UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Neoliberalism, Citizenship, and the Spectacle of Democracy in American Film and Television, 1973-2016 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television by Alice Elizabeth Royer 2018 © Copyright by Alice Elizabeth Royer 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Neoliberalism, Citizenship, and the Spectacle of Democracy in American Film and Television, 1973-2016 by Alice Elizabeth Royer Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor William McDonald, Co-Chair Professor Johanna R Drucker, Co-Chair This dissertation examines American films, miniseries, and television shows that center on the democratic process, mobilizing it in the service of stories that both provide intense narrative and visual pleasures, and offer satisfaction in the form of apparent knowledge gained about the inner workings of electoral politics in the United States; these media texts are here theorized as “democracy porn.” Significantly, democracy porn emerges alongside neoliberalism, and its proliferation mirrors that ideology’s meteoric rise to prominence. As such, the dissertation considers texts made since the advent of neoliberalism in 1973, and up to the US presidential election of 2016, which marks a major shift in the meanings and values associated with democracy porn. Through historical, textual, and discourse analysis drawing on critical theories of affect, citizenship, and neoliberalism, the dissertation interrogates the complex ways in which democracy porn is constructed and functions within and surrounding moving image ii texts. The project thus tracks the ways neoliberal ideology manifests in the media texts in question, as well as how the consumption of these texts impacts viewers’ understandings of their own citizenship within a democracy increasingly steered by neoliberal principles.
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