Group Performance: Unit 8: Personal Cameras

This was another two-person group, and they held "interviews/auditions" for a fake reality TV show.  The first part was an interview in which members of the class were called up by number (the numbers were assigned to each person at the start of class and then some were randomly selected) and asked what they liked to do with their free time, what they liked to eat, etc.  Some people interviewed were selected to audition in front of a camera.  The cameraman tried to pinpoint the auditioners into personality types that would work best for the show.

Then the performing group "filmed" the show.  It was a reality show about a competition among actors for a specific part.  The episode acted-out was about the contestants having to act in a Coca-Cola commercial.  At one point, someone took off some of their clothes.  The contestants started acting like polar bears from the famous Coke commercial.

Finally, the performing group showed a video of a reality show being edited together, which showed how "reality" is constructed for television. 

Evan: I didn't understand the beginning.

Naomi: It's about how people try to be certain personalities once they know they're on TV.

Evan: So people can't really be themselves.

Gail: We talked a lot about the "ground state" in our discussion - whether we can ever "be ourselves," esp. given that we're always on camera.

Wafa: It got me thinking about reality TV shows and how they're not real.  It's also always very dramatic.  Almost too dramatic to believe.  

Gail: You can't believe it, but people watch these shows b/c they're "real."

Naomi: I don't know if people watch reality TV b/c it's more real - a lot of people watch different things b/c of the characters - and if you can relate more to the characters.  Reality TV just makes characters more relatable.  The central basis of all TV is the same, it's about the characters.  People get attached to certain people on Survivor.

Wafa: Last week, I watched an episode of the new Real World, it was so weird b/c it was just their first day meeting, and drama started.  I found myself really into it.  That's weird.  It does have you thinking about how it's very addicting, you just keep watching and watching, and some of the characters would relate to who you are, or you get attached to some of the characters b/c you share some of the same emotions.

Evan: I used to watch The Hills and I don't relate to Lauren, or live in The Hills.

Wafa: Or you relate to how different they are.  Or how stupid it is.

Evan: That I relate to.  How stupid it is.

Wafa: And it's all scripted, it's so stupid.

Gail: This produced a lot of "actorly" behavior in the "contestants" - the people selected for the show talked about feeling lucky to get on the show, and to have people's attention, and some of them really ramped up how performative they were being for the fake reality show.  I think this was like a social experiment in that it asked whether people are different for the camera than they are in real life, and it demonstrated that yeah, we're pretty different.  The discussion was awesome, we talked a lot about whether we have a "ground" state when we are really ourselves, and whether there is a reality.