Library Catalog

Performing Fear in Television Production : Practices of an Illiberal Democracy /

Fong, Siao Yuong

Performing Fear in Television Production : Practices of an Illiberal Democracy / Siao Yuong Fong. - 1 online resource (212 p.) - Asian Visual Cultures ; 13 .

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1 Fear and the Fragility of Myths -- 2 Playing Games with Heritage -- 3 Drama Writing and Audiences as Affective Superaddressee -- 4 Producing Art, Producing Difference -- 5 Making Reality TV: The Pleasures of Disciplining in a Control Society -- Reflections -- References -- Index

restricted access http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

What goes into the ideological sustenance of an illiberal capitalist democracy? While much of the critical discussion of the media in authoritarian contexts focus on state power, the emphasis on strong states tend to perpetuate misnomers about the media as mere tools of the state and sustain myths about their absolute power. Turning to the lived everyday of media producers in Singapore, I pose a series of questions that explore what it takes to perpetuate authoritarian resilience in the mass media. How, in what terms and through what means, does a politically stable illiberal Asian state like Singapore formulate its dominant imaginary of social order? What are the television production practices that perform and instantiate the social imaginary, and who are the audiences that are conjured and performed in the process? What are the roles played by imagined audiences in sustaining authoritarian resilience in the media? If, as I will argue in the book, audiences function as the central problematic that engenders anxieties and self-policing amongst producers, can the audience become a surrogate for the authoritarian state?


Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.


In English.

9789463724579 9789048555604

10.1515/9789048555604 doi


Authoritarianism in mass media.
Television and politics--Singapore.
Television and politics.
Television and state--Singapore.
Television and state.
Television in propaganda--Singapore.
Television in propaganda.
Art and Material Culture.
Asian Studies.
Media Studies.
Radio and Television.
South East Asia.
PERFORMING ARTS / Television / Direction & Production.

Affective superaddressee, Control society, Illiberal capitalist democracy, Media production.

PN1992.6 / .F6 2023

302.2345