Critical Investigation - Task 4

Are contemporary documentaries, like C4's 'Benefits Street', providing a public service, or simply reinforcing negative stereotypes to generate a larger audience?

Section 1 - The evolution of documentary and society 

• Documentaries have moved away from traditional educational values
• The rise of reality tv and its integration into documentary
• Link to social realism
• add success of benefits street - c4 viewing figures

Quotes:

Reacting to Reality Television: Performance, Audience and Value – Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood

“Some of the research on reality television also reproduces the classed distinctions that structure the genre, in the same way Jon Cook (2000) proposes about Bourieu’s work, by suggesting that only high culture constitutes cultural capital and working class culture is located as value-less (Skeggs 2011) – pg. 37

“Whereas in the social-realist documentary tradition representations of working class life were couched in valorized discourses of community culture, now emphasis upon the individual in reality television has been psychologized and premised on personal failure (Ringrose and Walkerdine 2008) – pg. 37

“Any documentary should have at its core, some purchase or claim on ‘truth’ as a relatively objective, observable phenomenon, notwithstanding the variation in the presence of the voice of the film-maker” – pg.23

“Private lives are transformed into public spectacle through an emphasis upon drama and performance over information” – pg.?

Reality Television and Class  - Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood

"When finally given the choice, viewers turned away from state television's serious news shows, political discussions, talking heads, art films and other 'quality' programmes in favour of talk shows, competitive reality programmes and locally produced soap operas" - pg.91

Section 2 - Benefits street - view 1

• The programme exploits the poor in order to gain views - question morality - quotes from residents/characters in the show after production
• Link to Cohen - Moral Panics and Richard Hall - Dominant/ alternative readings
• Poverty Porn
• Stereotypes created - poor, uneducated, lazy, etc - link to textual analysis 
• Moral panic to gain views 
• Name of the show
• Channel 4 - link to similar documentaries, constantly creating stereotypical content for views - link to channel 4 remit - are they failing to follow it?

Quotes - 

“Programmes like Benefits Street are not serious documentaries, despite claims made by the producers to be giving a voice to people who otherwise would not have one. Instead, they are crude and gimmicky entertainment shows out to make a fast buck for television executives, trivialising important issues and perpetuating negative stereotypes by exploiting those people entitled to state support to make ends meet.” - Alex Cunningham, Labour MP for Stockton North

"They don't give a damn as long as it brings in the viewers. They don't care if anyone gets hurt" - Person living on Kingston Road, Stockton.

"Part of the problem of projecting the extreme cases is that people then extrapolate that and say that applies to everybody who is on benefits. There wasn't anybody who was a typical benefit claimant featured on the programme at all. There was a huge imbalance." Labour MP, Dame Anne Begg, the chairwoman of the Commons work and pensions committee

'We are getting it 24/7 down here. They will edit the truth so it looks like lies and edit the lies so it looks like the truth" - Person living on Kingston Road, Stockton.

'I think it is disgusting it is making it our street look like a hell hole. They are claiming it is a programme which shows everyone in the community helping out but it's not."  - Person living on Kingston Road, Stockton.

'There is no doubt this is about exploiting vulnerable people in order to make money. I know they will say it is about trying to give people a voice, but all they will do is expose them to the full glare of the national media" - Alex Cunningham, Labour MP for Stockton North

"I don't want them here making a programme which will show people in the worst possible light and potentially do such huge damage. For the producers it's easy ratings for a few weeks, but the damage they do can last much longer."  - James Wharton, Tory MP for Stockton South

"The vast majority of people know that the programme plays to negative stereotypes and I'm certain it won't reflect the amazing sense of community we have here in Stockton" - Stockton Council leader Bob Cook

"There are some brilliant people in Stockton and I think the programme tries to show the worst.I used to be a fan of Channel Four before Benefits Street started. It disappoints me." - Eileen Johnson, Labour councillor for Norton South

