Date of Completion
2018
Document Type
Honors College Thesis
Department
Film and Television Studies
Thesis Type
College of Arts and Science Honors, Honors College
First Advisor
Hyon Joo Yoo
Keywords
Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Film and Television Studies, Media Studies, Psychoanalysis, Pop Culture, Feminism
Abstract
Keeping Up with the Kardashians is a staple of modern pop culture and provides rich grounds for exploration due to its prominence, controversial nature, and scope of content. I use critical analysis with a basis in Lacanian psychoanalysis, postfeminist theory, and queer theory to explore reality, sexuality, and gender in Keeping Up with the Kardashians. I question how these concepts are utilized within the popular reality television show, how their representations on-screen can contribute to the discourse surrounding and understanding of these concepts, and what the future of women on television could be. I focus particularly on finding the subversive potential of the show’s content through each of these lenses, despite the way one might assume reality television upholds societal norms and ideals.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Leary, Catherine E., "Keeping Up with the Psychoanalysts: Applying Lacanian and Feminist Theory to Reality Television" (2018). UVM Honors College Senior Theses. 249.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses/249