Another example of hyperreality. TASK 4

The hyperreality lecture/seminar has given me a whole different outlook on everything from holiday destinations to watching television, so I've decided to give another example of hyperreality.

TV EDITING.

Today's television can be seen as perfectly innocent and when we watch something that provokes us in one way or another, we automatically take what we see or hear to be the truth.

It's going back to the idea of Plot's cave. We are almost metaphorically chained to our sofas watching tv or "the shadows" and accepting it as reality when behind the scenes there are puppet masters controlling everything that we see and manipulating it in a way that provides us with the best,gripping entertainment.

Reality shows such as Big Brother are a socking example of this.
Big Brother claims to be a "What you see is what you get" show, but in a world of editing, it is now possible to condense 24 hours of footage into an hour long highlight show. However, with the pressure of telling a story in only one hour a lot of footage is filtered, leaving us with a crude caricature of real life which can easily manipulated to tell a whatever story the editors desire.

In May 2007, Danielle Lloyd threatened to sue the reality show over the way she was edited in the show. Lloyd was infamously involved in a race war alongside two other celebrities who supposedly racially harassed fellow contestant, Shilpa Shetty.
Footage shows Lloyd and co mimicking the bollywood star's accent, questioning her Indian customs and telling her to go home. What the show didn't broadcast however, was Lloyd apparently making up with Shilpa.

I accept that some of my behaviour in relation to Shilpa Shetty, which was broadcast on Celebrity Big Brother, was unkind. While I was still in the Celebrity Big brother house I apologised to Shilpa.

"However, footage which further demonstrated my good relationship with Shilpa, and the concerns I aired to Big Brother in the diary room about what was going on in the house was never screened."
Danielle Lloyd's statement to The Guardian -

Despite the statement Lloyd was still labeled as a racist in the public eye as this footage shows.



If you listen carefully at 00.36, you can hear someone calling Lloyd "the racist one"
So it's obvious that the public still think of her as a racist. Although the comments she made were textbook racism, the editing of Big Brother only exaggerated the effect and we, the viewers, accept that as reality.