"When it aired earlier this year Benefits Street attracted widespread controversy, with critics branding it 'poverty porn' and it received 1,800 viewers' complaints. The series was investigated by regulator Ofcom owing to the huge number of complaints"

"It has become Channel 4's most popular programme since the 2012 Paralympics, attracting audiences of more than five million"

"What struck me is that it was called Benefits Street and then three-quarters or more of the programme actually followed one storyline which was about a petty criminal and shoplifter and how he lived on the proceeds of his crime, rather than the reality of what people face when they live on benefits," - Labour MP, Dame Anne Begg, the chairwoman of the Commons work and pensions committee

"Television producers hunt for unsympathetic examples of unemployed people - in this case, on a street in Birmingham; they portray them in the worst possible light; and they fuel the pervasive sense that people on benefits are feckless scroungers," - The Independent's Owen Jones

"Last year's Skint was basically Benefits Street under a different name and the ratings-grabbing Big Fat Gypsy Wedding franchise feels like it is now the blueprint for all C4 docs - laughing and pointing at the vulnerable, under the guise of a serious social and cultural study"

""Benefits Street" is a title cynically chosen to push buttons, and that ploy has worked"

Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) - Stanley Cohen

A moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests". Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as moral entrepreneurs, while people who supposedly threaten the social order have been described as "folk devils".

Stanley Cohen (1987) defines moral panic as a sudden increase in public perception of the possible ‘threat to societal values and interests’

Stuart Hall

"When blacks appear in the documentary/current affairs part of broadcasting, they are always attached to some 'immigrant issue': they have to be involved in some crisis or drama to become visible actors to the media."

"There has been little, attempt either in drama, documentary or features to explore and express the rich, complex, diverse and troubled experience of blacks."

Richard Dyer

A stereotype “is not merely a short-cut…it is something more. It is the projection upon the world our own sense of value,” (The Role of Stereotypes, 245).

 “it is nor stereotypes, as an aspect of human thought and representation, that are wrong, but who controls and defines them, what interests they serve,”

“the use of stereotypes, has to be acknowledged as a necessary, indeed inescapable, part of the way societies make sense of themselves, and hence actually make and reproduce themselves,”

By using stereotypes, we are expressing “an agreement about a social group, as if that agreement arose independently of, the stereotype. Yet for the most part it is from the stereotype that we got our ideas about social groups,”

“Stereotypes are highly charged with the feelings that are attached to them. They (stereotypes) are the fortress of our tradition, and behind its defences we can continue to feel ourselves safe in the position we occupy” (Dyer, 11). 

Channel 4 remit - 

Channel 4 remit : (a) demonstrates innovation, experimentation and creativity in the form and content of programmes;

(b) appeals to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society;

(c) makes a significant contribution to meeting the need for the licensed public service channels to include programmes of an educational nature and other programmes of educative value; and

(d) exhibits a distinctive character.

Does channel 4's remit provide content of an 'educational nature' and 'educative value' with the examples of documentaries explored in my investigation? Or do they simply reinforce stereotypes.

The Making of Channel 4 – Peter Catterall

“They were there as part of our educational output. I wanted the wildest possible diversity and therefore doled out commissions and penny pockets to see what people could do in the hope that the very difference of what they would come up with would give channel 4 its distinctiveness” –     pg. 106

“the importance of political impartiality in the overall output of Channel 4; of course I knew that was a requirement and a requirement that I was happy to live with. I did, however, think that it would have to be interpreted differently on Channel 4 than it had been on ITV if the channel was to appear more lively, more outspoken, more provocative, more stimulating, than ITV or BBC had ever succeeded in being”  - pg. 106

Reacting to Reality Television: Performance, Audience and Value – Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood

“The regularity and importance of the close up across all reality programmes, coupled with ironic music and juxtapositional editing, register the close proximity reality programming has to melodrama and its manipulation of affect.”

