Losing touch with Reality (TV)
Most summers I can be found complaining about reality TV. This summer, the adventures of Pete, Bonnie, Richard and co. have left me cold. Henry A. Giroux has this to say on the genre:
'Emptied of its political content, public space increasingly becomes either a site of self-display ... or it functions as a site for reclaiming a form of social Darwinism represented most explicitly in reality-based television shows such as "Survivor" and "Big Brother" with their endless instinct for the weaknesses of others and masochistic affirmation of ruthlessness and steroidal power ... Reality TV embraces the arrogance of neoliberal power as it smiles back at us, legitimating downsizing and the ubiquitousness of the political economy of fear.'
Quite.
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Read on: Henry A. Giroux, 'Globalizing dissent and radicalizing democracy: Politics, pedagogy, and the responsibility of critical intellectuals' in Laura Gray-Rosendale and Steven Rosendale (eds.), Radical Relevance: Toward a Scholarship of the Whole Left (New York: SUNY Press, 2005), p.145.
Buy it here (UK) or here used (UK).
US readers can buy it here:
'Emptied of its political content, public space increasingly becomes either a site of self-display ... or it functions as a site for reclaiming a form of social Darwinism represented most explicitly in reality-based television shows such as "Survivor" and "Big Brother" with their endless instinct for the weaknesses of others and masochistic affirmation of ruthlessness and steroidal power ... Reality TV embraces the arrogance of neoliberal power as it smiles back at us, legitimating downsizing and the ubiquitousness of the political economy of fear.'
Quite.
--------------
Read on: Henry A. Giroux, 'Globalizing dissent and radicalizing democracy: Politics, pedagogy, and the responsibility of critical intellectuals' in Laura Gray-Rosendale and Steven Rosendale (eds.), Radical Relevance: Toward a Scholarship of the Whole Left (New York: SUNY Press, 2005), p.145.
Buy it here (UK) or here used (UK).
US readers can buy it here:
posted by Graham | 7:25 am
1 Comments:
UPDATE:
TV presenter Dermot O'Leary - host of E4's Big Brother's Little Brother - defends what he calls "the biggest show for the past decade".
"The cruelty is all part and parcel of Big Brother," he is quoted as saying. "But one thing I do know is that the level of aftercare is tremendous."
Evicted housemates, he said, were "not just dumped back into their environment and left to get on with it".
See link -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5252516.stm
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