ABSTRACT
In contemporary times disclosures abound. It appears as if anything and everything in the Western world can be revealed from the bathroom of the Oval Office to the bedrooms of suburbia. These disclosures take on multiple forms, from evidence given under duress in the Starr investigation into President Clinton to people clambering over others to confess on national television their innermost desires, predilections and tragedies. The chapter addresses the issue of excessive disclosures and attempted hegemonic gags in the arena of popular culture. It offers an entertaining exploration of 'excessive personal disclosures' in popular culture. Cinema, sit-coms, comedy and cultural critique are shown to be politically and ideologically potent vehicles of disclosure, creating a hyperreality in which the distinction between sex scandals in the White House, or actual wars and movie scripts, becomes not just diffuse, but ironically ambiguous.
