|
This paper was presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and
Mass Communication in San Antonio, Texas August 2005.
If you have questions about this paper, please contact the author
directly. If you have questions about the archives, email
rakyat [ at ] eparker.org. For an explanation of the subject line,
send email to
[log in to unmask] with just the four words, "get help info aejmc," in the
body (drop the "").
(Feb 2006)
Thank you.
Elliott Parker
====================================================================
Tales of Tattered Romance:
Cheaters TV, Real Reality, & Melodramatic Parody
By:
Joseph C. Harry
Department of Communication
213 Eisenberg
Slippery Rock University
Slippery Rock, Pa. 16057
[log in to unmask]
Submitted to:
AEJMC Entertainment Studies Interest Group
AEJMC annual conference
San Antonio, Texas
August 10-13, 2005
ABSTRACT
The Cheaters syndicated television show is analyzed as a hybrid genre
that draws on and unwittingly problematizes traditional and
contemporary notions of romance, technological surveillance, and
voyeurism by featuring suffering lovers and videotaped exploits of
their cheating mates. The rhetoric of the text is explored by
examining its conjuncture within political, economic and
socio-cultural forces, and by interpreting the program's
contradictory narrative, ethical, and ideological stance.
"From Cheaters' surveillance cameras you're about to view actual
true stories, filmed live, documenting the pain of a spouse or lover
caused by infidelity. This program is both dedicated to the faithful
and presented to the false-hearted to encourage the renewal of
temperance and virtue." Introductory message of Cheaters syndicated
television program, 2005
Now in its fifth year, Cheaters is an independently produced
syndicated weekly TV program airing in more than 150 U.S. television
markets, and reaching more than 75 percent of American homes with
television. A global phenomenon, it also airs in some 220 television
markets worldwide (Business Wire, 2004). An hour-long show featuring
two new "case files" of the unfaithful men and women, fairly
equally divided, for the most part, between whites and
African-Americans, usually straight but sometimes gay, frequently
unemployed but nearly all working-class, typically in their 20s and
early 30s caught in the act, on prerecorded videotape. The show's
executive producer and co-creator said the show gets about 100,000
requests a year "for domestic-relations investigations" from people
who otherwise could not afford an actual private eye, and categorizes
the show as "true surveillance, spying, true voyeurism" (National
Post, 2004).
Many Cheaters "clients" are unemployed and Southern (the show is
based in Dallas), and often yell, shout bleeped-out obscenities and
get in fistfights with their cheating mate or romantic rival. Most of
those caught cheating end up signing legal waivers that grant the
show authorization to air real names and faces, but Cheaters
sometimes pays up to $2,000 to convince the reluctant, although a
Cheaters distribution representative claims it is relatively easy to
get waivers from "younger, lower-income, blue-collar" cheaters and
their illicit partners (Variety, 2004). Given its saucy subject
matter, Cheaters has joined a growing list of popular TV shows (most
notably, Jerry Springer) that are perfect fodder for derisive,
class-bound metaphors and 'lowbrow' stereotyping, such as the
following, from The Weekend Australian:
What better way to spend Valentine's Day than with a marathon of
trailer-trash infidelity? Cheaters, a hypnotic US hyperreality
series, invites people who think their partner is parking their boots
under someone else's bed to have the show follow them and then
initiate a very public brawl. No wonder someone stabbed host Joey
Greco on camera. What's really hysterical is that after the credits,
the show promotes its match-making website, because who wouldn't want
to find love this way? (2005, p. B-30)
Cheaters runs two new case files each Sunday, plus half-hour reruns
culled from its first several years, which are aired in many markets
each weeknight. Nielsen ratings indicate the syndicated show has
garnered the largest young-adult weekend audience, especially among
the most desirable advertising demographic women aged 18 to 34,
whose average viewing of the show, at about 2 million, is about twice
that of an equally desirable demographic, young men 18 to 34 who
regularly watch the show (National Post, 2004).
Since going into syndicated reruns as of 2004, the show may for the
first time make money, perhaps as much as $10 million a year, as its
original programming costs have already been covered (Business Wire,
2004). Direct-response advertisers, who hawk products and services
via 1-800 numbers, provide the revenue to cover the estimated $60,000
per-production-hour cost (National Post, 2004). The adult-oriented
content means the show usually airs in most markets sometime after
midnight, which is, however, also when a large number of its primary
audience is still awake. Cheaters executive producer and co-creator
Bobby Goldstein announced in late 2004 that, due to a boost in FCC
enforcement against indecency (most notably the Janet Jackson
"wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Superbowl), he was editing about
100 episodes that are aired as weekday reruns to avoid possible FCC
scrutiny (Associated Press, 2004).
One need only watch the flood of 1-800 ads to guess the show's
youthful demographic. Most ads tout a variety of dating services, as
well as personal enhancement products, including anti-balding
remedies, foot cream (to cure cracked feet), and non-prescription
diet pills or energy boosters. The latter products are aimed,
apparently, at the show's upper-age demographic, those in their
mid-30s. Watching even a few episodes of what Cheaters producers call
"real reality television" reveals an immediate paradox: Most products
and services promoted during commercial breaks are designed to make
one more attractive or available just the thing that, down the
road, might make one a prime candidate for infidelity.
This is one of many ironies examined in this exploratory essay. The
goal is to assess how Cheaters, as a text, articulates its own
rhetorical message by linking the text to range of real-world forces
political, economic, socio-cultural and, finally, ideological
that may be seen to act upon the text, without completely or
necessarily determining it. The kind of 'overdetermined' analysis
attempts to bring together, or, as Hall (1985) would explain it,
articulate the "conjuncture" of political, economic, and
socio-cultural phenomena that may help explain how such a show is
possible, and popular. For example, the above-mentioned audience data
documenting Cheaters' programming and marketing logic already provide
explanatory background for understanding the show as a very specific
kind of rhetorical construction, the institutional rhetor being the
Cheaters production team itself.