Section 3: Benefits street - view 2 

• It is educational - follows real stories/real people
• Outcry highlights moral panics in society - is that C4's fault?
• Highlights an issue in society

Quotes:

"They were very clear and transparent with everyone on the street about what the nature of the programme was, why they were there and what the nature of the end product was." - Ralph Lee, Channel 4 head of factual commissioning

When asked about the programme being branded as "poverty porn" by some critics, Lee said: "I am deeply uncomfortable with the phrase. It's inaccurate and patronising towards people who take part in these programmes and open their lives up. It's quite offensive to the people who make them, and make them with diligence and integrity. It's a phrase I resent quite heavily."

When asked about the social media backlash from the public, Lee said: "I don't think you should judge the programme by the extreme reaction represented by a handful of very intemperate tweets."

"It opens a window on part of our welfare state, our country, and if what we see is shocking, then the question is shouldn't we be changing the system? We are really good in Britain at ignoring extreme poverty and pretending it doesn't happen." - The editor of the Spectator magazine, Fraser Nelson

"I don't think this is a freak show, I think it portrays them in quite a positive light. A lot of the characters are ones that I personally warm to. The villain of the piece isn't the people, the villain is the system that makes them lead lives in the way that they do." - The editor of the Spectator magazine, Fraser Nelson

"We have, as a country, grown used to pretending they don’t exist; we shovel them off to edge-of-town housing estates and pay them to stay there in economic exile. We give them welfare for the foreseeable future, and wish them luck in their drug-addled welfare ghettos. This is our country’s dirty little secret, which has just been exposed by a devastating Channel 4 documentary. And the left are furious."

"The biggest scandal of Benefits Street, which Channel 4 is unlikely to reveal, is that White Dee is behaving rationally in deciding not to work...Dee is a single mother with two young children.  Were she to earn, say, £90 a week as a cleaner, then the system would reduce her benefits by £70 — an effective tax rate of 78 per cent on that £90 she’s earned. She’d thus be slaving away all week for £20 — far less than the minimum wage"

"If she landed a £23,000-a-year job, her effective tax rate would still be 74 per cent – so she’d end up just £5,975 a year better-off than if she’d spent the year sitting on the sofa watching daytime TV and chatting to her pals on the street. If she then worked extra hours, or earned a pay rise, she’d keep a pitiful 9p in every extra pound paid. This is nothing to do with indolence. Which of us would work at a 91 per cent tax rate?"

"So the tabloid critics are wrong — these people aren’t scroungers, they’re reacting in a way that any of us would in the same situation."

"These 91 per cent tax rates ought to be a national scandal, raised regularly in Parliament. This is why the people of Benefits Street don’t work — and MPs who talk about ‘scroungers’ should ask what they’d do in the same situation. "

"Make a documentary about poverty in Uganda and you could win an award. Look at problems in Britain and you’re reported for thought crime"

"British society seems to require a regularly-updated register of sanctioned hate figures, about whom it's OK to say more or less anything; people who form a vital pressure valve for this terrifying pent-up societal wrath"

" I didn't hate anyone in it. I liked them. A lot of what they had to put up with looked absolutely awful, but there also seemed to be far more authentic community spirit than I've seen on TV since Postman Pat's Magic Christmas. How you could come away feeling anything other than affection for most of the people involved is beyond me.

Link to aspects of c4's remit it does follow

Section 4 - Historical context

• Link to recession
• Benefits only become a recent issue as a result of the recession
• People turn to extremes during difficult time/become more self centred - e.g. rise of UKIP - more people wanting rid of immigrants/benefits
• Historical examples - Rise of Nazi party during German hyperinflation
• The truth - benefit claimants taking up very small amount of tax/immigrants helping economy

Quotes:

(Need more historical quotes - check psychology books)

http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/894/1/47_the_equality_impacts_of_the_current_recession.pdf - academic text - find quotes

http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/894/1/47_the_equality_impacts_of_the_current_recession.pdf

http://themediaonline.co.za/2012/05/media-agencies-the-impact-of-the-recession/

http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704334604575338691913994892

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/18/channel-4-benefits-street_n_6177654.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-entertainment&ir=UK+Entertainment

Uk benefit statsistics:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/06/welfare-britain-facts-myths - Article useful for gaining facts about benefits and how much they take from taxes for use in investigation.

