The Unreality of Reality TV

Neil Mcbeath, Oman

Neil McBeath served as a uniformed education officer in the Royal Air Force of Oman from 1981 to 2005. During that time, he took two Masters degrees and was awarded the Omani Distinguished Service Medal. Refusing to renew contract, he taught at the Technical Service Institute in Saudi Arabia for two years. He has now returned to Oman and is teaching at the Sultan Qaboos University.
E-mail: neilmcbeath@yahoo.com

This paper is the result of two co-incidences. Firstly, this past summer (2010) I had an unusually long leave in Britain, and that allowed me to watch far more television than is my normal habit. One of the programmes I watched was the fifth series of Ladette to Lady, a “reality TV” show in which eight young women, chosen for their raucous lifestyles, come to a finishing school called Ecclestone Hall. Over a six week period, three of them are transformed from ugly ducklings into swans, and the others are “invited to leave”.

It then turned out that the Spring 2010 issue of Speaking English contained a short article about the making of the very series that I was watching. This was written by the “elocution teacher” who in reality had taught very little “elocution”. In her own words, she had “tried to improve communication skills and clarity” (Forrester 2010; 5) and it must be said that she did her job admirably.

So let me be clear from the outset of this paper. Nothing that follows should be interpreted as criticism of Kate Forrester. I enjoyed reading her account of working on the programme, and judging from the VERY little that we saw of her work, it was clear that she was doing an excellent job with rather unpromising material.

Indeed, it would be fair to say that much of the success of the fashion show, and of the Midsummer Revels was the result of her coaching. Her tact, encouragement and support were clearly instrumental in bringing the three finalists to the point that they could speak clearly about their “journey” to the end of the series. But much of Kate Forrester’s work was in constant danger of being undermined by the bizarre “teaching” approach of her own colleagues.

For let us be honest. Ladette to Lady is a charade.

In the fifth series, Ecclestone Hall Finishing School no longer existed. The production company was using a film set. It had hired a run-down country mansion called Hereford Hall and moved into that. The production company, moreover, was not really interested in filming anything as boring as good teaching. It wanted shock-horror, voyeuristic confrontation, and to a certain extent encouraged this by ensuring that copious amounts of alcohol were available as fuel.

Nor were the “society” audiences for whom the ladettes went through their paces particularly noteworthy. There were the “bachelors” (a group of ill-mannered Hooray Henries) and some patronizing, superannuated Sloan Rangers in search of a free meal. One person who appeared was even recognizable as a former contestant from the Big Brother programme, suggesting that in Britain we now have high society, café society and TV company canteen society.

None of this would matter, of course, had the programme not been dealing with real people, who could get hurt. But that possibility always existed. The ladettes were, at base, a group of rather vulnerable young women. Some of them were still only in their teens, but they had all suffered from the deluded belief that if they behaved in an openly sexual and provocative manner, while simultaneously drinking large amounts of alcohol, then they would be happy. At least one of them had been shuttled around a succession of foster homes. Given their passion for clubbing, it was impossible that they had not come into contact with hard drugs. What was never acknowledged was that they also had histories of failed relationships, and possible sexual exploitation, if not abuse.

All the ladettes suffered from low self-esteem. If that were not the case, then why would they have volunteered to come to Britain to be “improved” – to break with their old lives? They had, however, been sold a competition format, where one girl would win, two others would do quite well, and the other five could experience nothing more than having their original feelings of inadequacy reinforced in public.

In Act Three of Pygmalion, Henry Higgins’ experiment with Eliza is shown up for the farce that it is. Dressed like a highly fashionable lady, and equipped with the most perfect of Received Pronunciation, Eliza plunges a Georgian “at home” into anarchy with a mixture of execrable grammar and totally inappropriate choice of conversation topic. But Eliza had one advantage over the ladettes. She did not have to endure the pain of being referred to as “a slut” and being called “revolting” and “charmless” to her face.

It was interesting that only in Kate Forrester’s classes were the ladettes accorded any sense of respect. She taught them to “notice” (Ellis 1985) their Australian intonation – “Can you hear the upward inflection?” When one girl got the giggles over a rather vulgar double entendre – Oh beautiful pussy, oh pussy my love / What a beautiful pussy you are - she accepted this, but put it in context – “You are talking to a cat!”