Hall (1996) explains the concept of articulation, as well as the
notion of conjuncture, as follows:
"An articulation is thus the form of the connection that can make a
unity of two different elements, under certain conditions. It is a
linkage which is not necessary, determined, absolute, and essential
for all time. You have to ask, under what circumstances can a
connection be forged or made? So the so-called 'unity' of a discourse
is really the articulation of different, distinct elements which can
be rearticulated in different ways because they have no necessary
'belongingness.' The 'unity' which matters is a linkage between that
articulated discourse and the social forces with which it can, under
certain historical conditions, but need not necessarily, be
connected. Thus a theory of articulation is both a way of
understanding how ideological elements come, under certain
conditions, to cohere together within a discourse, and a way of
asking how they do or do not become articulated, at specific
conjunctures, to certain political subjects." (pp. 141-142, italics
in original)
Grossberg (1996, p. 154) explains that articulation "refers to the
complex set of historical practices by which we struggle to produce
identity or structural unity out of, or on top of, complexity,
difference, contradiction. It signals the absence of guarantees, the
inability to know in advance the historical significance of
particular practices. It shifts the question of determination from
origins
to effects. " Conjunctural analysis, then, attempts to
analytically 'bring together' and assess relatively autonomous
elements of a social formation toward a critical interpretation, to
effect an incomplete totality a totalization of elements toward an
overarching interpretation that remains incomplete and open to revision.
Identifying a conjuncture (the "complex set" of historical and, by
definition, contemporary forces) can only be overdetermined,
provisional, tendential, thus the critic's resulting articulation of
a text is itself overdetermined and finally an attempt at theoretical
intervention that tries to explain the conjuncture between a social
formation and its articulation, its ideological meaning, in a given
text. In this interpretive framework, the critic is also involved in
a rhetorical reading, because the text is seen as having a contested
but persuasive message designed for a specific audience. Each
audience member is, however, subject to his or her own social,
economic and socio-cultural lines of force that collectively inform
his or her own particular ideological reading of a text, even though
the text is not endlessly open to just any meaning its polysemic
nature is limited by rhetorical structures in the text (Condit, 1989;
Morley, 1980). This form of interpretation is founded in establishing
a dialectic, meaning the analysis centers on ironies and
contradictions indicative of ideological problematics within the text
(Morley, 1992).
As an entertainment program watched each week by millions, and which
has an unusual subject matter that calls into question the propriety
of mass media and its reach into traditionally private domains,
Cheaters offers an ideal subject for conjunctural analysis, as the
analysis attempts to assess the meaning of a discourse "from its
position within a formation," its articulation within a specified
social structure (Hall, 1996, p. 142). Like any popular text,
Cheaters offers its viewers "equipment for living," (Burke, 1945), an
essentially dramatic means of understanding and coping with a portion
of reality, however ironic and contradictory the message may
ultimately be. If contemporary society is itself seen as ironic, full
of contradictions and clashing values that challenge anyone to make
ethical sense in a clear-cut way, then Cheaters may indeed give
viewers useful equipment for living, even as its contradictory
rhetoric and voyeuristic practices may be ethically problematic.
By attempting to make interpretive sense of a relatively new program
that in many ways breaks generic boundaries, this essay draws on both
journalistic and scholarly sources in an effort to understand
real-world and theoretical aspects of television and its relation to
social structure. The paper explores the program's narrative
structure and logic, its hybrid-like generic status as text, its
legal and ethical use of professional eavesdropping and voyeurism,
and its position within the larger, changing world of commercial
television. Attention to absences implicit assumptions the text
makes but never openly articulates as well as to contradictions
will both play an important part of identifying the overdetermined
nature of the program.
The essay also incorporates a case-study element. In the latter
portion of the paper one Cheaters episode (of many viewed over
several months) is interpreted as an emblematic text, an exemplar
representative of any "case file" offered in any week. The case-study
analysis provides a close account of the standard proceedings common
to each episode as a way to empirically anchor the interpretation.
The program is conceptualized as a conjuncture of the producer's
economic calculus versus the symbolic reality offered as text; as
inflecting a generically crafted "melodramatic parody" that, although
occurring in a non-fiction setting, draws upon but deconstructs
traditional elements of narrative and storytelling; and finally, as
an ironic rhetorical text that troubles conventional notions of
romance, as well as traditional ideas about privacy in an
increasingly voyeuristic, anxiety ridden world.
Although its closest relative is reality TV, Cheaters does not fit
neatly into any generic description. It is, from a
critical-interpretive construct, a postmodern pastiche or hyperreal
text a simulacrum or symbolic construction, "more real than the
real" (Baudrillard, 1988) that reflects different generic strains
of influence. In more conventional terms, Cheaters is a program
hybrid equal parts reality television, detective show,
action-adventure spoof, melodramatic soap opera, journalistic
docudrama, and even game show viewers know the "contestant" (the
long-suffering faithful spouse or lover) will get a "pay off" in the
form of catching the faithless lover with another. Each week Cheaters
host and deadly serious head sleuth Joey Greco, dressed in standard
black leather jacket, pants and shirt, and wearing stylish
black-rimmed glasses, calmly and sternly introduces detective-style
narratives, following a case-file format, featuring girlfriends,
boyfriends, live-in lovers, and current and former spouses, all of
whom suspect the number-one person in their life (a common
description applied to the wandering party) is in the arms of a
romantic rival. So upset with strongly sensing but not exactly
knowing the truth, and unable to afford the several thousand dollars
it would normally cost to hire an actual private eye, the wounded
parties invite Cheaters video "detectives" to stake out their
less-than-committed mates.
The televised result is always the same: The cheater is caught on
videotape and in recorded telephone conversations in various stages
of lying and unfaithfulness, including (quite often) having sex, the
latter of which is always presented to viewers blurred-out to ensure
the program meets FCC indecency rules. (However, unrated video
versions of the show available in local video stores do show explicit
sex scenes, which sometimes last 10 minutes or more. The televised
episodes, because of a legal prohibition, toy with viewers'
voyeuristic urges by obscuring the videotaped footage that the true
voyeur would desire the most.) Typically, the cheated-upon weeps when
confronted with the videotaped evidence -- although men very often
take the bad news with stoicism or a sustained look of repressed
rage. Later, when the obligatory "confrontation" scene occurs, the
aggrieved party usually expresses outrage and quite often becomes
violent. A bevy of paid security staff is on hand alongside the
ever-unsmiling Greco and camera crew to keep the violence from
getting too out of hand. Once again just as with the blurring out
of sex scenes the complete voyeuristic experience (in this case, of
raw violence) is policed, thereby limiting and containing full pleasure.
