If a reality show is going to have legs, it has to have a great cast. Having a good cast is a complex alchemy that is very much like a band. It’s not about skill, or experience or looks or likability, though that’s all a help. A good cast is about chemistry. In many instances it just IS, it is not made. Without the good cast the show will not fly. Having a cast with good chemistry is the input for our reality TV factory. Behind the scenes, we who craft the shows pull levers and spin dials to accentuate the characteristics that a good cast already possesses. An Instagram is the concentrated version of this. It is a cast of one. The stakes are high.
A good cast has characters just like in scripted shows. In the process of creating a successful show or a successful Instagram/YouTube/twitter/TikTok a remarkable creature comes into being: a reality TV star. As such the reality TV stars are not so distant from ye olde shakespeare and will generally fall along classic lines of dramatic stage personas: villains, heroes, fools, foils, tragic failures and damsels in distress. Below I will describe the process of creating a reality TV star on TV. But it is not the making of internet celebrities that I am pursuing but rather the way the much maligned reality TV was the bellwether to our current epoch of media stars on a multitude of platforms.
Reality TV casts really are ‘just’ people and as a general rule horrible actors, so when the cameras roll they really are presenting themselves. Exhibitionism is the currency. They are expected to air their dirty laundry whether it be about money, love or friendship. Cast members who are not simply outrageous by appearance or affect must find other means to enchant – usually by vomiting their interior through deed or word. No matter what your level of charisma, if you do not do this you will end up in the dust bin. That is the trade off; take your emotional clothes off and fuck in front of the camera or pack your shit and go (I address the correlation between the rise of porn and reality TV here). The successful reality cast members understand this either consciously or unconsciously. In the process of exposing their inner emotional lives they become typecast based on their most useful qualities with regards to cast as a whole e.g. a slut, or a liar, or an angry person, or a sad sack, or a drunk (villain, foil, hero or fool). These qualities can be fluid, just like real life, or fixed if the show requires it (Dr. Phil will always be the wise neutered sage). Over time the reality subject who was once ‘just’ a person will transform into the thing they are presented as on TV. This will happen like the much analogized cold blooded frog in a boiling pot – as the heat is turned up slowly to a boil and the frog doesn’t notice – the cast member won’t even be aware of the change, and the audience won’t be the wiser either because they only ever saw the constructed TV persona to begin with.
This metamorphose takes several seasons and is especially acute in the domain of docu-soaps where personalities and inter relational dynamics are mined over the course of multiple seasons. In the first season the molding of the on screen persona begins and the traits and roles that we will eventually identify each character with begin to emerge. As producers of reality TV we tell the audience who a person is through our depiction of them on a screen. That reality subject is then told who they are by the audience via the airing of their episodes and the concurrent chorus from Twitter and Reddit. That person internalizes the version of their character from TV and the internet fallout, and voilà: that person becomes even more solidly the person we have created. This process is repeated episode by episode, season after season. The reality TV star undergoes a re-education about who they are based on who they are on TV and social media. Some characters are self aware enough to ride the bucking bronco and be the character that TV has made for them, some are not. Now that the business has matured most reality stars know the game that is being played and at least try. However, from a psychological perspective, being human still works in the same ways pre and post Tree of Knowledge. Without concerted effort self-knowledge alone does not stop the internalizing of external negative stimuli. Most reality TV stars are essentially living their own Shadow and are not aware of it (more on the Shadow and reality TV in another post). This can be a very toxic and dangerous place to live, a place explored quite eloquently and poetically in the book Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I have first hand experience in this process. Here is an example I used in another post: In one show I was editing it was an understood joke between us editors (some shows work in teams of up to 15 editors or more) that whenever we cut away to a certain female cast member during a dialogue scene we would show a single of her stuffing something in her mouth. It wasn’t part of the story and she was not fat or skinny and food or body image was not part of her story for her more than anyone else – it was just a fun inside joke we editors had to rib the subject. This particular character had become difficult and although she was central to our cast’s arc she had begun to censor herself and limit access to her dirty laundry. As I have said above this is the unspoken contract that must not be broken, and in fact today she is unemployed for this very reason. So we stuck it to her in ways we could by poking her vanity. We were so relentless that we eventually got word from the network execs to stop cutting away to (X) while she was eating. The following season I was following mics and just listening for snippets of dialogue that I could use for a particular edit problem I was trying to solve (the subjects are wired for sound during shooting and often you can hear their conversations even when the camera is not on them). Some remember this fact, some do not, some don’t care. Subject (X) was talking to subject (Y) during lunch. Subject (Y) commented on the lunch and subject (X) mentioned that she dare not eat it because of her body shape. Subject (Y) reacted with surprise and said “What? But girl you look amazing!”. Subject (X) replied “Are you kidding me babe? Did you see me last season?! Every time the camera was on me I was stuffing my face!”. This is the internalization of behaviors arranged out of context and mirrored back to the reality cast. She has a scale, her own memory, her friends and a mirror yet the world we have constructed has her in it’s grips. Seeing is believing, and it is very seductive. I would posit it cannot be resisted.
In the case of Instagram celebrity the rules are the same. However, because we are our own producers on Instagram the responsibility shifts to the individual, not the team of producers and editors and network executives. In the case of Tekashi69 (aka 6ix-9ine) he expertly but recklessly sculpted his character. The goal was to maximize internet notoriety with a hodgepodge of playbook standards. Like a nouveau riche parody he grabbed as many signifiers off of the rack and slapped them on his persona. Face tattoo, check. Clothing, check. Out-sized behavior, check. Produce some music, check. Gang affiliation for purposes of street cred, check. Getting lost in the sauce, sadly – check. 6ix-9ine ran headlong into the false and unstable shadow persona and paid the price, just as our good Doctor does in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
6ix-9ine is actually just a relatively normal young kid who got caught up in the likes. I have empathy for him. All of us have done things for personal gain that we are not proud of and now that we have matured through the process of personal growth can see were foolish at least, and dangerous at most. Likely he was not consulting with a therapist while making his injurious decisions, and unfortunately now he does most of his consulting with lawyers. 6ix-9ine is a poster child for the way reality TV can twist the metal of your own consciousness. There is nothing inherently wrong with being a performer who performs as something they are not really. It is the basis for all dramatic performances. In small doses our Shadow Material can make our lives much richer and thrilling. In the world of reality TV (and Instagram/Twitter/TikTok) it is much more fraught because difference between reality and the “reality” portrayed on the screen becomes blurred. Reality TV and media stars are using their actual personal material to trade in this devilish deal and that makes the deal with the devil much more demonic. When playing a villain it is better to not actually be a villain.