Summary Of Arthur Anderson's Theory

In the excerpt written by Arthur Anderson, he explains a theory derived from the way media presents reality television shows such as Cops. This theory is essentially that producers of reality television have the power to edit the reality we see and do so by using coding to promote practices that would not be typically deemed as typical, ethical, or necessary. He was able to propose this theory by analyzing the different ways in which the producers edited the content, what type of content they displayed, the narrative told, and the codes that were used throughout the broadcasts. His theory, I believe, supports a lot of the ideas that are thrust upon us through reality television. Thus, I will first state a summary of his analysis. Then I will …show more content…
He explains that the show in itself is full of quick scenes with little understanding, no narration, and always come from the perspective of being on the cops team. These key points in itself promote the idea that the cop must be the good guy. It makes us feel confused so we link on to the one thing that the producers give us: comradery with the police. This biased perception, then allows us to believe that any excess force they use it justified, that any verdict they decide about the alleged criminal is true, and that at the end of the day they did the right thing by taking that person off the street. The other problem with this is that it promotes the us versus them ideology through almost always having a white cop arresting a person of color. Over time, this causes us to believe that people of color are naturally criminal. Therefore, justifying further any actions the police take without lack of reasoning. Arthur Anderson broke down piece by piece the way we are forced to see the producers’ skewed view of reality. Thus, proving his theory that their edited and biased version of reality and the coding that they use truly affects the way we see reality in …show more content…
Also, it needed to show an atypical situation that people would not necessarily agree with if seeing it in actual reality. For this, I felt The Bachelor would fulfill these qualifications in the best way possible. In the show The Bachelor, one sees an atypical form of dating in which roughly twenty-five women compete against each other to win the heart of the bachelor. In real life situations, if someone came up to you and said that they were living with 25 women and dating all of them in order to find their true love, you would probably find that quite odd. However, the producers of the show edit the content and use the perspective of the bachelor to create a biased idea that this is an effective and semi-normal way of falling in love. The show’s producers also use editing and coding to make certain aspects of the show more interesting. They do so by coding some women as overly sexual, others as gossips, a few of them as overly dramatic, maybe one or two as completely innocent, and some as down-right evil. They do this to display the multiple stereotypes that women are thought to fall into and to spice up the show’s content. Overall, the producers use tools and coding to promote the idea that women fit certain stereotypes, that the bachelor is in this for the