In one episode, Greco himself was actually stabbed by an angry
cheater, and in another episode a man who arrives with the Cheaters
crew to his girlfriend's house as she entertains her forbidden lover,
takes a baseball bat to a television set. He has to be physically
restrained, by security staff, from punching the wife's
anguish-filled lover, who scurries out the front door and down the
neighborhood sidewalk, wearing his blue jeans but carrying his other
clothes bundled under one arm. More often than not the cheater, after
shaking off the momentary surprise and deer-in-the-headlights shock
at being busted, becomes equally enraged at the videotaped invasion
of privacy, defiant about their right to be left alone while glumly
acknowledging what they've been up to is not a pretty sight. Quite
often the cheater offers a kind of last-minute defense, usually that
they were not getting enough romantic fulfillment on the home front.
Cheaters is a success. It is also, when analyzed as a conjunctural
television text, a reflection and refraction of various intersecting
political, economic, socio-cultural and, ultimately, ideological
forces at work in our contemporary mass-mediated social scene. By
making public videotaped footage of private romantic acts, Cheaters
offers its several million weekly viewers a voyeuristic look into
quarters that, without video and cell-phone technology, would not
otherwise be possible. It is perhaps the most clear example of what,
in the age of reality TV, Calvert (2000) calls our contemporary
"voyeur nation," a mass-mediated, socially acceptable obsession with
watching others without, unlike the traditional Peeping Tom, ever
having to leave home or worry, as was once the case with voyeurs,
about needing psychological treatment (Metzl, 2004). But Cheaters is
only the most obvious example of mass-media voyeurism. All reality
television taps into a psychological urge to secretly look at
otherwise private activities (Thompson, 2001; Metzl, 2004). The last
15 years has marked the "flowering of voyeur television, shows on
major networks featuring persons confessing to large viewing
audiences the most intimate features of their sexual and personal
lives, and TV 'reality programs' filming personal intimacies"
(Westin, 2003, p. 8). This relatively new trend in commercial
television calls into question traditional boundaries between public
and private, and challenges long-standing privacy claims as well as
conventional notions of civility (Westin, 2003).
The media have become, since the early 1990s, "one of the major
invaders of privacy of both the famous and of anyone else caught up
in public events," the media operating under the guise of the
public's right-to-know while at the same time understanding the
marketing value of such low-brow fare that it is wildly popular
with audiences and potentially profitable for both journalistic and
entertainment media (Westin, p. 4).
While most reality TV seeks only to offer sensation and adventure,
with no more immediately obvious "higher" purpose, Cheaters actually
does promote, at least in principle, a higher calling edifying
entertainment ("to encourage the renewal of temperance and virtue
")
But if we examine Cheaters, or any television show, in conjunction
with, at a relatively basic level, its audience demographic, and
especially the products and services advertised to them, surface
contradictions may be revealed. The irony inherent in Cheaters is in
the rhetorical tension it fosters between rank sensationalism and
"traditional" morality, producing what can be thought of as
melodramatic parody[1], a farcical, imitative tale dressed up, in
this case, as "real reality," and which subjects the cheating party
and his or her illicit mate to public ridicule as punishment for
violating a romantic bond, or more generally, for violating a trust.
This would generally describe much of what passes for reality TV
today, the reality brand being the most popular television form in
recent years. Cheaters draws on conventional, Victorian norms of
romance, and then parodies them by treating viewers to voyeuristic
peeps into otherwise private domains. The parody is enriched by
Cheaters, in its ads, inviting viewers to purchase a slew of dating
services, non-prescription pep pills, penis-enlargement concoctions
and many other personal enhancement products designed to spice up
one's attractiveness and, inevitably, one's sex life.
If leading television genres are always, in part, reflective of
emerging and evolving social trends (Feuer, 1991) such as, in a
post-911 world, a greater acceptance of reduced privacy and increased
surveillance within a security-state social mentality, a
'permanent-emergency' mindset attracted to "extremes," a growing
reliance on round-the-clock information and communication via a
variety of media technologies, and an increased desire in consumer
culture for immediate gratification, pleasure and sensation then
Cheaters and other reality shows may now be commercial television's
"form-in-dominance," just as Feuer (1991) claimed this status for
melodrama and serialized soap operas during the 1980s and early '90s.
Cheaters opens up private social terrain that, until very recently in
history, was closed. The viewer is positioned to vicariously
experience both the guilty sexual thrill of cheating as well as the
terror and anger of being caught doing so. The viewer is thus
rhetorically positioned as both cheater and cheated-upon, but in the
televised comfort of the living room.
Politically, Cheaters relies upon First Amendment and other legal
protections, such as those accorded detective agencies, for its right
to exist. Economically, it understands that a certain advertising and
cultural marketplace exists for this kind of entertainment,
especially in the age of reality TV. Ideologically, the show's
producers understand that by framing themselves as, in essence,
service providers video detectives whose only goal is to make whole
again what has been corrupted they remain, in principle, immune to
criticisms of overt sensationalism, as their show is devoted to
righting wrongs in the service of encouraging fidelity.
Rhetorically, at least on the surface, Cheaters is all about
encouraging faithfulness and trust in romance, the basis of healthy
family life. Thus the call, at each show's opening segment, for the
"false-hearted" to "renew" temperance and virtue, the assumption
being that those caught in the act must have once been temperate and
virtuous. But at a more subterranean rhetorical level Cheaters is all
about irony, farce, comedy and ridicule and, as a genre, parody an
unacknowledged, probably even unwitting spoof on the pitfalls of real
modern love and romance.
The cheated-upon are always presented in the best possible light, as
temperate and virtuous, having been done wrong for no good reason. As
narrative characters they are pitched as honorable protagonists,
suffering the neglect of their lying and cheating antagonists. This
is the basis of all melodrama, and a standard feature of narrative.
In fact, although the situations are real, Cheaters (like all other
reality TV, fictional shows and, increasingly, news programming)
draws on all the traditional elements of narrative. This is
especially true in terms of narrative "kernel" elements: disturbance,
obstacle, complication, confrontation, crisis, and resolution
(Porter, Larson et. al, 2002). Each Cheaters episode contains these
elements in this exact order, making this reality television program
different from fictional narrative only in its vaunted
faux-journalistic sense of offering veracity, "real reality."
