TO WATCH & BE WATCHED

"Margaret Mead was right, in the end: reality television was—is—a new kind of art form. What she couldn’t have predicted was that, as it aged, it would come to look more and more like the old ones."

"We have moved from the regressive logic of the sitcom, in which nothing really happens, to the recursive logic of the police procedural, in which the same thing keeps happening..."

"Mimetic realism refers to the idea that African American representation on screen mirrors material conditions and is relevant in its claim of portraying a “true” black experience. Simulacral realism refers to the idea that African American representation on screen influences the material conditions of black folk and thus can incite social progress. Lindsay’s season of The Bachelorette operates discursively according to the logics of simulacral realism."

"...(the traumatic ‘‘compulsion to repeat,’’ a structure that repeats, a fatal pattern)..."