. At the start of episode
one, he cheerily folds himself into an oversized tire and is rolled down the side of a steep hill just outside his family
home. In episode two, he turns a dump truck into a swimming pool. In another episode, he helps build a potato gun
that nearly burns his friend’s face off; searing fire is a fixture among Gandee’s daily activities, be it a nighttime bonfire
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or a romantic gesture. More than half of the season’s twelve episodes feature scenes of Gandee or his close friend
Joey Mulcahy fearlessly plunging pickup trucks into deep, muddy water found in the hilly West Virginia terrain. And
with his 1984 Ford Bronco’s exhaust pipe submerged in mud in the middle of the night, Gandee died of carbon
monoxide poisoning almost two months after the final episode of Buckwild aired on MTV. Within the following days,
the network canceled the show amid ethical criticism regarding their selection of participants, many of whom were
already tangled with the law by the time Gandee had passed.
Bill Nichols’ term “social actor” is useful for understanding critics’ reaction to Gandee’s death in conjunction
with the show he appeared on. According to Nichols (2010), social actors “draw on prior experiences and habits to
be themselves in the face of a camera.” Further, social acting is an “expression of traits” not adapted to “fit a role”
(8-9). “However,” Nichols contends, “TV shows like The Real World and Survivor give us untrained social actors so
strongly shaped by the filmmaker or producers that these works are usually treated as fictions even though their style
locates them close to the documentary tradition” (10). On Buckwild, Gandee was portraying a cranked up version of
himself for the camera in order to fit a specific redneck mythos producers had generated for the show. Buckwild also
has a twenty-one minute runtime, so there is a necessity to provide a hyperbolized and easily comprehensible version
of reality. This is reinforced by suspect commentary Gandee provides in his confessionals, most likely guided by
production staff. After swimming in water downstream from a power plant, Gandee tells the camera: “I’ve swam [sic]
in this power plant water probably fifty times. I’ve only got sick maybe twice. You could practically drink this shit!”
Nearly every scene in Buckwild is meant to prove these young social actors are reckless, ignorant, and doomed to a life
of cultural and intellectual ineptitude. The schadenfreude here is forced to the point of nausea. Worse, the hyperbole
and excessive danger of the show seems not as blatant in the face of Gandee’s nearly prophesied off-screen death.
In “Bucking Unseen Moments,” a season finale special, Gandee interviews a local resident who says one of the great
past times of Sissonville is driving up to the hills and getting a truck “hung up” in the mud. Smiling, Gandee agrees,
saying, “It is. Be stuck up there all night.” Scenes of Shain Gandee’s father Dale imploring that he be safe merely fuel
the Buckwild narrative’s uncanny relationship to his demise.
The young people and environment of Buckwild were unsuited to withstand the machinations of consumer
capitalist representation. When the show’s characters claim theirs is a life untouched by city folks and all the ills they
bring with them, they are not wrong. Producers required that Gandee and his friends convey their country lifestyle at
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its most extreme, and they did so with little regard for how that might play out. Thusly, that represented reality seeped
out beyond the televisual text, intervening with the reality it was mediating for the sake of viewership and advertising
revenue instead of any conceivable sense of truth. Certainly, in light of all its off-screen tragedy, the show became true
but a sort of truth that damns those behind the camera instead of in front—a circumstance which certainly gave
its producers pause, as evidenced by their quick cancellation of the show. Here, too, is the key ethical transgression
documentary theorists cite when rejecting reality TV. Yet this is not something to be ignored in favor of documentary
film; reality TV of this nature has a use to us. Buckwild forms Andrejevic’s “contrivance” of contemporary society and
what that contrivance does to those who come into contact with it. Gandee’s untimely death is not directly the fault
of the show, but the show facilitated a narrative which made his death so expected and seemingly natural that anyone
watching and caring could be made acutely aware of the immorality and thoughtlessness of consumer capitalism.
To read reality TV as comparably “less than” documentary is merely one reading, and speaks to a cultural
superiority or arbitrary hierarchy of representation that might favor a “sober” documentary over a thickly produced
and mediated reality show. Andrejevic (2004) ambitiously writes an entire book on the subject of reality TV only
to fashion his discussion into a polemical outcry against these shows, which misses the global problematic. Also,
reality TV can make for some literate albeit quick to judge viewers. Just because something is a product of the
culture industry does not inherently mean it can be discredited critically. As these forms of realistic representation
transmutate and coevolve, to dismiss one for the other has become dubious. The enduring question, and this touches
on all popular culture criticism, is whether “‘entertainment’ and ‘social weight’ really exist as mutually exclusive terms”
(Susan Murray 2004, 69). I firmly believe they are not mutually exclusive.
