Lying idiots: reality television & lie to me

This article addresses perhaps the key question for Television Studies: Who does television think you are? It argues that Reality Television answers this question by producing its viewers as, in the Classical Greek sense, idiots (meaning private and ignorant persons). Idiots are the perfect target for the advertising dollar that supports commercial television production. As Reg Grundy observes, Reality Television is anything but reality. With its tight framings of reality, it paradoxically operates to sever the viewing self from reality—from the “truth” of life. Lie to Me is the type of television we are left with after the demise of Reality Television. Lie to Me makes us self-conscious, in the strongest sense, and thus sustains the mission of Reality Television. By dragging the notion of reality into its self-serving fictions, it puts the viewer into the dangerous position of being unable to lie to television. If Reality Television constrained reality to falsity, Lie to Me implicates the viewer in the zone where falsity transforms into reality. Lastly, this article enquires into the possibilities, in today’s television ecology, for a mode of TV citizenship that would counter the abject viewing position of the consumerist idiot.

Responses to Australian society and culture by Greek-Australian writers

Focuses on the themes and preoccupations in Greek-Australian literature that reflect the influence of Australia on the traditional sense of identity of Greek migrants. Predominant concerns connected with identity are those of nostalgic references to the homeland, feelings of alienation and discrimination. These themes are related to what is recognised in life and in literature as "xenitia". Second generation writers reveal an acceptance of belonging to two cultures and having dual identities.

What is so ‘primitive’ about ‘primitive democracy’? Comparing the ancient Middle East and classical Athens

This chapter seeks to delve deeper into the ancient history of democracy than is normally permitted, back to a time preceding the developments of classical Athens, when the earliest signs of organized society and complex governmental systems emerged across the ancient Middle East. It then seeks to compare and contrast these ancient Middle Eastern examples with those of classical Athens and to offer new insights into, and questions about, the nature and history of democracy. Building on some recent work (Fleming, 2004; Isakhan, 2007a; Keane, 2009: 78–155), this chapter also hopes to move the discussion beyond the phrase usually associated with ancient Middle Eastern democracies, that of ‘primitive democracy’. This chapter also argues that, while the Middle Eastern experiments were less rigid and formalized, they were in no measurable sense more ‘primitive’ than the later example offered by classical Athens. However, this essay also cautiously notes that, while not all of the elements which made ancient Athens significant occurred in the same way and at the same time in the ancient Middle East, all of them did exist at varying times and in varying guises across these earlier civilizations. To demonstrate this thesis, the remainder of the chapter utilizes several of the key criteria by which we commonly measure Athenian democracy – the functioning of its assembly, the mechanisms of justice and of the law, the varying voting and elective procedures, the rights and freedoms of the citizens, and the systematic exclusion of ‘non-citizens’ – and discusses precedents and parallels drawn from the extant evidence concerning the ancient Middle East.