>I appreciate the leads about other TV series or films which are based on the
>same interest in voyeurism into the "private" lives of "real" people. Why are
>they more interesting than fictional characters? For whatever reason (and I
>would love to hear some speculations), this trend to
>documentary-as-entertainment (eg _Cops_ and that whole genre) is a fascinating
>twist in the positioning of documentary approaches in today's popular culture.
Pam-
What about Marchand's (_Advertising the American Dream_) tracing of the
creation of the desire to "eavesdrop" on people's personal lives in
dramatized, direct address ads?  He connects this to the "intense self
scrutiny" manufactured by advertising and I think that its incorporation
into more strictly narrative forms opens questions about the construction
of our sense of our place within a larger community--that is, allowing us
to judge our personal experiences against other's "personal" experiences
rather than "fictionalized" experiences.
Kelly