Title: Reality Television and the Change in the Character of Discourse
Subtitle: Play, Performance, Politics
Subject Classification:  Arts, Society and Culture, Politics and Government  
BIC Classification: AB, JP, JH
BISAC Classification: SOC052000, PER010100, PHI026000
Binding: Hardback, eBook
Planned publication date: Oct 2025
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-80441-821-5
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-80441-822-2

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Description

This book draws on phenomenological and hermeneutic philosophy to provide a new critique of the structures, ethics, and politics of reality television. It argues that reality shows, dominant in the media landscape since the early 2000s, are creatively authored forms of cultural production – despite their ostensible portrayal of “reality” – and interrogates their widespread association with democratization and upward mobility.

Exploring reality television’s connections to (and departures from) longer histories of performance and fictional representation, the book demonstrates how the reality genre has changed the character of discourse in America. The change in discourse is evident in the way shows have reframed dramatic performance; recast power relations between television producers, public personalities, and audiences; inspired new platforms for social engagement and exploration of identity; and exhibited unprecedented levels of humiliation and distress. Examples reveal that reality shows naturalize participant exploitation and aestheticize tyranny, with many individuals (in acts described as "self-despotism"), struggling to negotiate reality television’s technocratic systems of power.

This book is a sustained philosophical review of the genre’s relationship to fiction and reality, in the context of its transformative social and political impact, assessing how its cultural logic of cut-throat competition, conflict, contradiction, and constructed “authenticity” reframed American life in the twenty-first century.

Essential reading for students and researchers in culture, media, and communications.

Biography

Author(s):  Dr Carla Rocavert is a lecturer at the American University of Paris, and research associate at the University of Lyon 2, France.

Reviews

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