10
Popular Culture Review
Though the documentary is undoubtedly closely related to reality TV on the
media family tree, one can make a case that the rise of certain forms of
technology, especially the Internet and surveillance cameras, marks the true
beginning of the reality era, for it was at this moment that the documentary was
thought to be democratized. It was here, at the dawning of this new age of
postmodemity, that technology made it such that the everyday became
fetishized, the ordinary person could get on camera, and the camera itself
became an integral part of everyday life.
Deleuze maintains that we are no longer individuals and instead prefers the
term “dividual” in reference to the sense in which the no-longer-discrete
individual is multiplied in data banks around the world as a set of numbers,
credit reports, and data.3 Let us not disagree with this so much as add to it the
concept of the “di svidual” to refer to the fully-available self, the self that is a
construct of being always on camera, always potentially on the other end of the
phone, always being there for us—immediately (mediatedly) ready for us,
working for and existing for us—through the lens of technology.
In 1993 the Internet was, at best, an information cul-de-sac, but at
Cambridge University a group of computer programmers, tired of having to run
up several flights of stairs to the building’s coffee area only to find out that the
pot was empty, decided to put a live camera shot of the coffee maker on-line so
it could be checked easily from their cubicles. It was the first webcam ever, and
it started a revolution. Today, reality TV stars make their money by offering
themselves up for continual surveillance. There is a supposed distinction
between reality shows that simply follow people around during their ordinary
day (e.g., shows such as My Fair Brady and Cops) and shows that have a
contrived plot (e.g., Survivor and Wife Swap), but as we will see, all of life is a
contrivance. Though reality TV participants are laboring, they have no union.
This is, in part, why the standard reality TV show costs one-third of what it
takes to make a traditional scripted show.4 But let us make no mistake: this is
labor. And as such, it means that there is, by definition, no such thing as free
time for a reality TV star.5 One is being paid to be available at all times, to be
filmed at all times, to star as the disvidual in shows that both reflect and create
the selves we are all secretly becoming, for we, too, are always available—to
our bosses, to our friends and family, even to the technological projection of our
desires. It is not only the case that we must fax from the beach, tuck in our
children by cell phone, and always be on call and on camera (as an AT&T
commercial once promised/threatened), but that even the illusion of our free
time is ordered and controlled by technology and the demand to put ourselves at
its disposal.
The cell phone is the most obvious case, but there are others—no matter
what direction we turn in life. TiVo, for instance, is sold to us as convenience.
We can miss our favorite shows and then watch them at our leisure. But nothing
could be further from the truth. My TiVo does not free me but instead forces me
to bend to its will. As its hard drive starts to get full and all of the little circles