ABSTRACT
Whatever its contribution to the overblown claims of semiotics as a general “science” of language, Barthes’ analysis of “myth” 1 and its connection to ideology remains useful as a specific tool to understand particular types of media language such as advertising and also, I will argue, that most striking recent phenomenon, “reality television”. Myth itself, Ernesto Laclau has argued, is increasingly a requirement of contemporary societies whose divisions and dislocations multiply. 2 If so, reality TV’s mythical claim to represent an increasingly complex social space, for example in the largely entertainment mode of the “gamedoc” or reality gameshow, may have significance far beyond the analysis of television genre. I will make this argument more precise by considering reality TV’s ritual dimensions and their link to certain media-centric norms of social behaviour.
