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Introduction

In this essay I will analyse the way in which an ‘ordinary’ person is presented and how they present themselves in the reality TV programme Ex On The Beach. I will focus on the discourse of Maisie Gillespie whilst including some references to other speakers. Ex On The Beach is a series on MTV and its most recent season, which I will explore, was broadcast in early 2017. It is a show about young adults who are placed in a villa together, and as time goes on the participants’ exes arrive. Sometimes participants are told to choose another member to leave the villa and consequently, it is necessary that they try to be liked by the others, to maintain a place in the villa and popular standing within the show. However, as MTV is famous for bring ordinary people to stardom (Curnutt, 2009), it is also important to be liked by the audience in order to ensure the experience will lead to becoming a celebrity. I will look at how Maisie presents herself, and is presented, in relation to Goffman’s frontstage and backstage theory (Goffman, 1959), whilst comparing this to Thornborrow’s ideas about middle space (Thornborrow, 2015).

Theoretical Section

Goffman (1967), suggests that we live our normal lives in terms of performance; we aim to maintain a self-image within society in order to control the impression that others may perceive of us. This ‘impression management’ happens in a front stage setting, where we strive to maintain social standards; in discourse this may present itself as following pre-allocated turn taking, increased back-channelling to show attentiveness to the speaker, or hedges to soften meaning in order to avoid face threatening (Goffman,1967). The back-stage setting, on the other hand, is where one can “step out of character” and be authentic to oneself.

Thornborrow (2015), however, looks specifically at public participation media (in her case, Big Brother) and says that in reality television the participant makes a “choice between the presentation of a sociable self, in alignment with fellow housemates, or of a competitive self, in alignment with the frame of the game”. However in the ‘Diary Room’, (which in Ex on the Beach could be compared to the ‘to camera’ sections), the participants are in a “middle-space”; they are aware of being watched and so the aim “is not about being ordinary, but about displaying particular kinds of relevant social identities”. This also relates to Tolson’s (2006) theory about key identity values, where he says that showing a good moral standing (being of good character) is more likely to appeal to an audience than being funny and always good (being a character), or performing a caricature (performing a character). This means participants display these specific social identities in the middle space as they are aware of the double articulation; they are talking to the camera and producers but are aware that they are also addressing the audience at home.

Analysis

As an ordinary person in the show, Maisie is introduced by a voice over (Extract 1, lines 1-2), and this identifies her situated identity as being “a posh uni student” (Extract 1, line 1). Thornborrow (2001: 469-70) says that this type of situated identity places Maisie within a certain stereotype in the audience’s minds, and this will make people from that demographic more likely to warm to her as she is similar to them. However, the target audience of MTV is not “posh uni students” but instead are 16-34 years old and of a working class background. (Brandedcontent.adage.com, 2017). Therefore this voice over does not work in Maisie’s favour to encourage the audience to relate to her, or like her. Maisie then works to rectify this when she speaks to the camera, (Extract 1, lines 3-4) as she is in Thornborrow’s middle space (2001) and so needs to appeal to the audience at home, whilst still maintaining a sense of authenticity “I can get leathered down the fucking backstreets of Cardiff” and good moral standing “there’s more to me than wealth”. If however, we were to say that she was acting in a front stage performance at this time then Maisie would aim to keep a sense of privacy and reservation in her discourse (Coates 2000: 243), but this does not appear to be the case.

If Maisie was in front-stage performance (Goffman, 1967) when in her to camera exchanges she wouldn’t use so many expletives, which she does (Extract 1, line 4; Extract 2, line 12; Extract 3, Line 6). Goffman (1959) says that swearing is a feature of back-stage discourse, as you are “no longer maintaining social standards”, however Butler and Fitzgerald (2011) comment that swearing can “invite and promote an honest presentation of self” and that “these glimpses of extreme back-stage behaviour in a front-stage event provide a sense of playfulness, which may account for the attraction they hold for audience members at the time”. Butler and Fitzgerald also confirm that “the boundary between front-stage and back-stage self is blurred and tested in these moments” which supports the idea of Thornborrow’s ‘middle-space’ in television due to the aforementioned double articulation in this media context. This shows that although swearing in a front stage setting in day to day life is not socially accepted, in this ‘middle space’ setting, the swearing works to make us feel like Maisie is being genuine and not hiding or holding back.

When discussing ‘turn taking’ Goffman (1955: 2261) said “it seems that a system of practices, conventions, and procedural rules comes into play which functions as a means of guiding and organizing the flow of messages”, and by mentioning these ‘procedural rules’ it suggests that turn taking would mainly take place in a front-stage setting where we are “governed by protocols” (Goffman 1959). In the exchange portions of the extracts there is rarely any overlapping, and if there is, it usually follows a pause (Extract 1, line 15; Extract 3, line 2). This shows that the person overlapping thinks the previous speaker has finished; they aren’t intending to overlap and be face-threatening (Brown and Levinson, 1987) like you might in backstage performance, but instead are intending to follow these ‘rules’ for turn taking. This suggests that the participants are performing in a front-stage setting. They want to present themselves as polite and non-face-threatening in order to increase their chances of being liked and remaining in the show.

