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Hybrid history and the retrial of the painful past

Australian National University, Australia

If ‘the primary impetus’ of reality television is to entertain (Holmes and Jermyn, 2004: 2), what ethical implications flow from its inherently hybrid aesthetics? This article addresses this question by examining the 2002 televised ‘retrial’ of Louis Riel, a man executed by the Canadian government in 1885. The retrial's producers encouraged viewers to vote (through a website) on the merits of Riel's conviction ‘according to the laws of Canada today’. As an aesthetic form that diverted and informed the audience, the programme was a test of ‘post-documentary's’ ethical dimensions. In this case it was not hybridity of form and intent that undermined the programme's potential to effect corrective justice; rather the deliberate insertion of false information about the death penalty's application misrepresented the criminal justice past and present.

Key Words: aesthetics • capital punishment • ethics • reality television • re-enactment

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