Regional and National Identity

Regional and National Identity in Reality TV

National identity is not to be confused with ethnicity. Rather than being where a person comes from national identity is where a person lives. A persons national identity may change across a persons life as they move to different places.

Both national and regional identity are very prevalent in reality TV. I am now going to talk about some of these horrific clusterf**ks hopefully without throwing up in my mouth.

Big Brother:

Have you ever read George Orwell's brilliant novel 1984 in which society is watched over by an ominous being known as big brother because I'd be shocked if anyone who watched this show has. They basically took the premise of the book and went " wouldn't it be fun if people we're living in a situation like that except the watchers are the general public and the commentator is northern ". And so this pile of vapid sh*te was birthed.

Anyway I'm not here to rant about this crap. I only picked this one because it's the only reality TV show where i can stop myself ranting after only one paragraph.

So how is regional identity shown in big brother. Well actually quite well. Over its many seasons there has been a variety of people from many places. However when looking at the end statistics you do tend to see more northerners lasting through to the end. I think this is likely due to the fact that they are more entertaining to watch as they tend to "disagree" a lot to put it lightly. I don't really have anything more to say other than its clear they picked the dumbest northern people just to appeal to stereotypes.

16 and Pregnant:

This is the only one of these shows I've actually seen more than 1 episode of. Mainly because in the first season its clear the show tried to convey a message about the struggles of young motherhood especially with rising teen pregnancy rates in the UK. However this quickly devolves into "hahahah lets laugh at some stupid poor people". The way the later seasons treat this topic makes me sick. When looking at the north south divide (explanatory video at the end) the show clearly picks the very worst there is to offer. Most of the northerners in the show could barely tell the difference between their face and their shoes. It becomes a mocking documentary that seems to exist so middle class people can scoff at these people while enjoying their scones.