Reacting to Reality Television: Performance, Audience and Value – Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood

“A great deal of research maps how reality television is a product of political economy, where the commercial pressure to chase exportable ‘formats’ (ideally with increased interactive potential and alternative revenue streams) determines programme content (Moran 2005). – pg. ?

 “’spectacles of particularity’ run directly counter to any socio-political project, replacing the rational exploration of macro socio-economic issues, with the emotive instances of the micro, the particular and the personal” – pg.23

Section 5 - Marxist/Pluralist outlooks

• Marxist  view -
•  Upper class creating 'dumber' content to keep masses in place
• Poverty Porn
• Hegemony

Quotes:

"Reality programmes are identified as the trashiest form of television. While the critical outrage about the quality of commercial television is justified on the whole, the refusal to take such programmes seriously as proper objects of analysis also reveals a defensive class position taken by -- often formerly dissident -- intellectuals. The intellectual elite is in danger of losing the national leadership roles with which it has been historically charged, a role essential to securing its position within the post-socialist 'cultural bourgeoise'. - pg.91

“The idea of 'benefit ghettos' where unemployment is a 'lifestyle choice' is a powerful one that helps justify the Government's cuts to welfare budgets. Yet our research has demonstrated that this is a myth, in the sense that it does not reflect the facts of the matter.” - Professor Rob MacDonald of Teesside University

Stuart Hall

"The mass media play a crucial role in defining the problems and issues of public concern. They are the main channels of public discourse in our segregated society"

Reacting to Reality Television: Performance, Audience and Value – Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood

“Writers on reality television have pointed out how class distinctions mediate the representations of consumption in many lifestyle shows: the ‘new you’ of the make-over is a bourgeois you where the symbolic markers of class taste are neutralized” – pg. 37

“Whilst lifestyling is promoted as a signal of the demise of class and the potential attainability of a more affluent (individualized) consumer self, the process itself works to devalue working class culture and taste and instate the middle class as the ‘particular universal class’ (Savage 2003:536) – pg. 37

“Research which details the historical rise of the ‘telling self’ as establishing a precedent in the attainment of poor relief where redemptive narratives become a measure of a respectable and ‘worthy’ citizen, marking the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor” – pg.36

"Reality programmes are identified as the trashiest form of television. While the critical outrage about the quality of commercial television is justified on the whole, the refusal to take such programmes seriously as proper objects of analysis also reveals a defensive class position taken by -- often formerly dissident -- intellectuals. The intellectual elite is in danger of losing the national leadership roles with which it has been historically charged, a role essential to securing its position within the post-socialist 'cultural bourgeoise'. - pg.91

"In the West, the middle class viewer addressed by reality shows easily distances oneself from the abject spectacle of traumatised individuals in need of televisual charity and self help"

• Pluralist view - 
• Documentaries evolving with the people
• Content created is what people want to watch - viewing figures (top ratings every week)
• Perkins - positive stereotypes (find quotes)

Reality Television and Class Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood

"When finally given the choice, viewers turned away from state television's serious news shows, political discussions, talking heads, art films and other 'quality' programmes in favour of talk shows, competitive reality programmes and locally produced soap operas" - pg.91

The Ethics of Reality TV - Wendy N. Wyatt and Kristie Bunton

"Despite these encouraging presentations of ordinary, under-represented people, reality television programmes also have presented and reinforced stereotypes of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomic class and other identity characteristics. Media activist Jennifer Pozner suggests these stereotypes are 'endemic, even necessary' to some reality shows"

Section 6 - Conclusion

• My view - 
• Channel 4 have exploited a moral panic and stereotypes in society to gain views
• People have become more insecure/extreme in their views due to the economic climate

research skint
chavs - demonisation of the working class