My argument is that from the perspective of merit, documentary and reality TV are closely related to one
another. The privilege one is afforded over the other, at least in the academy or within “high” culture, is often a matter
of educational bias and, by that assertion, socioeconomic bias. Cultural choices, in light of sociologist Herbert J.
Gans (1999), are hinged upon a person’s “educational achievement,” which is, in turn, “predicted” by their economic
class (95). Most documentary films’ subject matter is meant for a narrow interest group, unlike reality TV which aims
for the largest audience possible. Moreover, documentaries, especially the expository kind Nichols extols, tend to
be somewhat slow in narrative and dense in their informational content, thereby attracting an audience used to that
kind of filmic construction. Typically, this particular audience is composed of the erudite and/or film enthusiasts
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whose education allows for that kind of appreciation. Nowadays, punchy documentaries such as Spurlock’s Super Size
Me6 and Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, which includes an animated segment a la Comedy Central’s South Park (1997ongoing), defy this trend. Privileging documentary over reality TV, then, says more about a given critic’s prejudice than
the object they are judging. Indeed, as Gans (1999) says of high cultural standards, viewers “cannot be expected to
choose [filmic] content which is incongruent with their education” (168). If viewers learn about their external social
world through “lesser” reality television, they cannot be faulted exclusively because of their personal choice but at least
partially to their material circumstances.
For those who privilege “higher” forms of cultural production, dismissing massively popular shows such as
A&E’s Duck Dynasty (2012-ongoing) is to snub a disparate (lower?) culture which abides by or favors that particular
construction of reality. And the adherence to that construction is critically valuable to both the viewers of these shows
and the many academic critics whose position is, at face value, dismissive of them. Leaving the hermetically sealed Real
of Duck Dynasty to its intended audience is a disservice when championing the same old documentaries produced by
the erudite, for the erudite. Marguerite Perrin punctuated a kind of cultural context, delivered on a mass scale, which
helped give shape to a contradictory set of middle class Christian values. The idea that she might have been exploited
because of her circumstances does not contaminate the message received, but instead highlights a consumer capitalist
production hierarchy which views people, especially vulnerable ones, as guinea pigs to be gawped at, reflective of
the objects being sold on commercial breaks. There is nothing new here about that criticism of reality TV. But the
moment at the end of Crumb where Terry Zwigoff guilts judgmental viewers is what happens when savviness intrudes
on the reality TV exercise; the accusatory finger turns around and we become complicit. A more difficult intellectual
hurdle is the realization that, in the throes schadenfreude, we are to blame for the thing we take guilty pleasure in.
On a much larger scale, this representational conversation is weighed by competing distributional mediums
(Film/TV). Theatrical films carry more “high” cultural credential than television. This is mostly because advertiser’s
intentions shape televisual content even, if not especially, reality television’s. Coca-Cola’s longtime support of American
Idol (2002-ongoing) proved to be one of the enduring advertiser relationships among reality programming. Anytime
capitalist intentions are favored over artistic or social ones, academic merit is unsurprisingly tarnished. Summer tentpole films, such as the Disney superhero movies, are also the subject of advertising whim, but to a lesser extent than
6. It should be noted that, before he became a poster boy for “New Documentary,” Spurlock’s was employed by reality television hotbed
MTV.
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TV, which locates the majority of its revenue in the hands of advertisers. Duck Dynasty is also proficient example here, as
its “American heartland” demographic attracts advertisers, such as Wal-Mart, who bank on its family-friendly content.
But television carries a consumer stigma that has been arguably eroded into the twenty-first century by networks
such as broadcast PBS and pay-per-month HBO that distribute high-minded documentary formats through the very
same consumer medium which distributes MTV’s Jersey Shore and ABC’s Wife Swap. Online, very popular TED talks
and salacious VICE News YouTube documentaries have further complicated the documentary/reality TV binary.
The Internet has bred a new documentary which capitalizes on consumer skepticism while furthering its delusional
shroud. The solution to this problematic, then, is heightened media literacy among consumers, allowing for what
Gans (1999) terms as “cultural mobility” among media consumption (171). However, such literacy is contingent upon
the breaking down of socioeconomic barriers meant to exclude “lower” taste communities from erudite documentary
viewership and “high culture” more generally, a mawkishly purposeful venture which preserves the integrity of touted
cultural items. Until then, as Gans (1999) contends, “it would be wrong to criticize people for holding and applying
aesthetic standards that are related to their educational backgrounds […]” (171). Reality TV belongs to “low” culture,
but it should not be ignored because it reaches a mass audience. Privileging a niche documentary which grosses very
little money over a television show viewed by millions of people is to willfully neglect a more widely accepted and
thusly more relevant form of cultural interest, and this oversight is only to perpetuate an exclusionary academic value
system.
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