Helsingin Sanomat revealed on April Fool’s Day that a few participants in the Tanssii Tähtien Kanssa reality show have unpleasant experiences.
The newspaper said that it had interviewed ten people who were involved in the program either as competitors or on the production side. Five of them were positive about the experience, the “others” were not. According to the magazine, a harsh reality was revealed behind the scenes. Sounds serious!
A couple of hundred celebrities have participated in the program, which has been shown since 2006, during its 18 production seasons. Now 2–5 of them have anonymously expressed their dissatisfaction.
Of course, even one serious misconduct is too many. The unethical production methods of reality TV have become a big topic of conversation in recent years – especially after two former contestants of the popular British dating show Love Island committed suicide. The negative publicity that is organically connected to reality shows is known to have a negative impact on the participants’ mental health.
Many discoveries have been unpleasant. According to the BBC Among other things, contestants on Real Housewives and Love is Blind have been sexually harassed and pressured to drink in order to mess around more in front of the cameras.
In Finland, on the other hand, it has been revealed that the contract terms of some programs are for competitors so unreasonablethat they would hardly even hold up in court.
It has also been reported that Warner Bros. -production company tried to pay the singer Mira Luodi to keep quiet after she had been sexually assaulted in the Julkkisselviyytytjat program a victim of violence.
So what terrible thing has happened behind the scenes of the whole family’s dance program? Have the star students been beaten with ingots? Will they be locked in basements for months to train like South Korean pop stars?
Well, not really.
“The public figures interviewed by HS say that in their opinion the problem is not only in individual situations but in the structure itself. The training is tough, for many people performing is beyond their own competence and the performances are evaluated publicly as part of an entertaining drama. At the same time, the participants carry a feeling of inadequacy, shame and fear of failure.”
I may be simple, but isn’t that the whole point of the show?
That public figures who are not professional dancers learn to dance on a television show and compete against each other until someone wins? What would be interesting about them performing within their own expertise?
It’s also hardly a closely guarded secret that it’s hard to practice dancing many hours a week. Will we reveal next that we had to know on the quiz? After all, it is also a structural problem in a way that some people know more than others.
One of the magazine’s sources seemed to have problems understanding the concept of the competition as well. He didn’t think it was “fair” that some of the participants in the program had never danced and some had.
Admittedly, sometimes it feels unfair that many are better than me at something, even though I have clearly expressed that I don’t like it.
Perhaps the latest revelations behind the scenes of Reality reveal the most about the principles of the attention economy.
The conditions of dance reality TV became a topic of conversation after Benjamin Peltonen, who became familiar from Instagram and reality TV, revealed to TV star Maria Veitola on reality TV that participating in the reality TV program undermined his mental health. The program was referenced in a magazine and now that report is being referenced in another magazine. You can talk about things on social media, and then you can make a story about what things were talked about on social media and how someone felt about it.
We go to the programs because of the publicity, and if the publicity turns out to be a negative experience, you can always return to the publicity by telling about the negative publicity experience. It is called content in today’s media business, opportunism in the old cold world.
In the attention economy, victimization, no matter how casual, is a desirable and safe state, because good manners do not include questioning the legitimacy of another person’s feelings or asking why a grown person goes on TV to dance if they don’t want to dance on TV at all.
Peltonen’s experiences certainly sound really unpleasant, and appearing on television does not mean that a person has given consent to hateful comments about his appearance or death threats to his family.
(Of course, at this stage of humanity’s decline, one could already assume in principle that the craziness and maliciousness of people on the Internet are the rule and not the exception.)
Dealing with serious abuses is important, but the mechanisms of the attention economy do not encourage it. When even the smallest revelations bring flair to analytics, why spend time on laborious large-scale investigations?
In the attention economy, remembering even mild miseries of the past has become a popular type of story and a script that can be used to show that you were on the right side of history and ahead of your time. Reminiscence usually reveals one’s own goodness and the badness of others, but no reincarnated person feels that he was a hangman in his previous life, but always a saint.
That’s why every twerker, actor, singer, and politician wants to say that they’ve once experienced belittling and received nasty comments, which they’ve gotten over because of their own determination and bravery. Difficulties must be overcome to become a beloved hero. For Katariina Souri the tepid reception of his visual art by the art world testifies to a systematic struggle, not to the artistic quality of the works bursting with angels and glitter.
Journalist Louis Theroux characterizes in the new in his document the attention economy of manosphere men into an inflationary cycle of racism and bigotry. In order to remain interesting in the eyes of the viewers, you have to always produce more violent and racist content.
Perhaps the same can be applied to this sector of the attention economy. In order to stay afloat, smaller and smaller sorrows must produce larger and more negative emotions.
And if you can’t do it through TV shows, luckily the press is always ready to listen.
