ogical Apparatus which generates particular representations of our world. Further, I support Barker's claim that television is a major media player that uses the narrative, or story-telling form. These narratives, according to Barker, "provide explanations for the way things are. They supply answers to the question: how shall we live? They offer us frameworks of understanding and rules of reference about the way the world is constructed" (1997: 73). In this way the television narratives may establish and maintain a particular social status quo. In order to support this viewpoint I will examine three aspects of the television media. First, I will discuss some of the ways in which the television media creates a reality effect, namely, through the camera gaze, overcoding and genre. Second, I will look at how realism effects are created in the soap opera genre, and finally, I will be suggesting that these reality effects promote a particular way of being and behaving in the world.
             Now, we have all heard the adage that the camera does not lie. Basically, we usually regard the camera as a recording device that tells us how things really are. For example, we have just been seeing live TV coverage of the Iraqi war. Although we are aware that some editing has taken place, we assume that what we see is real. Likewise, when we watch a sitcom or drama, we know the characters in the show are actors, but we accept that the events being shown are staged happenings that have been accurately recorded by the camera. That is, both fiction and non-fiction recognizably represent the 'real' world. This acceptance of the camera's gaze as representing the 'real' is often termed a reality effect: we are assuming that the camera's gaze imitates, or mirrors, the real.
             Yet, if this is so, how can we say that it constructs, or creates, a particular version of the world? It does this by the camera operator (and othe...