CULTURE-ARGENTINA: ‘Real Life’ on the Small Screen

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 4 2001 (IPS) - A scene of three people sleeping for hours is shown, in real time, on television. Later, the three eat, talk, argue, reflect or even kiss, all of which is observed by hundreds of thousands of TV viewers in Argentina, where the genre known as “reality TV” is all the rage.

“I can’t believe it. I arrive home at midnight with my husband and my adolescent children are sitting in front of the television with friends watching other people sleep,” concerned mother Mabel Gutiérrez told IPS. Her alarm is shared by many secondary school teachers who do not understand the allure this new programming holds for their students.

“Dead air time,” which in television tradition used to be considered a sin, has achieved significance in dozens of countries with the arrival of reality shows, in which – literally – nothing may happen during as much as 90 percent of the broadcast.

But this “reality” often comes off as unnatural, similar to the result photographers get when they ask a model to be “spontaneous” and the model’s face turns into a sort of mask.

Reality TV, dating back to experimental efforts in the 1970s, and resurrected by cable television’s music giant MTV with its “Real World” (now in its ninth season), has been at its height since the original version of “Big Brother” appeared in the Netherlands in 1999.

No other Latin American country has given this media trend the warm reception it has found in Argentina. Here, the public can choose between four TV programmes that largely involve the tedious vicissitudes of the participants, all against an illusory backdrop of reality.

Many Argentines believe in the possibility of making a living through public exposure, according to media experts. This explains, to some extent, the success talk shows enjoyed until the latest reality trend. Scores of previously nameless people proved eager to tell the shows’ hosts, and the TV camera, about their personal, and supposedly true, misfortunes.

Susana Salerno, of the Argentine Actors’ Association, said in a conversation with IPS that the traditional openness of this country to any new cultural trends has become bad news for her union, as professional actors are being pushed off the small screen, substituted by amateurs on the reality shows.

In 1999, Argentine actors launched a campaign to denounce the fact that, in five years, dramatic programming had been reduced from 50 percent to 11 percent, to a great extent replaced by talk shows.

Actors have always been invited to participate on these programmes, not to act, but to comment on current events or talk about their own lives, but with no pay. Now professional actors are facing new competition.

Reality shows represent the next level of public participation in television because the contestants, chosen among applicants from the general public, “live” on TV and provide constant company to viewers who may say they disapprove of the participants but in fact avidly watch them, even they do so with a sideways glance.

The most popular of the four shows in Argentina is “Gran Hermano” (Big Brother), based on the idea purchased from Dutch television. The Argentine version has three daily broadcasts, Monday through Saturday, and a 24-hour version via satellite TV.

Twelve contestants move into a house with 30 cameras and 70 microphones scattered throughout all rooms, including the lavatory and shower. The person who survives 112 days of this cohabitation wins 100,000 dollars.

The spectators are not as passive as they might seem because they can vote – through a three-dollar-plus-tax telephone call – on who should leave the programme. First, the inhabitants of this created community elect two candidates to be excluded, then the public decides between the nominees.

Another popular Argentine reality show is “The Bar,” broadcast Monday through Saturday evenings, also with the option of watching it 24 hours on a paid channel.

The programme involves young people who live together and work at a bar that serves the public – in front of 25 cameras and 50 microphones.

Then there is the more explicitly competitive “Expedición Robinson” (a copy of the US-made “Survivor”), which is in its second edition this year in Argentina. The participants, just one of whom will take home 100,000 dollars, compete on teams in eliminatory sports-related adventures on the island.

Lastly, for now, the country’s cable television offers a US- made programme in which Argentines are only viewers, not participants: “Temptation Island.”

On that show, four established couples are separated at a beach resort in Belize and face the attempts – day and night – of single men and women whose mission is to seduce the contestants into giving in, with the details available for the scrutiny of TV viewers.

As if four programmes were not enough, there are plenty of accompanying shows – “news” about entertainment and celebrities – that conduct interviews, surveys or panel discussions about what is occurring “in the house, at the bar or on the island.”

The phenomenon has also invaded the reputedly “serious” programmes, where sociologists, psychologists and experts on gender issues attempt to decipher the supply and demand involved in reality TV, a genre most of these specialists consider voyeuristic.

Comedians and even radio programmes do not miss a chance to make fun of the phenomenon. One of best known endeavours in this area is a spoof by “Todo por dos pesos” (Everything for Two Pesos), which each week shows two actors wearing masks of Walt Disney characters as they fight to use the lavatory, or portray some other difficult situation involved in the sharing of living quarters, as on “Big Brother.”

In the world of magazines, entire spreads are dedicated to telling “the true story” of the previously unknown participants in the reality shows, people who are quickly becoming famous. Ironically, it is the ones who have been voted out of the house, or kicked off the island, who get the most media exposure, and thus garner the most fame.

“The kicked me out because I’m a mother,” says a headline in the weekly magazine ‘Caras’ (Faces) above the photo of someone who is unknown to those who have not become obsessed with the genre. The story is about a young woman who was voted out of the house in “Big Brother” because, she says, the public was punishing her for having left her son with his grandparents in order to appear on the show.

An estimated 120,000 Argentines – all young and, for the most part, physically attractive – have applied to appear on these programmes. The producers generally agree on the requisite that the participants should be people who want a change in their lives, not just the prize money.

Sixty percent of the audiences for these programmes are women. But there are viewers from all socio-economic sectors, according to the polling firm IBOPE, which is measuring the impact of real TV on Argentine society and attempting to figure out who the audience is. When it came to determining the average age of the viewers, there were some surprises.

In contrast to the prevalent prejudices among the phenomenon’s critics, and the concerns of Mabel Gutiérrez about her teenage children’s new obsession, most of the audience is 50 or older, followed by the 30-49 age group. But the average age falls when the polls ask about “Expedition Robinson.”

Besides Argentina, the only other Latin American country to join the wave of real TV has been Brazil, which last year produced its version of “Survivor,” known as “No Limite” (To the Limit). The show was broadcast once a week from a remote location and included “common” people, such as professionals, homemakers and amateur athletes.

In the rest of Latin America, Cuba, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Mexico and Venezuela are relatively oblivious to the phenomenon. Uruguay is aware of the genre because a large portion of its television programming comes from neighbouring Argentina. Uruguayans, however, cannot take part in the phone-in vote for “Big Brother,” even though they are party to the show’s live broadcasts.

Given the circumstances, the professionals represented by the Argentine Actors’ Association have opted against launching a public campaign against those who may at one point have been among their fans, but are now their competition. However, the Association says it will lodge formal complaints with the television producers and station owners.