Ioannis Vamvakitis

'big Brother' - the 'reality Show' As a Globalized 'post- Documentary' Form Ioannis Vamvakitis

In this book I am attempting to scrutinise the Big Brother show (Endemol, 1999) - the archetype of the 'reality show' genre (Cummings, D, 2002, xii) - as a cultural product of our 'post-modern-late capitalism' era (Jameson, F, 1993, xii). In specific, I am focusing on its function as a pop- culture globalised 'post-documentary' form that, on the one hand, reflects our era's 'post-modern' dimension, and through the space-time processes decontextualises space (geography) and time (history), and thus, distorts our sense of the 'real' and transcends the cultural borders; while on the other hand, reflects our era's 'late- capitalism' dimension, and thus, the western capitalistic spaces, (pop-) cultural symbols and social dynamics. Therefore, Big Brother, enhances the globalisation process in the form of westernisation.