Reality Television: The Art Of Reality TV Shows

In the movie Now You See Me 2, Morgan Freeman said “The eye, it may not lie, but don’t think for a moment it can’t be lied to.” The art of manipulation has the ability to deceive one’s psyche and alter their perception of reality. Society tries to implement a certain criterion of what the norm is by using the art of manipulation, whether it be through TV shows, news, or even books. Unreal is a TV show that attempts to reveal the manipulation found on one of the most successful reality shows on television, The Bachelor. The Bachelor is a dating show that tries to portray true love and happy endings. The majority of the show’s audience finds these portrayals to be nonsense, and Unreal perfectly reassures them of their opinion. Whether it be love,

In reality TV shows the producers are known as story producers, whose job is to coordinate and create a story on set. These stories are mainly created using manipulation. In Rachel E. Dubrofsky’s book, The Surveillance of Women on Reality Television: Watching The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, she says “Reality TV shows accurately portray the ‘reality of contrivance’” (Dubrofsky 24). Rachel is clearly stating in her analysis that reality TV shows are compiled with situations that are purposely constructed. Unreal portrays this contrivance in situations when the producers manipulate the contestants to participate in certain actions. Unreal gives its audience visual representation of the truth behind reality TV shows. Sarah Gertrude Shapiro was a former producer on The Bachelor and was a co-creator for Unreal. She based the majority of the show on her experience from working nine years as a producer on The Bachelor. This is prevalent because it brings truth to how similar these two shows actually

Reality dating shows, like The Bachelor, portray feminism and beauty in and extremely stereotypical manner. The Bachelor portrays women as a size two, blonde, with big breasts, and white, when in reality the majority of women are not like this. In fact, in the upcoming season of The Bachelor, 15 of the 30 women are white blondes and all but one is white. This is a dangerous portrayal, because it gives the women of society the mentality that they have to be this way to find love. Apart from the false portrayal of feminism, the show also classifies women into certain character roles, just like Unreal. The producers set an environment that modifies the attitudes of the contestants, and use specific footage to classify them. For example, one girl could be classified as the mean girl, or another as the desperate “MILF.” Both The Bachelor and Unreal use this classification to serve the purposes of higher ratings, audience approval, and to make the show more