On the occasion of the 20 years of reality TV,
20 Minutes
offers a series of articles on this phenomenon which has shaken the small screen.
In
Loft Story
, we put about fifteen young people in a house.
In
Les Marseillais
, about fifteen young people are placed in a house.
But is this the only point in common between the two generations?
“The way of constructing the character does not change drastically.
What changes is the candidate's degree of awareness, ”emphasizes sociologist Nathalie Nadaud-Albertini.
"The triumph of voyeurism", "a tyranny of insignificance", "a machine for psychic denudation". When
Loft Story
landed fresh on our screens twenty years ago, the press was quick to bring out the heavy artillery to destroy the program. Two decades later, the genre is still far from winning unanimous support, but it has become firmly established in the PAF. In a recent report, the CSA estimated that the so-called “collective life” reality TV represented 2,057 hours of program per year, a “volume almost three times greater than it was in 2010”.
It must be said that the genre has evolved a lot. Candidates are no longer locked up and monitored 24 hours a day by the eye of dozens of cameras attached to the walls of a temporary house. Today, the protagonists evolve in a more natural environment and chain jobs or missions in order to create a semblance of challenge.
The Angels of reality TV
, launched in January 2011 on NRJ12, is the show that has (almost) changed everything.
By bringing together various participants from past programs in one single villa, the genre took on another dimension and began to write a new page in its history.
"It transformed different stories that took place in different shows into a more important story which is that of reality TV," notes Nathalie Nadaud-Albertini, media sociologist.
Friday.
23 hours, waiting for the bonus of "Secret Story
"
Over the years, the shows have still lost the event aspect that created their strength. Remember those long evenings spent struggling not to fall asleep on our sofa before knowing the name of the person who was going to leave
Secret Story
… You sometimes had to wait until 1 am!
Each week, the so-called “confinement” programs took stock of the last few days and competed in their imagination to revive the public interest.
A mechanism that we no longer find today, the fault of the change in television consumption patterns.
"We are not so used to this live television, a moment when you have to be in front of the television," remarks Nathalie Nadaud-Albertini.
Before, we adapted its temporality to that of television.
Now, we adapt the temporality of the television to his own.
"Enough to make reality TV lose a prominent aspect of his story.
"Hello, my name is Jonathan and I would like to play the handsome muscular kid"
However, despite the lack of event bonuses, reality TV has not lost its fundamentals over the decades. In the press kit for
Loft Story
, published in 2001, M6 and ASP Productions then defined their UFO as "a real interactive fiction". With so many contradictory terms, there was something to get lost in. Overall, it was actually about casting people who seemed to fit certain profiles, putting them in multiple situations with a set of possibilities, watching them interact and then extracting the most relevant pieces to create a story. A scenario-building machine just as effective in 2001 as in 2021.
All this is possible in particular thanks to what Nathalie Nadaud-Albertini calls a “person-character”, namely “a character who is created on the actions and words of a person in a given situation. While a fictional actor will seek to aim for the probable in his performance, reality TV contestants can offer something more authentic and believable to the public.
But that was before… For several years now, those who pass a casting to join a reality show have known it: you already have to play a character to get noticed.
“The way of constructing the character does not change drastically.
What changes is the degree of awareness the candidate has, summarizes the media sociologist.
They are people capable of improvising scenes, especially when we tell them that nothing is happening.
They know that the idea is to stage a conflict because it will allow them to have air time, to be more visible outside and then capitalize on their notoriety.
"
Reality on TV?
When you are in front of a reality show, you recognize it immediately. First on the form with the use of bright colors or songs that we tend to listen to in TikTok challenges. But also on the merits with its candidates who clash about three times per episode. But, fortunately, each of the stories is unlike any other since before playing characters, the protagonists play their own score.
“When you put people together, there are also things happening that are not necessarily played out. They are real people so there is something genuine left. There is always something that we cannot play ”, nuance Nathalie Nadaud-Albertini. And if we can also summarize the whole concept of reality TV by "stories of love, friendship, enmities and family", this last criterion takes more importance year after year and season after. season.
Some of the “Marseillais”, who took their first steps in reality television as twenty-something in search of love, are now parents.
A new role that does not prevent them from evolving in front of the cameras, quite the contrary.
In 2018, Manon and Julien Tanti let 6play tell the story of the birth of their first child in
Manon + Julien = Bébé Fraté
.
Rebelote two years later for the little second with
Manon + Julien = Bébé Angélina
(we can't blame them for their lack of originality).
On the side of TFX, we let mothers tell their daily life in
Moms and Famous
for four seasons now.
Enough to prove that reality has more than ever its place on TV.
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Reality TV is 20 years old: Why do the shows leave so few traces in our memories?
Television
Loft story
The angels of reality TV
Reality show
Secret Story
The people of Marseilles