Cheaters producers realize 'reality' benefits from the rhetorical
elements that make a fictional story compelling, suspenseful, and
dramatic. As Kozloff (1992) notes, the traditional narrative
story-telling structure permeates virtually all kinds of TV
programming. Even those programs, such as talk, exercise, or sports
shows, which normally don't follow narrative logic often incorporate
elements of it. Narratives "are not the only dominant type of text on
television, but narrative structure is, to a large extent, the portal
or grid through which even non-narrative television must pass"
(Kozloff, 1992, p. 69.) In the time since that was written, it is
likely that narrative story structure is even more pervasive in the
television landscape. A traditional dramatic structure may work as an
inviting and conventionally understood audience lure that helps draw
in and retain increasingly fickle viewers, about 90 percent of whom
now have either cable or satellite TV and who, in the demassified
mass media environment, typically may choose from more than 100
television channels.
But the rhetorically 'absent' message, and what may be the real basis
for narrative excitement and drama in Cheaters, is that the
cheated-upon, regardless of the "pain" caused by their mate's
infidelity, also want revenge, and in a very public way. It is this
rhetorically tangled message between the melodramatic notion of
faithful good-heartedness and a very real-world, gut-level
resentment, the basic human urge to "get even" that makes Cheaters
worthy of critical analysis as a unique television genre able to
attract a popular audience by offering troubling, controversial but
comical kinds of real- reality soap operas.
Case Study
Every Cheaters program follows a standard presentational format that
never varies. This tightly fixed message format, common to most
non-fiction television programs, indicates we are being given a brand
based on a business model, and which creates a product designed to
deliver the same result, time after time.
The show always begins with a warning to viewers about the mature
nature of the program, quickly followed by a brief review of the
evening's two case files. Next, the message (text and male
voice-over, presented in full at the opening of this paper) which
actually functions as a mission statement is provided: Viewers are
made aware they will see "actual true stories" documenting the "pain"
caused by infidelity, with the hope that the evidence will encourage
a "renewal" of temperance and virtue. Next, viewers are presented a
montage of footage culled from previous shows, featuring cheaters
caught in the act, with lovers, spouses and the cheating "others" all
reacting in mostly violent and highly dramatic ways. This, again, can
be read as part of the branding process, especially when followed by
the standard statement (in voice-over), and functioning as a kind of
brand recognition: "Real reality television, as brought to you by
Cheaters detective agency's private eyes on Cheaters." Here, the
program attempts to differentiate itself from all other "reality" TV
shows by calling itself "real" reality, the assumption being that
other reality shows are fabricated. Rhetorically, the producers align
themselves with the legal-political cover provided by detective
agencies (private eyes), which serves also to deflect any criticism
of rank sensationalism. (After all, the message implies, you have a
legal right to know).
The above information precedes each program, providing a clear
introduction of what the program's about and an ideological
justification: Cheaters is here to help those in need of it, the goal
being to right a romantic wrong, thereby restoring honesty and
integrity where, at the moment, there is none. Rhetorically, on its
surface, Cheaters provides, in a voyeuristic entertainment format
featuring melodramatic stories of wrongdoing and, ultimately,
redemption, a traditional call for romantic fidelity.
The first episode (of two, during one program) airing in early March
2005 featured a 38-year-old named Chris Carlisle. Joey Greco, the
program host, introduces himself and then turns to Chris' case. Chris
himself (or rather, his mug shot) is first featured at the upper left
of the screen, inside what looks like a file folder. Greco introduces
him as, "Chris Carlisle, a stoic figure struggling with his deepest
fear his wife's infidelity. Seeking a dignified resolution, an
embattled Chris appeals to Cheaters for professional assistance." The
"file folder" that encased Chris' face now turns into a narrowed
camera lens, still with his face inside it, and is followed by an
approximately two-minute videotaped discussion provided by Chris, to
an unseen interviewer, about his tattered relationship. Greco tells
viewers that Chris is "worried his reconciled ex-wife is expanding
her romantic horizons with an unknown gentlemen," before Chris tells
us the story of his relationship. During Chris' brief explanation of
how things were, and how they now may have gone wrong, a large,
bright, almost shiny golden heart, ripped down the middle, flows
across the screen about every thirty seconds, accompanied by a
"whish" sound effect. This serves to punctuate certain phrases or,
sometimes, during virtually all scenes in an episode, helps segue
from one scene to another. This tattered golden heart is superimposed
over the constant graphical backdrop (during in-studio presentational
segments from Greco and his "clients") of a deep, vibrant, gauzy
blue, with the Cheaters logo moving leftward, but always in the
background, behind the subjects appearing on screen. It is
interesting to note that the Cheaters logo is framed within a
graphically produced image of a magnifying glass, the "C" of Cheaters
forming the circular part of the magnifying glass. The combined
effect, as a structural rhetorical device, provides significant
evidence of how television, as a communicator, actually articulates
its own commercially driven interests.
The above-described visual setting reveals what can be conceptualized
as the articulation of an "economic calculus" within a "symbolic
experience," the political-economic and cultural (symbolic) matrix
that forms the rhetorical basis of all commercial television (Harry,
2004). What viewers experience in commercial television, as well as
during promotional ads for any show is, on the one hand, network
branding and, on the other, the product lure the dramatic program
and storyline itself. It is only the latter that is actively attended
to by viewers, who desire only the "symbolic experience" of a show,
which is always, however, produced by a rhetor (independent producer,
or a network producer) whose chief interest is expressed as an
economic calculus the attempt to attract the largest possible
number of viewers within a desired demographic to a certain program,
to obtain the largest possible ad revenue. In the case of Cheaters,
especially at this part of the show, but throughout the entire
program as well, the viewer is constantly, even blatantly made aware
of the economic calculus behind the show. This occurs in the form of
program branding the deep blue background punctuated with a broken
"heart of gold" (which semiotically represents the aggrieved party
whose pure golden heart has been shattered) superimposed over the
Cheaters logo, which itself is meshed visually with a magnifying glass.