With the other “teachers”, by contrast, derision was the order of the day. One girl was sneered at because she made it clear that she felt that being the commentator at the fashion show put her in the Cinderella role - “you wanted to wear a pretty dress!” Of course she did. Parading up and down a catwalk in a glamourous gown is infinitely preferable to standing in a frumpy twin-set and tweed skirt, reading from some cue cards. It is easier, the clothes themselves instill confidence, and there is far, far less chance for a girl who feels insecure to make a mistake.

And mistakes were jumped on, and punished. Every week, one girl was “invited to leave” – i.e. thrown off the show. The tension and pressure were unremitting. Judgment was applied, even when there were no absolute standards. The gin and tonics were “far too strong” – Failure. There was “far too much mustard” in the ham sandwiches – Failure. Yet surely, in both instances, these are entirely matters of personal taste?

“Knock, knock. Who’s there?” jeered another “teacher”. “Someone who can’t make a profiterole!” And how we tittered. Or, more accurately, how we were supposed to titter.

But….as far back as 1975, long before any of the ladettes were born, Shirley Conran informed us that “Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.” If that were true in 1975, surely in the 21st century, life is far too short to waste it making profiteroles – particularly when it is possible to buy three dozen of the things for less than seven pounds fifty in Waitrose.

The world of Ecclestone Hall seemed to be stuck in its own time warp. Not only were the girls expected to dress like the Mitford sisters from the 1930s, but they were introduced to country pursuits that belonged to the even earlier period of Brideshead Revisited. Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder motor around Oxfordshire, eating picnics out of wicker hampers, and possibly in those days the etiquette for a young lady when getting in and our of a low-slung sports car actually mattered.

Today, we believe that young women are capable of opening their own car doors, and we are more concerned about leaving carbon footprints, and with healthy eating. We also live in a multicultural society, and our food choices reflect this.

Pork pies made from scratch – i.e. start with a pig’s trotter; quails eggs; strawberries in meringue nests; ham sandwiches; profiteroles; the full English breakfast – aka “a heart attack on a plate”; what is there here that is suitable for anyone who is Jewish, Muslim, vegetarian or simply sensible about food? It is an appalling diet, and its effects show in the cookery teacher who is, frankly, clinically obese.

Ladette to Lady is not the only make-over show on British TV. We have seen Trinny and Suzannah giving advice on what not to wear, and recently that baton seems to have been handed over to Gok Wan. The difference with those shows, however, was that their presenters were prepared to confront their subjects with unpalatable truths in order to break a vicious cycle, and then supported them through the change.

Ladette to Lady does not do this. It presents obsolete, ritualized behaviour as if it were a God-given absolute, and taps into some very nasty veins of snobbery and condescension. It also seems to be uncertain whether it is training the ladettes to be ladies, or to be scullions. They certainly appear to spend a disproportionate amount of their time preparing, and then serving, food.

The guest at the fashion show who pointed out that one of the ladettes had a dirty cuff, moreover, did not behave like a gentleman. That intervention was based on a crude power imbalance – I am so superior that I can humiliate you in public and you just have to stand and take it. This is the behaviour of a bully, or of a cad.

The viewer is supposed to react with horror at how dreadful the ladettes are, and gleefully look forward to the next incident, but the format is now probably past its sell-by date. The programme is now broadcast very late in the evening schedule, almost on the cusp of the graveyard shift. This is often an indication of falling viewer numbers.

The programme also appears to have spawned a spoof advert for a brand of ginger beer, where a hyper-enthusiastic young woman, with hyperlectal diction, poses in a twin-set and pearls and extols the virtues of her “tickety-boo” product. The cross-referencing to the ladettes’ uniform cannot be co-incidental, but it is hardly flattering. Nor was a column in The Guardian (Sweeney 2010) anything but a solid thumbs-down.

In the fifth series, however, what was truly interesting was that the eventual winner was the girl who had previously been described as “charmless.” This in itself suggests that the “School Principal” was a poor judge of character, but it may simply be that she underestimated the winner’s tenacity. She was 23, a little older than the others, and she seemed to have understood that if she just kept her head down and got on with the various tasks she was assigned, then she would win through. I wish her well. She came out of it with considerably more grace than her so-called “teachers.” With the very honourable exception of Kate Forrester, they came across as narrow-minded bullying snobs, intolerant of any behaviour that did not match their own outdated standards.

References

Ellis, R. (1985) Understanding second language acquisition. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Forrester, Kate. (2010) “The Reality of Reality TV.” Speaking English 43/1. Pp. 4-5.

Sweeney, Kathy. (2010) “Ladette to Lady needs to forget some of its reality TV Etiquette.” The Guardian 21/8/2010.

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