Blog post #1 for Wednesday’s reading on January 22, 2020

Reading Summary

Media can not actually give you something real. It is a medium for which things in the real world can be shown to the receiving audience and yet what they are seeing is not real. All they are seeing is pixels or hearing audio waves. Because of this it changes the way we see and feel about film and television. Smith argues that “realism isn’t natural it’s just something people do.” He states that people look at a wide range of media forms that are put together by the creators techniques and is then left up to the audiences interpretation. The audience assumes what they are seeing is real when the media maker does what their assumptions are. Peoples assumptions are different when it comes to sit-coms, reality television, documentaries, fictional films, news, and much more. The feeling of spontaneity plays a role in how the audience perceives realism. These feelings and assumptions are formed by the audiences experiences with film and television, but more importantly the real world. 

Source: Greg Smith (2010) CH 2 “What is realism, really?” in What Media Classes Really Want to Discuss. London: Routledge.

Outside Example

There is a show I watched over Christmas break that I watched with my sister out of boredom on Netflix. This show is called The Circle. In this show eight people are put into their own apartment building. They can only talk to each other by messaging through a social media app called the Circle. They make a profile page that consist of their photo, bio, and relationship status, but some of the players are catfish using fake profiles. It calls itself “a social media game show”. While this show is a reality game show, I always wondered whether the acknowledgment of the cameras made certain people play the game a certain way or act a certain way.

Reading Connection

The connection between the reading and my example are the perception of realism. The social media creates its own perception of realism for the creators and audience. For the reality show The Circle, a lot of things can come into question since it is a social media based show. The players have their own understanding of whats real in the game.The players and the audience are aware it is a show. It could honestly have a research paper written about it over realism and trying to understand it. As a viewer of the show you are aware that it is a show and these people you are watching are aware of it as well. From my own experiences in the world and my experiences with watching reality television I found this show to be realistic. After reading Smith’s understanding of realism I now know that this shows spontaneity is part of the reason it feels so real to me, despite the the awareness that it is a show.