Abstract
This fascinating book by Frances Bonner (from the University of Queensland) is like a journey into the personae of selected television celebrities in England, focusing especially on television presenters. As we know, most of these television presenters are more than just the persons who present things: they build a recognizable personality and they become familiar and predictable (p. 179). In terms of content and marketing, familiar television presenters are hired to ‘lead the programme’ but also ‘to lead it to the viewers and the viewers to it’ (p. 3). Some of these television presenters are experts, while others are not (p. 51). Hence, the author raises some interesting questions in this book: How does one become someone that everybody wants to watch and listen to, and how can unknown wannabes become high profile television presenters?
A book in two parts (‘The people who lead programmes’ and ‘The content of presentation’) and nine chapters plus a (too) short conclusion, Personality Presenters: Television’s Intermediaries with Viewers concentrates on the people on the screens and the contexts of various shows made mainly on British television during the 1990s (and to a lesser degree in the USA and Australia). However, it is not essential for potential readers of this book to know or be aware of all these more or less famous presenters and programs (like Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? or Top Gear, used as a counter-example) to follow the book’s arguments and explanations. What really matters are the dynamic forces in play and how to make sense of them.
In her introduction, Bonner explains that nowadays, television presenters can create a privileged relationship, usually based on familiarity, and they can even in some cases create the impression of a sort of intimacy between the television presenter and the viewer: Their familiarity within the domestic situation, which is still where the bulk of television is consumed, the way they speak directly to the audience assuming an intimacy and commonality, their roots in ordinariness, the way in which their own personal details are shared with the audience on the show or in its promotion, all operate to establish precisely this warm, friendly aura which brings those viewers with whom it resonates back week after week. (p. 10)
But Frances Bonner’s book really begins to work from Chapter 2, presenting the theoretical framework, with an interesting and balanced critique of Pierre Bourdieu’s (1979) salient concept of ‘Cultural intermediaries’ as re-conceptualized by Popular Culture experts Sean Nixon and Paul Du Gay in their salient article ‘Who needs cultural intermediaries?’, first published in 2002 in the journal Cultural Studies (p. 20; see also p. 155). We learn that television programmes are integrated into a process where, according to John Ellis (2000), ‘the materials of the witnessed world [are brought] into more narrativised, explained forms’ (p. 22). Core works by other theoreticians like Erving Goffman are quoted as well for concepts such as self and identity (pp. 23, 90). This rich balance between sociology and Cultural Studies (and from everything both disciplines can contribute to) is one of the strengths of this book.
Together with Chapters 1 and 2, Chapters 3 and 4 set out the journey of becoming a celebrity, or in this case a personality presenter (especially in Chapter 4, titled ‘What Makes a Successful Presenter?’), using core concepts such as ‘persona’ and characteristics such as ‘sincerity’, ‘authenticity’, and ‘friendliness’ (p. 56). Here, ‘persona’ is understood as the activities inside and outside the television presenters’ shows, for instance in interviews or talk-shows: ‘The term ‘‘persona’’ acknowledges that the act of presentation is a performance and although the person concerned is not an actor dramatizing a character in a role in some fictional way, they are nonetheless doing more than ‘‘being themselves’’ in front of the camera’ (p. 55).
Chapter 5 introduces additional useful concepts for the understanding and analysis of television presenters whenever they reveal something hidden from their private persona, for example what is coined as the ‘rhetoric of authenticity’ or the ‘what is he like in real life?’ question about presenters, characterized by ‘the search for signs of betrayal of the real’ or ‘glimpses of the private’ which separates the public and the ‘authentic’ persona (p. 90). In Chapter 6, the author notes how early morning news shows are more relaxed, and therefore like an invitation for more casual presentations of news and especially sports, in the same way as ‘some documentary programmes allow space for their presenters to act as cultural intermediaries, most frequently those on cultural or social topics’ (p. 113). Among the most interesting, Chapter 7 investigates how presenters act and react in three types of light entertainment which are ‘characteristically low on information and high on entertainment’ (p. 115): variety programmes, game shows, and reality television programmes.
Despite the fact that countless programmes on diverse topics (from cooking to gardening) are discussed and compared here, the most interesting dimensions offered in this book are theoretical, for instance in Chapter 8 on ‘infotainment’, with selected examples such as the TV parenting show Supernanny, which, according to the author, should not be seen as didactic or instructive (i.e. something that could seem too serious), but rather as simply ‘offering advice’ to parents (p. 135). Given the richness and diversity of all she contributes, it is clear the author has read about and published extensively on lifestyle television and its sociological meanings, explaining that lifestyles link identity to objects and activities (p. 143). In some ways, she follows what Anthony Giddens once wrote two decades ago, arguing that lifestyles are ‘a more or less integrated set of practices which … give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity’ (Giddens, 1991, quoted by Bonner, p. 143).
In the last chapter (Chapter 9) before the conclusion, Bonner reworks Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural intermediaries in order to study those television presenters who have an ethical life, both on television and in real life, for example those presenters of gardening shows or shows about organic food, who have to lead an ‘ethical life’ even outside their shows, in private; the author identifies ‘sincerity’ as the key element for their credibility (pp. 155–157).
It would be too vague for a critic to write that this book is made for scholars in sociology, Media or Television Studies since it is situated at the intersection of Celebrity Studies and Cultural Studies, with a focus on narratives, self, and identities. But here, Frances Bonner only opens one door into a rich and still unvisited site of investigations for social scientists and academics in Media Studies. Scholars working in languages other than English could someday draw on parts of this analysis in other cultural contexts with different television programmes.