Date of Award
Spring 5-30-2020
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Graphic Design
First Advisor
Lucinda Hitchcock
Second Advisor
Cara Buzzell
Third Advisor
Ryan Waller
Abstract
[My appreciation for mainstream pop culture is genuine, but I am not a passive consumer.]
[Drawing from embodied experience and contemporary feminist theory, I design as a participant, cultural surveyor, and critic.]
[From these vantage points, I binge-watch to discern the tropes of media such as reality TV romance and dead girl shows.]
[My data bingeing leads to a process of archiving, de/recoding, and making visible the algorithm structuring pop culture.]
[“Fantasy” is derived from the Greek phantazein, meaning “to make visible.”]
[In this thesis, I demonstrate that the reality-fantasy relationship is not an either/or.]
[Reality TV challenges this notion directly: it is more fantasy than reality.]
[The line between reality and fantasy is further blurred when real women play fantasy dead girls;]
[The plotline may be fictional but the violence against women is a reality.]
[Like binge-watching, Binge fully immerses you in my pop culture world through both critique and celebration.]
Recommended Citation
Foraker, Elena, "Binge [Fantasy reality]" (2020). Masters Theses. 519.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/519
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