Spectacle of the Real

Hollywood special effects offer spectacular creations or re-creations that make claims to our attention on the grounds of their ‘incredible-seeming reality’. They can appear both ‘incredible’ and ‘real’, their appeal based on their ability to ‘convince’—to appear real in terms such as detail and texture—and on their status as fabricated spectacle, to be admired as such. At a seemingly very different end of the audio-visual media spectrum, ‘reality’ television offers the spectacle of, supposedly, the ‘real’ itself, a ‘reality’ that ranges from the banality of the quotidian to intense interpersonal engagements (two extremes experienced in Big Brother, for example). The two also overlap, however, nowhere more clearly and jarringly than in the ultimate ‘spectacle of the real’, the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, live television coverage of which evoked constant comparison with big-screen fictional images.

Notes on Contributors
 
Preface
Jay David Bolter 
Introduction: The Spectacle of the Real
Geoff King 
Part I: Spectacle, Ideology, Catastrophe1. Media Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle
Douglas Kellner 
2. Real Time, Catastrophe, Spectacle: Reality as Fantasy in Live Media
Lee Rodney 
3. ‘Just Like a Movie’?: 9/11 and Hollywood Spectacle
Geoff King 
4. Reframing Fantasy: September 11 and the Global Audience
Kathy Smith