Simulacrum and Performativity in Contemporary Reality Television

Abstract

Seemingly, contemporary factual TV is immersed in a period of progressive hybridation and restylization. Unceasingly, new formats are being developed in order to maintain the attention of the audience. In this sense, it is interesting to examine how –while staging the real– these new programs are playing with the baudrillardian notion of simulacrum and Nicholsian idea of performativity, key concepts for understanding the narrative and rhetorical strategies displayed within them. In the light of those postmodern concepts, this paper will study the new formats appeared both in the Spanish and British television within the post-Big Brother era, since 2005, in order to define how terms such as “authenticity”, “realism” and “truth” are being distorted and reinvented.