Join Amazon Prime and get unlimited Free One-Day Delivery. Already a member? Sign in.
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Staging the Real: Factual TV Programming in the Age of "Big Brother" by Richard Kilborn |
by Anita Biressi
|
by Annette Hill
|
by Su Holmes
|
by Jonathan Bignell
|
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links(What is this?) |
Product Description
Product Description
In the late 1990s, the global television industry struck gold. The reality game shows Big Brother and Survivor became TV events that whipped up storms of controversy and changed the face of prime-time schedules. Subjecting their contestants to protracted seclusion from the outside world, the shows offered up a novel combination of the mundane and the extreme, inspiring countless imitations and almost as many law suits. Shooting People examines the emergence of the form, its relation to documentary and its place within a globalised TV industry. Sam Breton and Rueben Cohen draw parallels between methods employed to control contestants and techniques of interrogation honed by military intelligence. Exposing the dubious involvement of psychologists and psychotherapists in the reality TV business. This 'ultimate form of light entertainment' is also shown to be the perfect medium for an apolitical time that has displaced grand narratives with an obsessive focus on personality and trivia. It has been some forty years since television first decided a presidential election, in the legendary Nixon-Kennedy debates; if, in 2004, we should see the Republican and Democratic nominees debating alongside a third-party candidate given to the world by Messrs Murdoch and Cutler, elevating the game show to the level of a decisive electoral institution, the term 'reality TV', always dubious before, will have simply made itself redundant, 'reality' and 'television' turned interchangeable in an ultimate parody of democracy's aspirations to liberate humankind.
From the Author
In the late 1990s, the global television industry struck gold. The reality game shows Big Brother and Survivor became TV events that whipped up storms of controversy and changed the face of prime-time schedules. Subjecting their contestants to protracted seclusion from the outside world, the shows offered up a novel combination of the mundane and the extreme, inspiring countless imitations and almost as many law suits. Shooting People examines the emergence of the form, its relation to documentary and its place within a globalised TV industry. Sam Breton and Rueben Cohen draw parallels between methods employed to control contestants and techniques of interrogation honed by military intelligence. Exposing the dubious involvement of psychologists and psychotherapists in the reality TV business. This 'ultimate form of light entertainment' is also shown to be the perfect medium for an apolitical time that has displaced grand narratives with an obsessive focus on personality and trivia. It has been some forty years since television first decided a presidential election, in the legendary Nixon-Kennedy debates; if, in 2004, we should see the Republican and Democratic nominees debating alongside a third-party candidate given to the world by Messrs Murdoch and Cutler, elevating the game show to the level of a decisive electoral institution, the term 'reality TV', always dubious before, will have simply made itself redundant, 'reality' and 'television' turned interchangeable in an ultimate parody of democracy's aspirations to liberate humankind.
From the Author
Immensely topical, given the rash of car-crash TV that infects the schedules, this sustained polemic considers the history of the form, the TV industry's nervous wranglings over it, the often devastating psychological effects participation in a reality TV environment can have on the 'contestants', and the nefarious and ethically questionable influence of psychologists involved in the shows. The propaganda of the ordinary, elevated in an anti-ideological age to the role of prime narrative, also proves to be the perfect vehicle for the bullying assertions of heroism now pouring out of the military-industrial complex.
See all Product Description
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
 |
64% buy the item featured on this page: Shooting People: Adventures in Reality TV £10.99 |
 |
36% buy Big Brother: Reality TV in the Twenty-First Century£18.04 |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
|||||||||||
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
 |
Customer Discussions
Beta (What's this?)|
This product's forum
(0 discussions)
Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Active discussions in related forums
|
Related forums
|
|||||||||||||||||
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > History > Cultural History
- Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Television > History & Criticism
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Communication Studies > Media & Communication Industries > Television
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Communication Studies > Media Studies
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Sociology
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
The Body Shop |
Let Olay Amaze You |
A Close Shave |
Treat Someone
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). |
|||||||
| |||||
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
You have no recently viewed items or searches.
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Look to the right column to find helpful suggestions for your shopping session. |
Continue Shopping: Top Sellers
| ||||
Amazon Home | |
| International Sites: United States | Germany | France | Japan | Canada | China | |
| Business Programs: Sell on Amazon | Fulfilment by Amazon | Join Associates | Join Advantage | |
| Customer Service | Help | View Basket | Your Account | |
| About Amazon.co.uk | Careers at Amazon | |
| Conditions of Use & Sale | Privacy Notice © 1996-2009, Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates |