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Realism

About: Realism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 10799 publications have been published within this topic receiving 175785 citations.


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Journal Article
TL;DR: Biressi and Nunn as discussed by the authors discuss the cultural significance of reality TV programming in Britain and demonstrate how this genre (which includes talk and game shows, law and order programming, 24/7 formats, and dramatic reconstruction) has changed viewers' expectations, the definition of celebrity, and the representation of the truth.
Abstract: Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn. Reality TV: Realism and Revelation. Wallflower Press, 2005. 183 pages; $22.50. Therapeutic Culture In Reality TV: Realism and Revelation, Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn discuss the cultural significance of reality TV programming in Britain. Using several case studies, the authors demonstrate how this genre (which includes talk and game shows, law and order programming, 24/7 formats, and dramatic reconstruction) has changed viewers' expectations, the definition of celebrity, and, most importantly, the representation of the "truth." Each chapter reads like a separate essay, but uniting such topics as the documentaries of Errol Morris, re-enactments like The Trench, and the televised death-defying stunts of illusionist David Blaine is the relationship between subjectivity and performance. Further, the emphasis on confession and exhibitionism indicates how pervasive "therapeutic discourse" and "the revelation of trauma" have become in popular culture (7). The initial chapters describe various examples of the observational documentary in order to trace how reality TV programs, with their focus on "ordinary" (i.e. working and middle class citizens) have borrowed from this format. What has been lost, for better or worse, however, is the political, left-leaning agenda of the documentary. State-funded films of the '30s and '40s, for instance, examined the lives of the working class and advocated change, while docudramas (films that used fictional characters to treat real social issues), like Cathy Come Home by director Ken Loach, gave viewers access to tenements and caravans, satisfying voyeuristic curiosity but also exposing the failure of the welfare state to abolish the class barrier in Britain. Yet as film and TV began to focus more and more on narratives of personal trauma, the goal of political advocacy took a back seat to the focus on domestic drama and "narrative-fuelled entertainment" (84). Reality TV programming is both a product of and fuelled by what Biressi and Nunn call a "therapeutic culture," with its dominance of subjective experience and the eroding boundary between public and private. One of the most disturbing examples of the media's and viewing public's fascination with the revelation of personal trauma was the British Everyman documentary series on Court TV, Our Father the Serial Killer. Biressi and Nunn make excellent use of this strange program in which a brother and sister, convinced that their now elderly and harmless-looking father committed a series of grisly murders, retrace the scenes of his alleged crimes. Though the program never proves or disproves the father's guilt, it becomes clear that the siblings were victims of abuse at his hands. That such a trauma-based narrative would attract a large viewing audience and serve as "entertainment" is a topic worthy of its own book. Perhaps the weakest part of Reality TV: Realism and Revelation is its cursory attention to the larger historical context in which reality TV has grown up. The authors make passing reference to changes in technology that have led to audience-driven programs, as well as the breakdown of the economic and social order that allows working class participants in such shows as Big Brother to attain publicity and instant wealth. …

54 citations

Book
01 Sep 1999
TL;DR: In this article, Gutkin brings together work on the subject of Soviet aesthetic ideology to argue that socialist realism encompassed a philosophical world view that marked thinking in the Soviet Union on all levels, political, social, and linguistic.
Abstract: In this text, Irina Gutkin brings together work on the subject of Soviet aesthetic ideology to argue that socialist realism encompassed a philosophical world view that marked thinking in the Soviet Union on all levels, political, social, and linguistic. Using a wealth of diverse cultural material, the book traces the emergence of central operative in socialist realist theory and praxis from Symbolism to pre- and post- revolutionary Futurism, through the 1920s and 1930s. Rich in both cultural and philosophical analysis, this book should appeal to Russian scholars and historians, as well as the general reader.

53 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Byers' "Custom, Power, and the Power of Rules" as mentioned in this paper is a recent contribution to international legal theory, and it has been criticised for the lack of a reconciliation between the two disciplines and the power of rules.
Abstract: The rejuvenation of international law in the last decade has its source in two developments. On the one hand, 'critical legal scholarship' has infiltrated the discipline and provided it with a new sensibility and self-consciousness. On the other hand, liberal international lawyers have reached out to International Relations scholarship to recast the ways in which rules and power are approached. Meanwhile, the traditional debates about the source and power of norms have been invigorated by these projects. This review article considers these developments in the light of a recent contribution to international legal theory, Michael Byers' Custom, Power and the Power of Rules. The article begins by entering a number of reservations to Byers' imaginative strategy for reworking customary law and his distinctive approach to the enigma of opinio juris. The discussion then broadens by placing Byers' book in the expanding dialogue between International Relations and International Law. Here, the article locates the mutual antipathy of the two disciplines in two moments of intellectual hubris: Wilson's liberal certainty in 1919 and realism's triumphalism in the immediate post-World War II era. The article then goes on to suggest that, despite a valiant effort, Byers cannot effect a reconciliation between the two disciplines and, in particular, the power of rules and the three theoretical programmes against which he argues: realism, institutionalism and constructivism. Finally, Byers' book is characterized as a series of skirmishes on the legal theory front; a foray into an increasingly rich, adversarial and robust dialogue about the way to approach the study of international law and the goals one might support within the

53 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
2023736
20221,471
2021265
2020314
2019346
2018345