Patrick:
 
        The sorts of questions you seem to be asking re. the admixture of
reality and simulation suggest a postmodern direction to your media
criticism. There are a number of works in postmodernity and popular
culture worth looking at:
 
        a. postmodernity, postmodernism and cultural theory per se
 
        Jean Baudrillard. Simulations.
 
        Frederic Jameson, "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism" in Jameson's volume of the same name. A classic neo-Marxist
critique of the postmodern.
 
        b. postmodernity and popular culture
 
        John Fiske, "Television and Postmodernism" in the James Curran
and Michael Gurevitch edited volume, Mass Media and Society. There are
many Dutch contributors to that volume, including Denis McQuail, Ien Ang,
and Lisbet van Zoonen.
 
        Jim Collins, Uncommon Culture: Postmodernism and Popular Culture
 
        Douglas Kellner, Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and
Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern.
 
        c. any periodical literature on the "reality-based" shows so
popular in North America
 
        ... e.g. of "Cops", "Hard Copy", other forms of infotainment
 
J. David Black
Instructor, Communication Studies
Wilfrid Laurier University
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada
519-884-1970, ext. 3868
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"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth. The simulacrum is
the truth which conceals that there is none."
 
Jean Baudrillard, Simulations
 
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