The rest of the episode follows a standard format common to every
episode, and is divided as follows:
Program Promotion (voice-over and visual text)
"If you suspect infidelity in your relationship, Cheaters licensed
investigators may be able to provide you assistance. Exercise your
right to be informed."
Introduction, in case-file format, of the cheating party
Julie Carlise, age 41, a homemaker "seeking satisfaction outside her
current relationship," accompanied by an undercover videotaped moving
image, in gauzy black-and-white, of Julie in a playground swing,
where she's accompanied by her lover.
Detailing of investigation, via undercover videotape and
tape-recorded phone calls
This typically involves several days of investigations, with all
damning evidence shown, most often in black-and-white. Frequently,
certain portions are placed into freeze-frame, with a graphically
produced image of a squared, checkerboard "scope" superimposed around
the face of one of the guilty parties. The lover is also usually
introduced by name.
Discrete evidence unique to each case: In this episode, hidden
cameras installed in Chris and Julie's apartment catch her and her
lover, Robert, on the couch drinking tequila and, on two separate
occasions, moving into the bedroom. Cameras catch them having sex,
but are purposely blurred.
Taped phone call
Each episode offers a taped phone call between the aggrieved party
and the cheater, with the latter engaging in a lie to cover up where
they are, or why they are not available on a particular evening.
Evidence indicates cheating has occurred
A voice-over explains to viewer that, "Cheaters investigators
reconvene at the Command Center to prepare a final report to Chris."
First commercial break
A voice-over notes, "Coming up the confrontation," accompanied by
brief visual footage of same.
Revelation Scene
The client is given the damning videotaped evidence. Greco says,
"With Julie's indiscretions now preserved on tape, Cheaters
regretfully must confirm Chris' worst suspicions. Driven by his
desire for the truth, shaken but willful, Chris prepares himself for
the imminent conclusion." The client then views the videotaped
evidence, with Greco at one point telling Chris, "That's her tattoo.
I'm sorry you have to see this." Chris agrees to take advantage of
"the opportunity" to confront the cheating party, who is with their
lover nearby.
Van Scene
Chris and Greco are shown driving to the site of the confrontation,
usually a restaurant or parking lot. In this case, the cheating
couple is at a lake, leading Chris to comment sardonically, "I'll bet
you they're not fishin'."
Confrontation Scene
The main conflict, it usually features shouting and very often,
violence. Chris and Greco confront Julie and Robert in the park, and
Chris immediately pushes Robert into the lake. Robert comes out of
the lake, shirt ripped off, and attempts to hit Chris, but security
guards intervene.
Unique footage: In this case, Julie is remorseful, with head in
hands. "I didn't mean to hurt you," she tells Chris. Greco tries to
draw her out on why she would leave her three-year-old daughter with
a babysitter on this particular evening. Greco concludes, speaking to
Julie: "I don't want to sound like the hard guy, but there are a lot
of streets named after you." Greco asks Robert, as he and Julie get
into Robert's truck to leave the scene, "How are you helping her be a
responsible parent?" As Robert gets into his truck, Chris yells,
"Y'all are made for each other, Robert!" Robert replies, directing
his comment to Chris, "She deserves better than that!" Julie yells
out, "I'm still a good parent!," to which Greco replies, "That might
be responsible in your world."
Back in the Van for the Ride Home
Brief dialogue between Greco and Chris ensues about what has
transpired. "Adults can be more childish than children," Greco
concludes, attempting to console Chris, who remains stoic throughout
the episode.
Promotional Voice-Over
"To learn more about this and other cases, log onto cheaters dot
com." Cut to commercial break.
Wrap Up
Greco faces the camera to announce: "With the confrontation behind
him and a fresh outlook on life, Chris struggles to put the events
into perspective. Later in the show, Cheaters updates you on his progress."
Next Case Introduced
Exact structural format as above.
End of Show, Recap of Both Cases
In the denouement, Greco reports, facing the in-studio camera, with
the deep blue graphic backdrop and above-described Cheaters logo:
Chris says the relationship is over, but will maintain a relationship
with his daughter (who is from Julie's previous marriage). Julie
explains her actions by a "need for attention," complaining Chris had
"an inability to show sensitivity" to her and others close to him.
Robert, we are informed, has no feelings for Julie the two had only
a sexual relationship.
Discussion
As a rhetorical text, Cheaters is an articulation of a particular
historical conjuncture of economic, political and socio-cultural
forces, which collectively inflect the program with a fairly
straightforward surface (denotative) message but at a deeper,
connotative level, a more complex and contradictory message, the
latter of which can be read as ideological. As Seiter (1992, p. 39)
notes, "Connotative meanings land us squarely in the domain of
ideology: the worldview (including the model of social relations and
their causes) portrayed from a particular position and set of
interests in society." From a conjunctural-interpretive framework,
ideology is seen as an over-determined confluence of political,
economic, and socio-cultural forces, none of which are in themselves
determinate but all of which a textual critic brings together as an
argument for a certain ideological reading of a given text at a
definitive point in history. White (1992), applying ideological
criticism to commercial television, explains that such criticism "is
concerned with the ways in which cultural practices and
artifacts
produce particular knowledges and positions for their
users. These knowledges and positions link viewers with and allow
reception of the economic and class interests of the television
industry" (p. 163). Ideological analysis is "produced in specific
historical contexts, by and for specific social groups," and thus
cultural artifacts express and promote "values, beliefs and ideas in
relation to the contexts in which they are produced, distributed, and
received" (White, p. 163).
Political, economic and socio-cultural forces provide a historical
conjuncture within which an ideological message, and interpretation,
is articulated. Politically, Cheaters takes advantage of First
Amendment protections governing free speech, including the right to
videotape people in public places (restaurants, sidewalks, parking
lots) as well as (with consent) in their private residences. In many
episodes, such as the case-study portion of this paper, the "client"
(Chris) agrees to have Cheaters undercover cameras installed in the
residence he shares with his cheating girlfriend. She is not legally
protected from being secretly videotaped, provided Chris has given
his legal consent to have cameras installed in the residence they
share. The legal protections afforded such undercover recording
whether undercover or out in the open exist quite apart, at least
in principle, from any ethical considerations that may arise.
Cheaters relies on these protections for its legal and political
right to exist as an "undercover" reality TV show; its popularity
depends upon the political.
