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<title> WHY DO DOCU-SOAPS STIR EMOTIONS? </title>
	During recent years, TV-producers - forced by the growing entertainment industry to concentrate on special effects rather than coherent and meaningful content - have developed a new genre, docu-soaps, in order to attract the viewing audience's disillusioned attention. A docu-soap's format basically consists of a number of ordinary people put together in order to get them to establish relations (or, even better, conflicts); the latter are often a way to give certain competitors advantages since this format also involves some kind of competition. During the last year, I have witnessed an overwhelming interest among my friends and fellow students in this rising phenomenon. Keen on being able to join in the discussion rather than of authentic interest, I have watched a few programs and observed some characteristic elements, of which some may be causes for this genre's immediate success. Thus, what are the reasons for the explosive interest in these series and their competitors, whose fates occupy so much of our concern? 
	As with most of the visual age phenomena, watching docu-soaps carries no resistance. Thrilled by its honest authenticity and unpredictable immediacy, people tend to be devoted to this genre because of its easy accessibility: the docu-soaps seem to offer us a kind of immediate pleasure when it takes no energy of response on our part. In comparison to for example a novel, these programs do not require tiresome abstract thinking, which characterises the more difficult pleasures. Frequently debated, the role of television in turning humanity into a passive audience has once again become the important issue, mainly due to the great deal of controversy stirred by these programs. (One should, however, make no bones about the fact that this relaxed and convenient passivity is to various degrees willed by the majority.)
	In addition to this, the docu-soap genre reflects the spirits which form the atmosphere of today's society. The programs' competitors, who often possess an idealistic mixture of phoney compassion and indispensable selfishness, are encouraged by the rules to lie, deceive and become allied with whoever that has the same principles (or lack of principles). Confessedly self-centred, the participants have no limits which cannot be crossed on their way to a short-lived stardom. Since unemployment has failed to decrease and the financial situation overall is not at its peak, we tend to be familiar to and identify ourselves with the brutal competitiveness the characters so shamelessly reveal.
	Another perhaps more valid reason is that this genre is - or at least is intended to be - authentic glimpses of real life, the reality. When we know that the rows, tears and joys crystallised on the screen are for real, the dramatic attraction gains an essential dimension. Naturally, exposed intimate human relations are always fascinating - not to mention the stirring and nerve-racking experience of seeing someone become humiliated.
	Moreover, these relations become interesting because the programs are often broadcasted on a day-to-day basis, allowing the viewers to go fairly deep into the participants' souls; a pleasant feeling of togetherness between the docu-soap's characters and the audience might gradually emerge. More seriously, people who live in involuntary solitude may watch docu-soaps, almost as if it is a compulsion, to compensate their own lack of family life or just human relations in general, making the programs a necessary substitute of real life.
	In our age of chaotic media flow - consisting of newspapers, magazines, internet sites, radio and TV channels a masse - one requires something extraordinary to attract attention - something that is new, ahead of its time. So as to make their voices heard in the multifocal media chaos, TV-producers tend to focus on creating sequences of sensationalistic, and sometimes unpleasant, shocks. Originally inspired by the idea of the controlled totalitarian state featured in George Orwell's 1984, Big Brother, until now the most extreme of all the docu-soaps, was successfully launched in Sweden last autumn. Featuring an authentic sex scene and some serious mental collapses among the characters, Big Brother has taken this format to consciously absurd lengths - yet it perfectly fulfils our impatient expectations of instant gratification. 
	To sum up, the docu-soaps, with their unrecognised ability to reflect our time, fulfil people's inevitable needs for exploring human confrontations, relations and feelings.
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