The Hybridization of the Real: Simulacrum and Performativity in the Era of Post-Reality Television

Contemporary factual TV is immersed in a period of progressive hybridization and game oriented restylization that we can call "post-reality TV". New formats are being continually developed in order to maintain the attention of the audience. In this sense, it is interesting to examine how-while staging reality-these new programs are playing with the Baudrillardian notion of simulacrum and the idea of performativity, key concepts for understanding the narrative and rhetorical strategies displayed within them. In light of these postmodern concepts, this article will study some new formats of post-reality TV in the successful post-Big Brother, Survivor and American Idol era, in order to define how terms such as "authenticity", "realism" and "truth" are being distorted and reinvented.