Economically, Cheaters has successfully crafted a marketable cultural
product that targets a valuable audience demographic, the relatively
youthful who enjoy reality television and who are most likely to
respond to the 1-800 dating services and personal-enhancement product
ads that finance the Cheaters program. An irony absent in the surface
message, but clear from linking the ad programming to the actual
program, is that Cheaters appeals to its viewers' personal vanity
(the desire to enhance ones attractiveness), a quality that may also
enhance one's propensity for illicit affairs. Indeed, during each
program Cheaters promotes its own dating service (nocheaters.com).
Cheaters thus actively sponsors (and profits from) an in-house
service whose name ("no cheaters") connotes the program's "temperance
and virtue" rhetoric, but which, by bringing singles together into
supposedly trusting relationships actually creates a precondition for
potentially illicit affairs down the road, since there's no assurance
any couple brought together by any dating service will remain loyal.
(One day, Cheaters may be able to feature an estranged couple that,
if truth in advertising is worth anything, will acknowledge that they
met through Cheaters' dating service.) In this way, Cheaters mixes
its true-romance ideology with a separate, profit-generating side
business, a kind of "value-added" portion of the overall Cheaters
business model. This mixture of program and in-house advertising may
be especially prevalent in the reality TV genre (American
Demographics, July 1, 2001), and is an example of 'advertainment," an
emerging trend wherein ads and entertainment programming merge fairly
seamlessly (Deery, 2004). Having remained on the air for five years,
Cheaters has positioned itself to finally begin to profit from
second-run (re-run) syndication, where all ad revenues are pure
profit. This only enhances the show's economic viability, ensuring
its continued popularity as an ever-more-profitable cultural product
in a tightly controlled, fragmented, demassified television marketplace.
At the socio-cultural level, Cheaters producers understand that
traditional notions of privacy as well as social-psychological mores
pertaining to voyeurism are in flux, especially at a time when media
technologies such as the Internet, cell phones, video cameras, and
satellite and cable television all produce an ever-greater flow of
information, allowing once-private matters to be recorded and
instantly broadcast. In this escalating information environment media
users themselves confront uncertain boundaries about the
right-to-privacy (especially in a surveillance-heavy post-911 era)
and, flooded with "Survivor"-like reality shows (all the way to
grotesque programs documenting plastic surgery), face real questions
about what subject matter is, or should be, off limits. "Voyeurism
TV" (VTV) is already a concept utilized in the video age. Traditional
pathological diagnoses of voyeurism, casting voyeurs as "sick" and in
need of psychological treatment or even drug therapy, have "limited
relevance in a world where it is at times difficult to distinguish
hard-core paraphiliacs who require psychiatric interventions from the
many amateurs who simply watch VTV programs" (Metzl, 2004, p. 127.)
In fact, a narrowly defined psychiatric definition of voyeurism
versus a fairly broad category of "acceptable" voyeurism has emerged
only in late 20th century (Metzl, 2004). Voyeuristic television, and
consequent revaluations regarding the nature and dangers of voyeurism
is it a psychiatric condition or just harmless entertainment? --
provides a stark example of media effects in action. To the degree
media consumers benefit from or simply enjoy new kinds of
reality-show information, they ultimately, over a period of time,
will likely question (implicitly or explicitly) their own views of
privacy and, at the voyeuristic level, what is or is not appropriate
to view. Cheaters operates in a media-technology environment that, by
its continued presence, must unavoidably expand and question
traditional notions of privacy, voyeurism, and surveillance. The
undercover camera and the cell phone are central in Cheaters "getting
the evidence" and once broadcast, this material invites viewers to
peek into what at best are ethically problematic private domains.
Cheaters recognizes, also at the socio-cultural level, that
traditional notions of romance have long been troubled and
challenged, now more than ever. Cheaters, upon close inspection,
steps out of its "traditional" moral environment to adopt a
liberal-pluralistic view of romance, sometimes featuring episodes
involving, for example, gay couples, not to mention the many couples
who live together which from a traditional moral viewpoint would be
"living in sin." The program thus never questions a belief common to
many traditional religions that one should save sex for marriage.
Most estranged couples featured on Cheaters are not married, a great
many are divorced, many live together. The invocation of the
program's mission statement to "renew" temperance and virtue implies
that these Victorian moral qualities need not be associated, as they
traditionally have been, with married love. Implicit in this message
is also the (absent) assumption that the characters featured in any
episode were once temperate and virtuous. At this socio-cultural
level, then, is an ideological problematic: Ironically, Cheaters
paints at one level a traditional-ethical picture of what romance
should be, but in other ways deconstructs its own surface call for
"temperance and virtue" by never really passing moral judgment on
anything other than, ultimately, the wrongness of deception itself.
In short, Cheaters projects a story of melodramatic parody, an
essentially amoral stance, which is the generic-ideological basis of
its parodic take on modern romance.
On the surface, Cheaters is simply a program dedicated to righting a
wrong. It invites those who suspect they're being hurt by their
partner's unfaithfulness to learn the truth, but also to extract
justice in the form of "busting" the cheater on camera for all the
world to see. Viewers are positioned to sympathize with the injured
party but also to obtain vicarious pleasure from watching the
"false-hearted" caught, sometimes literally, with their pants down.
In this respect, the viewer experiences some of the emotions of the
Cheaters "client" pain at being deceived in the worst possible way,
plus full-bore resentment promoting a desire to get even in a way
that itself is ethically questionable. It is here where the show's
voyeuristic element truly comes into play, because rarely does the
public get to witness such up-close-and-personal outrage. Viewers
experience the excitement of watching an open confrontation, but also
inevitably must reflect upon the discomfort of the cheating parties
as well as the ethics of invading what is, for all its covert
tawdriness, a private, legal activity: Cheating is immoral, not illegal.
