Heartbreak Hotel: MTV's The Real World, III, and The Narratives of Containment
1998; American studies; Volume: 39; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2153-6856
Autores Tópico(s)Rhetoric and Communication Studies
ResumoAs I write this, MTV continues its daily reruns of The Real World, HI, San Francisco, episodes, and has aired several marathons of the series, attesting to its unceasing popularity. The program has also won innumerable awards, and in March of 1995 the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) honored it as well for its positive presentation of a person with (PWA), namely, Pedro Zamora, who was a member of The Real World cast and became a considerable part of the show ' s focus. In fact, Zamora achieved a hybrid stardom of an activist/heart-throb variety not seen before in other media-frenzied cases related to HIV and AIDS. This essay will inevitably seem to work against the grain of what appears to be unmediated (and still resounding) applause for the series {Real World, VII, situated in Seattle, currently airs). My aim here is neither to engage in so called academic quibbling, with its presumed elitism, nor to judge the show against some irrelevant standard of representational practices. But as Douglas Crimp has noted, AIDS does not exist apart from the that conceptualize it, represent it, and respond to it. We know only in and through these practices (3). Thus, given the enormous stakes inherent in any representational strategies related to AIDS, I think it is important to look critically at the politics
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