Real TV

Catalog description

How does television bring "real" events to us? How do we know what's "real"? What kinds of "realities" exist on television, and how do they operate (in relationship to one another, to TV fantasy, and to our everyday lives)? This course will consider not only some specific "reality genres" (news, catastrophe coverage, "surveillance programming," documentary and docudrama, talk and game shows, reality series and "docu-soaps") but the representational modes that define the reality of commercial television as a whole. Issues to be addressed include: TV "liveness," crisis and scandal, therapeutic discourses, "surveillance society," media simulation, realism and anti-realism, civic and commercial discourses, and television's construction of history and knowledge. Preference given to graduate students, seniors, and juniors in Modern Culture & Media and Art-Semiotics. Prerequisites - two of the following: MCM 0100, 0150 , 0230 , 0240 , 0250 , 0260 , 1110 . Interested students who cannot pre-register should come to the first day of class for an application for admission by instructor permission.