Real Deceptions develops a new theory of realism through close consideration of myriad contemporary art, media, and cultural practices. Rather than focusing on transgressing deceptions which distort reality, the book argues that reality lies within the deceptions themselves.

• Introduction: Realism and Deception


• Chapter 1: The Realistically Deceptive, or the Deceptively Real? Ron Mueck and the Internal Illusion


• Chapter 2: Documentary REAL-ism: Catfish and This is Not a Film


• Chapter 3: An Uncertain Indeterminacy: Aliza Schwartz


• Chapter 4: A Ruse for the Real: Christoph Schlingensief's Deportation Installation


• Chapter 5: The Faux and the Schmo: Parodying Reality TV


• Chapter 6: Corporeal Realism: Bodyworlds and Cloaca


• Chapter 7: "Something I Can't Quite Articulate": Breast-feeding and the Real


• Chapter 8: Melancholia and the Real of the Illusion


• Conclusion: On Being Duped

Jennifer Friedlander is the Edgar E. and Elizabeth S. Pankey Professor of Media Studies/Associate Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College. She authored Moving Pictures: Where the Police, the Press, and the Art Image Meet (Sheffield Hallam University Press, 1998) and Feminine Look: Sexuation, Spectatorship, and Subversion (State University of New York Press, 2008). She has published articles in Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture; CiNéMAS: Journal of Film Studies; Subjectivity; (Re)-turn: A Journal of Lacanian Studies; Journal for Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society; Subjectivity; and International Journal of Zizek Studies.