“It's been real”: Forms of television representation

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Abstract
“Realism” as a notion applied to visual media comes to television studies encrusted with ideas from centuries of debate. This essay suggests that “verisimilitude” is a more fruitful term not only because it is less value laden but because, by definition (“real‐seeming”), it implies the notion of “work.” Television verisimilitude, like all forms of television representation, is a product of engagement between program and viewer in the process of text construction. Television offers varying degrees of verisimilitude, from the preferred naturalized codes that parallel television ‘s achieved ontology of “liveness” to the self‐reflexive nature of verite. I argue that much of the reason a series like Hill Street Blues, whose verisimilitude is so obviously constructed, can appear more “real” is because much of its verisimilitude arises paradigmatically. Viewers, involved in the work of text construction, may engage Hill Street Blues' encoding not so much as verite but as something that most of the rest of television, save for the “reality” of newscasts, is not.

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