On the rhetorical surface Cheaters construes romance and the act of
cheating in staunchly moral, melodramatic terms with its
"false-hearted" antagonists, and virtuous, temperate protagonists who
always declare the purest intentions before riding to the scene of
the videotaped "confrontation." But at a deeper connotative level,
given the nature of its ads, the promotion of its own dating service,
and the voyeuristic practices and privacy-invasion underlying its
narratives, Cheaters actually promotes not a moral but an amoral
stance. As program executive producer Goldstein acknowledges: "I just
want to make TV programs." Cheaters is merely adopting the ethical
stance common to all mass-media cultural products designed for
popular commercial consumption amorality, the ethical basis of the
liberal-pluralist capitalist marketplace, where high ratings, ad
revenues, and mostly conventional (and politically conservative)
storylines are the basic business model. The parodic rhetoric of
Cheaters lies in the fact that it draws on these conservative,
conventional notions of romance in a plotline that positions readers
to, at first blush, take seriously traditional notions of love and
trust but, when deconstructed, actually treats viewers to a comical,
farcical, public ridicule and thrashing of those caught violating the
Victorian norms, while the 1-800 ads slotted in between program
segments scream endlessly sex, sex, more sex. In one episode,
Cheaters "detectives" break into a hotel room where the cheating
party is dressed in a sadomasochistic black-leather mask, chains and
other bondage garb as he's whipped by a female prostitute. The
embarrassed object of ridicule runs down the hallway and outdoors
onto the sidewalk to escape the glaring cameras. In another episode,
the cheating man, when busted by the Cheaters squad, jumps into the
back of his pickup truck, grabs a sharp-pointed pole used to capture
small farm animals, and threatens to use it on Cheaters security
guards. He kicks over a cooler, and out pops the severed head of a
pig. "What's that?" the normally staid head-detective, Joey Greco,
asks. The man explains that he sells them as food to local Mexicans,
then gets back to the business of defending himself against the
Cheaters invading force. At this point, the real reality show has
morphed into a high-jinx farce not quite soap opera, not quite reality TV.
Thus, the text poses yet another ideological problematic, an implicit
contradiction: the tension between the vicarious thrill of a
voyeuristic experience (watching cheaters get clandestinely
"investigated" and then caught) and the questionable ethics of
invading someone's private affair. The viewer is rhetorically
positioned as a spectator experiencing what must, for many, be a
guilty pleasure. The guilt relates not only to the voyeuristic thrill
but also to an ingrained American political belief in the "right to
privacy." Cheaters implicitly tells its audience: Those who cheat
don't deserve privacy, and watching their private acts being busted
up is, by the way, quite a lot of fun. In the final analysis,
Cheaters relies on the depiction of a mean-spirited desire for open
revenge, a hallmark of many competition-oriented reality shows, as
the rhetorical underpinning of each episode.
As Cheaters "clients" view the videotaped evidence of their partner
up to no good, many cry, and all express anger and resentment. But
absent from the surface text is any discussion regarding whether the
cheaters are actually deserving of the public disgrace that always
befalls them as a narrative element in "Confrontation" scene. In
fact, it is the confrontation that offers viewers the only truly
unique storyline, because it is the only unscripted, thoroughly
existential part of the show. One never knows just how the angry,
estranged lovers (not to mention the secret partner) will interact
when the bright lights and security staff finally catch them on tape.
But viewers are certain there will be plenty of tears, rage,
recrimination, and weak-kneed alibis, alongside detective-host Joey
Greco serving as one-man Greek chorus by attempting to get cheaters
to morally justify their immoral actions, even as the text, when
deconstructed, plays the whole thing as an amoral parody of modern romance.
Conclusion
Reality TV has gained a strong foothold in the American television
landscape, with nearly 50 percent of Americans as far back as 2001
reporting that they watched it. The audience segment most likely to
watch is the very desirable 18-to-24-year-olds, but the biggest
segment of the audience for reality TV is actually 35-to-49-year-olds
(American Demographics, Sept. 1, 2001). As a genre, reality TV
attracts a wide swath of viewers, with no end in sight. It is
arguably the current "form-in-dominance" in commercial television.
While generically close to reality the TV genre, Cheaters breaks the
mold by its postmodern borrowing of elements from an array of other
recognized forms (especially the fixed format of the game show, and
the sleuthing maneuvers of the detective show). But reality TV and
its spawns all conform to a grab bag of generic elements. "Reality TV
combines the 'live' qualities of the Game of the Week spontaneous
actions, uncertain outcomes with the voyeurism of The Jerry
Springer Show, and the hackneyed, ongoing narrative of a soap opera"
(American Demographics, July 1, 2001). Cheaters goes somewhat beyond
this, however, with its controversial and ethically problematic
subject matter, making it unique to television "equipment for
living" in a postmodern age of constant information and surveillance,
where the Constitutionally derived right to privacy is perhaps more
challenged and fragmented than ever. The show unwittingly invites a
critically minded viewer to contemplate not only the propriety of
voyeurism but also its link to an ongoing expansion in the post-911
world of surveillance for both entertainment and national security
purposes, and all points in between. Some predict that as the use of
surveillance technology becomes more pervasive, pressure may mount
for laws that are likely to limit its scope (Westin, 2004) to ensure
America's hallowed right-to-privacy is more than just a clichι. If
Cheaters' controversial use of voyeuristic surveillance contributes
to such a dialogue, then the show will inadvertently serve a valuable
public service.
As a contemporary television narrative, Cheaters relies on standard
narrative elements that have always made for a good story, including
strong characters, conflict, and thematic resolution. Audiences have
grown used to such narrative traditions, with large numbers reporting
they watch reality TV just to see conflict break out (American
Demographics, Sept. 1, 2001). Like virtually all commercial mass
media products, Cheaters articulates a distinct but by no means
one-dimensional message, the conjunctural product of intersecting
political, economic and socio-cultural realities. It draws on
available legal-political protections, on a defined
economic-marketing strategy, and on both traditional and emerging
social and cultural notions of privacy and romance to craft its
storyline, its business logic, and its overarching ideology. In this
way, Cheaters, like all cultural products, exists as both an economic
calculus (from the producer's vantage point), and from the viewer's
vantage point as a symbolic experience within the broader realm of
popular culture. On a more fundamental level, Cheaters translates the
most basic violation of the romantic bond infidelity into an
actionable case, but in the rhetorical form of commercial
melodramatic parody, which is also the basis of its amoral ethical stance.
Watching many episodes closely, it also becomes clear that the
cheating partner caught in the bright lights of Cheaters surveillance
cameras has almost been expecting it. The guilty party often appears
to know about or has watched Cheaters, because their actions and
demeanor are relatively calm and defiant, even confident in front of
the cameras. As Cheaters producers acknowledge, most caught on camera
easily agree to have their names and faces shown (in some cases
induced by cash offers, though this is never made known in the show).
