Democratic Potentials of Media Entertainment: Reading ‘The Pyramid’
Democratic Potentials of Media Entertainment: Reading ‘The Pyramid’

Summary/Abstract: Contesting a tradition deeply ingrained in media studies, which conceives of news and current-affairs programming not only as a reliable, but also a sufficient platform for a mediated enhancement of the democratic ideal of plurality (in a representational realm which many members of society find devoid of enjoyment and consequently ignore), this paper seeks to explore how ‘mass’ entertainment texts are able to provide subsidiary platforms for debate on society’s relevant issues. From this standpoint, the ‘reading’ of popular media texts on the micropolitical level (the capitalist consumerist setting notwithstanding) is potentially useful to democracy on the macropolitical level. Although popular texts are ardently condemned by ‘mass culture theory’ and confined to the realm of mere profit-motivated irrational pleasures, they are nonetheless involved in rational deliberation of popular culture consumers engaging with texts as active citizens. The powers and limitations of “democratic entertainment”, a paradigm recently emergent in political communication, will be assessed in a case study of the game/talk show “The Pyramid”, co-produced by Croatian public service Television (‘HRT’) and ‘Castor Multimedia’, as a text which boldly confronts entertainment audiences, prime-time celebrities and current-affairs politicians in informed discussions on the nation’s pertinent issues.

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