In the second extract we witness gossiping between three girls. Blum-kulka (2000: 213) says that gossip “has to do with exchange of information between at least two people about a non-present third party”. Gossip is a type of backstage talk and “has been seen as both a means of reinforcing group membership, and as a means of social control” (Guendouzi, 2001: 33). Guendouzi breaks the genre of gossiping down into “peer group news-giving” and “bitching”. When they are sat together during the exchange they are simply stating what is going on and how they feel; this would fall under peer group news giving. Zhahida does say at the end (Line 11) “are we gonna have a problem” however the laughing implies that she is joking and no face is threatened. After this however, both Zhahida and Maisie talk to camera and each talks about the conversation that has just taken place in a much more aggressive manner; this falls into the sub-genre of bitching. Although “bitching is typically always private-domain ‘off-the-record’ talk that relies on a ‘safe’ discursive environment to avoid any risk to the gossip instigator’s positive self-image” (Guendouzi, 2001) this is a little different in reality television.

The bitching takes place in this ‘middle space’ where although the participants are talking in a private-domain away from the other participants, they are speaking directly to the audience. In this extract it becomes clear that although Maisie doesn’t want to present herself as face-threatening to Zhahida (who she has just met), she does want the audience to know who she really is in order to make them like and trust her.

Conclusion

Maisie walks a tight-rope between performing in a front-stage setting and performing in the middle space in order to ensure that she presents herself in the right way to the right people. Through this analysis it is clear that middle space is prevalent in reality TV, whereas it is probably not in everyday life. Maisie and the other participants use this in order to make the audience like them and therefore increase their stardom after the show has aired. Brian Hayes said “never again will the voice of the public be irrelevant to the mainstream of broadcasting” (quoted in Hargrave 1994), and this could not be more true, however it is important to recognise that even the public, when involved in reality TV, are not in their back-stage setting and therefor are presenting only a version of themselves for the audience to see. On top of this, in Livingstone and Lunt’s interviews with audience members on Kilroy (2002), one said “they’ve got me typed as… someone who is prepared to open their mouth about their and other people’s sex lives”, and this still clearly applies now; in order to be liked and gain popularity Maisie and the others must present themselves in personal discourse that they probably wouldn’t do in a back-stage setting.

References

Blum-Kulka, S. (2000) `Gossipy Events at Family Dinners: Negotiating Sociability, Presence and the Moral Other', in J. Coupland (ed.) Small Talk. Harlow: Pearson.

Brandedcontent.adage.com. (2017). MTV | Cable Guide 2010 | Advertising Age. [online] Available at: http://brandedcontent.adage.com/cableguide10/network.php?id=19 [Accessed 2 Mar. 2017].

Brown, P. and Levinson, S.C., 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Vol. 4). Cambridge university press.

Butler, C. and Fitzgeral, R. (2011). “My f***ing personality”: swearing as slips and gaffes in live television broadcasts. Text & Talk- An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse & Communication Studies, 31(5), pp. 525-552

Coates, J., 2000. Small talk and subversion: female speakers backstage. Small talk, pp.241-263.

Curnutt, H. (2009). "A Fan Crashing the Party": Exploring Reality-celebrity in MTV's Real World Franchise. Television & New Media, 10(3), pp.251-266.

Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden city, NY: Doubleday.

Goffman, E. (1967) On face-work. Interaction ritual, pp.5-45.

Guendouzi, J., 2001. You'll think we're always bitching': the functions of cooperativity and competition in women's gossip. Discourse Studies, 3(1), pp.29-51.

Hargrave, A.M., 1994. Radio and audience attitudes: annual review 1994. John Libbey and Co. Ltd.

Livingstone, S. and Lunt, P., 2002. Talk on television: Audience participation and public debate. Routledge.

Thornborrow, J. (2001) Authenticating Talk: Building public identities in audience participation broadcasting. Discourse Studies 3 (4): 459-479.

Thornborrow, J. (2015) The Discourse of Public Participation Media: From Talk Show to Twitter. London/ New York: Routledge

Tolson, A. (2006) Media Talk: Spoken Discourse on TV and Radio. Edinburgh: EUP. (chapter 9)

TV Tropes. (2017). Manipulative Editing- TV Tropes. [online] Available at: http://tvtropes.org/pmwifi/pmwiki.php/Main/ManipulativeEditing [Accessed 2 Mar. 2017]

Ex on the beach season 6 episode 6 in HD - latest season.

This link will let you watch extract 3 which is from 26:41-28:31.

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Ex on the Beach - Season 6 The sixth season of series continues to tell the story of eight single guys and girl who attempt to looking for a true love. What challenge must they face to attain their goals?

This link will let you watch extracts 1 and 2. Extract 1 is from 2:40- 3:33. Extract 2 is from 11:45-12:12.

#mediadiscourse

This is the appendix. Click the link to see my transcriptions. Transcription key is at the bottom.

The formatting was altered a little by the PDF program.

#appendix mediadiscourse

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