Language of Surveillance

Where is the reality? In the scene, situation, or equipment? As Andrejevic states, "[reality television] itself reinvents conventions of prime-time programming". What's the difference between Survivor and Jeopardy? After all, both use real people, aware of studio-grade cameras, culminating to a "relatively inexpensive and profitable entertainment product"(Andrejevic). While this may be one reason the Emmy's reality awards are split between the 'game show' and 'real-life' formats, it also reveals a particular problem with reality TV - it normally has a staged or fictitious element. While Big Brother and The Osbournes are differing formats, both take place in real houses - and each house becomes a stage/studio for all its camera-aware actors that prance by the kino-eye. There becomes a sort of grotesque voyeurism for any cheap spectacle. Hegenomy in its purest, there occurs "a recording of tastes [and] surveillance of consumption... all reflect[ing] a more nationalised and regulated way of life"(Robbins and Webster) which Americans are embracing. There becomes the obvious dissonance between what knowledge expansion surveillance may provide versus the control it maintains, especially when all surveillance power is granted to the state. With all technologies, there is an accompaniment of proper-use responsibility, and we've certainly seen this with security cams. Many movies have explored this principle, and even developed a language by which we understand given visual conditions as "security footage". A major question begs, "If we are always under surveillance anyway, how far off are we from being part of our own TV-show called LIFE?" Given that most reality TV involves amateur actors on professional sets with studio equipment, it's not going to take long before it reinvents itself with semi-believable stories on pre-installed surveillance equipment on college campuses everywhere. Considering the expense-profit ratio, that's just smart economics.