ABSTRACT
Whether as an explicit accusation, a sidelong swipe or a coy implication, reality TV has long been associated with pornography. The iterative relation between reality TV and pornography points to the way in which the mention of sexuality and sexual practice seems almost inevitably to lead back to questions of reality, while attempts to probe the depths of reality, conceived as the truth of the subject, often discover sexuality at its kernel. The connection between pornography and reality TV has been made in a variety of critical contexts, albeit usually in a metaphorical vein. Sam Brenton and Reuben Cohen, in one of the first books on the provenance of reality television, blithely refer to the pornography of the performing self, thereby implying indecent - presumably both excessive and eroticised - self-exhibition. Notably, though, before reality TV went naked on mainstream channels, it had already gone pornographic on particular US premium-cable channels.
