Analysis of a Tv Show

The performance of ‘university students’ in the TV show “University”

During the twentieth century people used to pay attention on domestic and global politics and economy since the world was just steady after the wars, people from different country started to restructure their own rules and develop new societies. While after the twenty-first century, they tend to emphasize on the variety of lifestyle, which mostly focus on amusement and recreation, the increasing lifestyle TV programs and magazines emerge with the demands of public audience. Among the varied and types of TV programs, talk show has become a popular genre recently. “University”, a kind of talk show has being on view in Taiwan since 2007, turns into a hot issue in Asian countries. This essay will roughly exhibit the introduction of this TV show at first, but mainly attempts to analyse the performance of “university students” and then brings out the limitation and influence.
“University” is a television program which based on the style of talk show performed on week day nights which involves three hosts, a university group contains sixteen students from different universities of Taiwan, and some honoured guests from professional aspects or representative figures of universities such as school beauties. These attenders share their own experience and ideas of the topic which is given of each episode. The reason that shown at night every week days is because it is the time university students are active at. The content of “University” bases on the campus life of Taiwanese university students and their experience of it as well as their shared ideas of some hot issues. Most of the type of the content appears in the talk show is about lifestyle such as gossip of celebrities or political personages, fashion, romance, travel, education, career and some interesting or strange phenomenon. It can be also interestingly found that the guests from some of the episodes are comprehensively different identities, for example, one guest is the school beauty and the other, the ugly person from the same university (of course we will never know how much money the production units pay for her to be a guest on TV until you have a try). This phenomenon is called “binary oppositions”, one of the categories of structuralism. Branston and Stafford claim in the theory of this concept that the reason why people use binary oppositions in myth systems and in language is because they can have a comparison of different key boundaries and cultures, especially with unequal value attached to one side of the pairing. One example of using binary oppositions in language is: black/white, hot/cold; etc. The other example is that we know the word ‘man’, but it can mean different things in different contexts. It can be opposed to ‘boy’ in some context such as ‘act like man not a boy’, or to ‘woman’, or even to ‘beast’, for instance, ‘are you a man or a mouse?’(Branston, G. and Stafford, R, 2010) Producer of the talk show invites a school beauty and an ugly person at the same time tends to have a comparison of them and tries to tell the media audience take care of their appearance properly is sometimes important both to self and to others.
The performance of university students in the talk show is another important figure in this essay. According to Goffman’s statement he asserts that the word ‘person’ is not just the first original meaning: a mask, it is more like recognition of the fact that each person is somewhat playing a role everywhere. They know each other and also know themselves through playing these roles. (Goffman, E., 1959) Goffman believes that individuals and society are related to each other with a deep interaction, he stresses the fact that there are cultural differences in the arts of impression management, when people are playing a role of others, they are finding for the facts of the situation as well. “It would be useful to know the innermost feelings and thoughts of those involved in a given interaction. Since this kind of information is rarely available, the individual tends to employ substitutes as predictive ways.”(Goffman, E., 1959) The more an individual is concerned with the reality of a situation, the more he must focus on appearances. As performers, individuals are concerned with giving the impression that they live up to the many standards by which they and their products are judged. Goffman also accepts that when an individual is acting, he is regarded as a performer at one side also as a character to the other side. The character is a mask which uses for the current situation, the performer himself need to use different skills to play his role. During the experience of the involvers themselves in the talk show they claim that the main reason they have the chance to perform in public is due to their identity --- a university student, however this identity also becomes a character in the talk show. The production units of this TV program give these involvers masks and require them to play a good part of the situation as they are “just like those university students” indeed. Goffman’s statement can also bring out the limitation of “University”. For example, once a performer needs to have a successful performance, he has to exaggerate his role so as to enable audience to recognize that they, the performers, are imitating someone else known by people. If audiences have recognized the person they are imitating, they will think the ability of these performers are brilliant, and will pay more attention on the entertainment effect. As a result of this, the production unit will then choose performers who have high sense of humour rather than the ‘standard identity of university student’ originally. It violates the initial purpose of producing the talk show.
From the analysis above, the influence of this talk show can be found that the words said by attenders in the talk show can have an effect on the ideology of audience. For instance, if attenders in the talk show are inclined to western culture, the traditional culture of Taiwan can be ignored. In other words, ideology changes culture. It is said that “Lifestyle magazines and television programs are primarily consumer-based products that aim to make a profit by ‘selling’ particular types of audience to advertisers. They are literally offering their readers a ‘’lifestyle” --- in other words, a model on which base their lives at this particular moment and the goods necessary to accommodate it.” (Rayner, P. and Wall, P., 2008) The more audiences rely on this kind of talk show, the more demands they need both on material and ideological aspects. As a summary, this essay reveals the performance of performers from different universities of Taiwan who play in the television show ‘University ’. The identities of these performers are university students both in the show and in real life; however they wear masks when playing as roles. While they are playing a role of others, they are finding for the facts of the situation at the same time. Moreover, performers need to use different skills to play their roles well for the appropriate situation as well. The ‘University’ television show gains a number of praise but also reflects the limitation. Due to the preference of audience that focus on the entertainment effect rather than the standard of the identity of performers who are university students originally, performers exaggerate their attitudes instead of declaring their viewpoints fairly, which may influence the ideology of audience. Such lifestyle television program can become consumer-based products that aim to make a profit by changing ideology of audience and ‘selling’ them to advertisers, as a result, it is important to consider seriously about the values of such kind of television talk show.