WHEN MEDIA TAKE OVER THE PERFORMANCE

Taking up the perspective of performance studies and dramaturgy, the article explores the possibilities of performance in social media by looking at analyses of a sample of the SF TV series Black Mirror and the Instagram performance Excellences and Perfections by Amalia Ulman. The aim is to indicate through the chosen examples some features of theatricality in the interaction of Internet users with the public by way of social media. Comparativist method opens up these analyses to a wide referential field, so that the content of the chosen episodes of Black Mirror simultaneously points to the problem of normativity (political and cultural) of performance, in the sense used by Jon McKenzie in his book Perform or Else. Amalia Ulman's performance is considered from the perspective of feminist criticism and cultural studies; therefore, this part of analysis is devoted mostly to the influence of the male gaze-a phenomenon coined by the scholar Laura Mulvey-on dominant representations of femininity appropriated and massively reproduced by young girls and women on the popular social media such as Instagram.