(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[self exposure] Look at me, then, am I not nice, nice, great? Young breasts are exposed on deiligst.no. This is about conquering public. About the need to be visible.
Figures Ny Tid has collected show that as many as 60.000 people have signed up for various
reality concepts over the past year. 15.000 will sing in Idol, tralala, while 10.000 families dreamed of having their house refurbished in Extreme Home Improvement. In third place is Big Brother, while the least popular were Heia Tufte, You Are What You Eat and The Garbage King.
Tina B. Christensen is the casting and program manager at TVNorge. She says the programs are very different, and so is the motivation of those who sign up.
- At Sjarmørskolen you sign up to get a girlfriend, while at Big Brother, the participants will first and foremost get to know each other and get on TV. What may be a turning point is that people increasingly have an agenda ready in advance. Maybe they have a single lying around that they want to promote. Television often becomes a help for self-help, and a way to get to know oneself, Christensen says.
contagion Effect
The need for self-exposure spreads to other spheres. Media writer Alex Iversen believes there is a cultural change going on, where staging himself in public is becoming increasingly important. Several are applying to the theater college and will be educated in the media. The picture volume of columnists and journalists is steadily increasing, and the standup in the TV box is increasing. Look at me, then!
- Self-exposure is also reflected in art. Many visual artists use the private and themselves in the works of art. In addition, more and more books have elements of autobiography, says Iversen, who has studied the reality genre for ten years.
At a coffee shop at Frogner in Oslo, artist Anne Grete Preus sits and thinks. Does she also think that self-exposure is spreading?
- Yes absolutely. It is a kind of democratization process, in which the ordinary person is exalted and portrayed. Part of the same democratization is that it is no longer allowed to say that something is worse than something else. But how democratic is it to fill the public space with insignificance? says Prussia.
On her last record she sings that it is difficult to be seen. That's why we talk to her.
- It seems as if this being known is the salvation of society, the forgiveness of sins, that it should take away the greyness.
Preus refers to a conversation late one night far down in the red wine glass.
- Then I heard one of the theories about why dinosaurs became extinct. Yes, it was because they were bored to death. So maybe reality is one last spasm before we draw our last sigh?
Preus draws on her own smile band, then, she realizes, that she sits in glass houses, that it is nothing nice to sit in glass houses, especially if you are moralizing, and she is on TV itself, on a regular basis.
The number of journalists increases in line with the number of reality participants. Iversen believes it is connected – breast exposure, reality, this enormous interest in media professions, the whole motivation to become a journalist, perform or do "something with film".
Now there are 8943 members in the Norwegian Journalist Team, almost 200 more than the year before. Some journalists suffer from cleft palate. If they don't have their name on print at regular intervals, it's as if they don't exist. Slit sickness can also hit celebrities who even call weekly magazines and offer stunt swimsuits. Last year, 800 applied for one of ten theater colleges in Oslo. Within film, there is also a huge stream of graduates, and almost no jobs to be had.
- We have a kind of notion that in our time everything important happens in the media. They instill an aura of excitement. The media's benchmark for success is becoming the benchmark for all things. If you do not think so, you do not exist. It is believed that if you get on TV, life will be radically transformed. Visibility becomes a kind of capital that is exchanged for benefits such as exciting experiences, new friends, parties, money, lady in the city. Not least the latter, says Iversen.
He talks about reality participants he has talked to who could take good advantage of shameless offers on the city.
Iversen says most people get a spectacular new life from coming on TV.
- The media eats celebrities and spits them out again. It requires a very special talent to hold the attention, says Iversen.
Admit the vulgar
- You have to fight to find the valuable in the public space, while all the shit is served on a silver platter, says Anne Grete Preus.
- New popular culture is met with contempt from the elite, but ends up as important cultural forms of expression with state support. Well then, there is a lot of vulgar TV. But a culture that does not want to admit its carnivalesque and vulgar sides is not worth its name, sighs Iversen.
Preus does not really think man has more need to be seen, part of the thing is that society nails more opportunities, more scenes to be seen. But when it is so important to stand out – when everyone is hanging on the wall, talking from the TV screen, has a crown on their head, when everyone is going to be princes, princesses – there must be someone left. Someone has to watch, someone has to read all the new magazines, be the audience at the performances. Are there any people who do not want to watch TV? Yep, we know about one, she's sitting in a cafe in Oslo right now. She drinks water with ice cubes, eats soup, has blonde hair and is an accountant.
- No, on TV I really could never have imagined, at all, says Marit Nøkleberg, who still agrees to answer a couple of questions.
- I'm too private, would feel uncomfortable if others were to look at me, she says.
She does not condemn, everyone can do as they please, she herself goes to the cinema, Capote, it was so good – she goes to the theater, loves opera, goes to concerts, recites the auditor. Then she must ask back to the numbers again.
The number of subscribers is taken from the broadcasters. NRK has had documentary series such as Hurtigruta, but would have preferred to have these figures included in a case that was about reality and documentaries.
