Emotional Expression in Reality TV

Reality TV has been disputed and discussed along many lines for the last 20 years; the media themselves always with a twist of concern about reality programs crossing moral borderlines while research has put more interest in questions of genre and representation of more or less useful and maybe empowering social identities. In the latest generation of reality TV which Misha Kava has described as the “celebrity generation”, it seems that reality creates new standards for mixing facts and fiction and even different “realities” as participants become media stars while more traditional celebrities are being treated as ordinary people. My article will discuss different presentations of selves and especially the emotional verbal and nonverbal expressions in reality TV communication. Aspects of the intimate self and its emotional expressions seem to be strategically managed in reality TV and even commodified in the celebrity culture.
The article will discuss and analyze examples of reality TV’s interpersonal strategically communication in relation to ordinary interpersonal communication where much information about the self is communicated incidentally to the purpose of the situation, and some is communicated involuntarily. Goffman has described the intended and the unintended aspects of personal communication as information ‘given’ which means intended and managed, and information ‘given off’ which is unintentional. In relation to his investigation in human lying and deceit Ekman points out, that information ‘given off’ in lying behavior will must often be found in non-verbal mikro expressions and mikro gestures.
I will end by discussing the strategic emotional expressions as production of floating identities in a broader framework on the basis of among others Gergen, Lipovetsky and Baumann. These postmodern and hyperreal trends will then be discussed in relation to Danish philosopher Løgstrup and his concept of the basic utterances of life (de suveræne livsytringer) and Habermas’ understanding of life/system worlds. I aim to get closer to an understanding of what management of visibility and sensibility in communication might mean to the human being of our time – and why we seem to seek it so desperately in the (media) culture.