Trans-Reality Television: The Transgression of Reality, Genre, Politics, and Audience

`This collection offers an energetic and illuminating range of explorations into what is involved in thinking about generic shifts and generic contexts. It does so in a period characterized both by radical transformations in the recipes and modes for mediating reality and by provocative questions about just what kind of datum points for representation `reality' provides. The writings here will provide an excellent encouragement toward further debate."---John Corner University of Leeds

In Trans-Reality Television: The Transgression of Reality, Genre. Politics, and Audience, the contributors examine the phenomenon of reality television as a tool to reflect on societal and mediated transformations and transgressions. While some delve deep into the theoretical issues, others approach the topic at hand through empirical studies of specific reality television formats and programs. The chapters in this volume are divided into four sections, all of which deal with how we see the fluid social at work in reality television through the trans-real, trans-politics, trans-genre, and trans-audience. Stressing the concept of the trans-real, the first section explores the complex construction of reality in reality television. The second section, which deals with the concept of trans-politics, offers a diversity of perspectives on the articulation and rearticulation of politics and the political. The chapters comprising the third section analyze how the modern conceptualizations of genre and format are transcended. Finally, the last section articulates the concept of trans-audience, using case studies of particular audiences and a study of reality television celebrities. Trans-Reality Television concludes by returning to the sense and nonsense of the use of "post" concepts.