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.]

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