Freakshow

Why do people watch Jerry Springer? What makes the confessional mode of television talk shows so popular?Freakshow offers a serious look at "reality TV" in an attempt to understand the mass media's fascination with intimacy, deviancy, and horror. Jon Dovey analyzes reality TV in terms of the political economy of the mass media. He investigates the relationship between confessional television and our modern understanding of culture and identity. For instance, is our fascination with the personal the only meaningful response to the complexity of our own lives? Are the politics of the self the only alternative to the defunct grand narratives of yesterday?In concentrating not on the reception of these new television forms but on the choices, models and agendas that inform their production, Dovey reveals the relationships between social anxieties, economic pressures and their specific inflections in media texts. In a critical analysis of media industry practice, Dovey asks why can't directors stay out of range of their own cameras -- and what is the role of the tele

Jon Dovey is a writer, producer and senior lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies at the University of the West of England