So many agreeing to "go public" with their tawdry transgressions may
seem odd. But it may be that in the ever-expanding age of
information, surveillance, and instant celebrity, the clichι of
having one's fifteen minutes of fame is now virtually irresistible.
Apparently, for many, it's actually cool to be on Cheaters, including
for both the lovelorn "clients" who initiate the "investigation" and
seek revenge, and the guilty parties who have lots of explaining to
do. If so, then Cheaters is thoroughly postmodern, both in its own
parodic twist on melodramatic romance and in its program
participants' willingness to publicly ridicule and exploit themselves
and their false-hearted mates: Even most of those busted on camera
agree to go public, and can then sit home and watch, and videotape,
their very own episode, then add it to their personal scrapbook as a
badge of honor. This kind of postmodern, public self-ridicule, with
its connections to fame and faux celebrity is itself a contemporary
parody of "real" life, and a new and little-understood element in
contemporary reality television that deserves more analysis.
Cheaters' weekly doses of melodramatic parody are finally, then, a
postmodern put-on, a comical, leering farce: My ex-lover has agreed
to go public, so why not I? As a program focused on tightly
constructed imagery marketed as "real reality television," Cheaters
may perhaps be best understood as pure simulacra, a spectral image
bearing "no relation to any reality whatever" (Baudrillard, 1988, p.
170) other than its own radiating presence. Real reality TV would
then truly be, in Baudrillard's sense, hyperreal more real than the real.
REFERENCES
American Demographics. "Reality Bites." July 1, 2001, pp. 56-58. Intertec
Publishing Corporation.
American Demographics. "The Tribe Has Spoken (Nearly Half of Americans are
Faithful Viewers of Reality Television)." Sept. 1, 2001, pp. 34-40.
Associated Press. "Cheaters Tones Down Tawdriness as FCC Boosts
Enforcement." Liz Austin, Nov. 24, 2004.
Baudrillard, J. (1988). Jean Baudrillard: Selected writings, (Ed.)
Mark Poster.
Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press.
Broadcast & Cable. "Cheating Hearts." Paige Albiniak, Aug. 2, 2004, p. 9.
Burke, K. (1945). A grammar of motives. New York: Prentice-Hall.
Business Wire. "American Television and Film Co. Flooded with Online
Applications for New Reality TV Show 'Stag'." July 19, 2004.
Calvert, C. (2000). Voyeur nation: Media, privacy, and peering into modern
culture. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Condit, C.M. (1989). The rhetorical limits of polysemy. Critical
Studies in Mass
Communication, 6(2): 103-122.
Deery, J. (2004). Reality TV as advertainment. Popular Communication,
2(1): 1-20.
Feuer, J. (1992). Genre study and television. In R.C. Allen (Ed.), Channels of
discourse, pp. 138-160. (2nd Ed.) Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina
Press.
Feuer, J. (1991). Melodrama, serial form and television today. In L.R. Vande
Berg & L.A. Wenner (Eds.), Television criticism: Approaches and
applications, pp. 163-177. New York: Longman.
Grossberg, L. (1996). History, politics and postmodernism: Stuart Hall and
cultural studies, in D. Morley and K.H. Chen (Eds.), Stuart
Hall: Critical
dialogues in cultural studies, pp. 151-173.
Hall, S. (1996). On postmodernism and articulation: An interview with Stuart
Hall. In D. Morley and K.H. Chen (Eds.), Stuart Hall:
Critical dialogues in
cultural studies, pp. 131-150. London: Routledge.
Hall, S. (1985). Signification, representation, ideology: Althusser
and the post-
structuralist debates. Critical Studies in Mass Communication
2(2), 91-114.
Harry, J.C. (2004). A Burkean analysis of a television promotional
advertisement.
In K. Smith, S. Moriarty, G. Barbatsis, and K. Kenney (Eds.),
Handbook of
visual communication: Theory, methods, & media. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Kozloff, S. (1992). Narrative theory and television. In R.C. Allen (Ed.),
Channels of discourse, pp. 67-100. (2nd Ed.) Chapel Hill:
University of North
Carolina Press.
Metzl, J.M. (2004). Voyeur nation? Changing definitions of voyeurism, 1950-
2004. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 12: 127-131.
Morley, D. (1992). Television, audiences and cultural studies. London:
Routledge.
Morley, D. (1980). The Nationwide audience: Structure and decoding. London:
British Film Institute.
National Post (Canada). "So Many Affairs to Remember. Long-running show
Cheaters is on the Cusp of a New Trend in Adultery TV." Peter
Brieger, Nov.
22, 2004, p. AL-1.
Porter, M.J., Larson, D.L., Harthcock, A., & Nellis, K. (2002). Re(de)fining
narrative events: Examining television narrative structure.
Journal of Popular
Film & Television, 30(1):
Seiter, E. (1992). Semiotics, structuralism, and television. In R.C.
Allen (Ed.),
Channels of discourse, pp. 31-66. (2nd Ed.) Chapel Hill:
University of North
Carolina Press.
Thompson, R. (2001). Reality and the future of television. Television
Quarterly,
31(4): 20-26.
Variety. "Cheaters Scores in Late Night." John Dempsey, Feb. 23-29,
2004, p. 27.
The Weekend Australian. "Quick Bites," Feb. 12, 2005, p. B-30.
Westin, A.F. (2003). Social and political dimensions of privacy.
Journal of Social
Issues, 59(2): 431-54.
White, M. (1992). Ideological analysis and television. In R.C. Allen (Ed.),
Channels of discourse, pp. 161-202. (2nd Ed.) Chapel Hill:
University of
North Carolina Press.
[1] Melodrama can be defined as the "indulgence of strong
emotionalism; moral polarization and schematization; extreme states
of being, situations, action; overt villainy, persecution of the
good, and final reward of virtue; inflated and extravagant
expression; dark plottings, [and] suspense
" (Feuer, 1991, p. 165;
citing Brooks, 1976). Parody is "a literary or musical work in which
the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect
or in ridicule" (Webster's Dictionary, 1971).
|
