Reality TV has become an indispensable form of entertainment for Thai audiences _ Thailand's Got Talent is still going and the 10th season of the popular Academy Fantasia, which sparked the reality-show craze here, began last week. Over the past decade, there's no doubt we have come to enjoy the novelty of "unexpected" and "unpredictable" turns of events and observe "unrehearsed" human behaviour, as opposed to other TV shows and series.
But there's no denying the oft-asked question: How real are these reality shows? It has dogged viewers and media scholars from the start of the reality TV fad and lingers with every new season.
While some are quite satisfied with this form of entertainment, a recent incident on Thailand's Got Talent when a seemingly autistic man was publicly ridiculed by the judges and the studio audience has made such questions impossible to ignore.
There is a possibility that the head of the show's production company, Workpoint Entertainment CEO Panya Nirankul, is still smiling right now. Despite (or more likely because of) that appalling incident, the show's ratings are still going strong.
Whether he is autistic or "like any other young man" as the production company claims doesn't really matter. And it didn't make much of a difference when Panya later spoke of how sorry he was for the incident, saying that it resulted from "a lack of foresight". (He was also very sorry about the incident last year when a woman took off her bra and painted with her breasts on stage.)
Actual unscripted occurrences? Or a carefully plotted narrative and planned strategy to manipulate ratings and increase commercial gains?
Are the contestants given the opportunity to show their talents? Or are they being used as tools in a marketing game? Are the viewers being entertained or are they in fact the victims who are being tricked and exploited? And where is the media ethics line that is not supposed to be crossed?
The Star is one of the most popular reality competitions, and there have been a few controversial cases in which the talented, not the good-looking, were eliminated from the competition, creating suspicion about whether the results really come from viewers' votes or whether it was determined from the very beginning.
In a recent interview with Thai Rath, Thakolkiat Veeravan, an executive of Exact Co which produces the show, firmly denied the allegation, explaining that The Star is a research show to find the person the general public admires and the winner comes from the voting process.
"If you say that the show is a set-up, it's not only an insult to me and my company, but to our entertainment industry and fellow human beings," he said.
But to Suppakorn Chuthapol, an advertising graduate who has watched almost every episode of Academy Fantasia and The Star and has written an analysis of the strategies they use, it is quite the opposite. He believes there are definitely some set-up tactics involved in most shows.
"Even though it's called 'reality', at the end of the day it's another type of business. In every business, there must be a marketing plan. There is no way they will let things happen without control. Business entrepreneurs try their best to minimise the risks by thoroughly planning out the strategies," he said.
He believes shows like Thailand's Got Talent, Academy Fantasia and The Star are trying to turn contestants into idols for commercial purposes.
"The idols or the artists are their products. If we were the business owners, we would want quality products which can create a trend and stir up the ratings. Of course they can't wait for people to wait in line and sign up like we see in show footage, several contestants who have qualified for the next round are from modelling agencies or are directly approached by the staff."
For independent mass communications scholar Dr Kitti Gunpai, these competitions are a construction rather than a representation of reality.
''They are entertainment programmes for a mass audience,'' he says. ''The production techniques require script writing, shooting with various angles and editing to create a narrative that viewers can understand, for example, creating the roles for each contestant in the competition like a villain or a hero.
''The producers' intention is to seek profit rather than give something intellectual to the viewers because they are responsible for the company and its shareholders' interest. Consequently, sometimes they forget about the issue of ethics.''
Another question is whether the viewers realise that what they're watching is not all real _ in other words, whether they're complicit in the whole fake-real shows. Suppakorn thinks audiences are aware, but only to the extent that the shows allow them to be.
''People just like the entertainment, they won't be analysing the strategies which the shows are using on them. For example in Academy Fantasia and The Star, there are usually couples who are especially intimate, and the audience just enjoys observing what they say and guessing about when they are going to hug each other. They will keep voting for that couple to stay on and this is just like how they enjoy watching TV series.''
Dr Kitti adds that viewers are like fish that don't see the water they are in.
''They are addicted to popular and mass culture and it results from a lack of media literacy.''
As to why people still keep watching the shows even though they know full well they are not real, Suppakorn explains that it's not a matter of brand but the product.
''Some people keep watching it because they love the people, not the show itself. They keep voting even though each vote is expensive because they want people they like to stay on,'' he says.
Another tactic that they use is male contestants who can attract female viewers of all ages and who win almost every year. Suppakorn doesn't think it's wrong for shows to set up contestants who are good looking because it's normal for a business to want the best quality products.
''But what's ethically wrong is the way they try to create a controversy that's negative to the image of the contestants,'' he adds. ''For example, in the fifth season of Academy Fantasia, a female contestant was given the choice of letting all the contestants who had been eliminated return, but she must eliminate herself from the competition. She decided to stay and was criticised by other contestants' fans. In the end, however, the show let everyone who has been eliminated come back to the competition. This made her become like a scapegoat even though it was not her fault at all.''
In the increasingly complicated relationship between shows' producers and the audience, Suppakorn thinks viewers are being entertained, but at the same time exploited without realising it.
''For example, the shows present some contestants' poor backgrounds in an exaggerated manner,'' he says.
''They use viewers' sympathy as a tool to urge viewers to vote more. The shows might think they aren't doing anything wrong because they are just portraying real life. But actually they are putting the responsibility to vote to the viewers.''
Suppakorn adds that viewers have to always be aware of what the shows are trying to do to them, what kind of emotion they are trying to make them feel and whether that will eventually influence how they feel compelled to vote. In the end, viewers are like victims, not only in terms of voting, but how the show can make them feel anything they want.
Dr Kitti says right now most viewers are ''passive audience'' members who are being controlled by the producers. There are very few organisations or ''active audience'' members out there who constantly examine these shows.
''They don't have to be all real. Just don't write a script and trick people to stir up the ratings. Producers should study more about ethics to highten the standard of Thai media,'' he says.
As for the future of this kind of show, Dr Kitti thinks that we should be optimistic that Thai viewers are going to be smarter and one day these shows will less and less popular.
Thailand’s Got Talent judges.
