Introduction Chapter 1
Notes Introduction 1. I write in the context of major commentators such as Baudrillard ([1970]1998), Jameson (1991), and Featherstone (1991), who regard the prominence of both mediation and consumption as key to understanding contemporary or postmod- ern society. 2. Andrejevic links these trends to another form of convergence, that between leisure, labor, and consumption (2004, 53). This third conflation, while significant, is not my primary focus. 3. For simplicity’s sake, I still employ the terms “television,” “broadcast,” and “air” to refer to the primary source for the material I am discussing, even though much of it is delivered digitally via cable or satellite and distributed in a more heterogeneous fashion than in the network era. 4. I will use “public relations” or “PR” as singular nouns. 5. Indeed, Baudrillard (1996) goes one further when he credits Disney with being the precursor of a recently begun process of turning all of real life into a giant reality show. 6. Perhaps not surprisingly, this has been my own experience on several occasions, but I have also heard others say it both in real life and on television. 7. Cinema Verite (2011) is a dramatized behind-the-scenes account of the PBS series An American Family, in many ways the most obvious forerunner of today’s reality TV. 8. In 2011, US campaigns for Kraft mayo and Febreze fabric spray adopted RTV narratives and aesthetics. 9. Technologies of the self are, in Foucault’s terms, the ways in which individuals experience, understand, judge, and conduct themselves. Chapter 1 1. In 2010, the US expenditure on advertising was $131 billion and global spending on advertising is projected to exceed $500 billion in 2011.
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