The nature and functions of tragedy-farce in a real show (based on the material of the Ukrainian projects “I am changing my wife” and “Hello, I am your mother!”)

Abstract

The article substantiates the features of the nature and functions of the comical, laughter, farce, and tragedy-farce in Ukrainian’s reality shows “I am changing my wife” and “Hello, I am your mother!” These projects touch upon basic social and everyday problems of the modern family and purport to foster a responsible attitude to family values and the personality of each member. Such tasks involve the stirring up the classical worldview and appeal to its fundamental values. Their circle includes the comical and laughter as public gestures. For this, reality shows use the capabilities of situational models and scenarios. However, the special nature of these projects initially does not allow us to talk only about traditional types and forms of the comical, laughter, and farce as funds for to realize their main goals and objectives. Reality shows, by virtue of their nature, come to tragedy-farce as the leading principle for the realization of goals and objectives. The nature of tragedy-farce in these projects shows the unity of the comical, amusing, kind, humorous, absurd, and scary, vicious, frightening, miserable, dramatic, and destructive, which simultaneously coexist in the life of a person and family. In these reality shows, tragedy-farce is formed by combining heterogeneous realities into one unpredictable and provocative whole: mass media and real life. This not only complicates its nature in relation to theatrical literary and mass media realness, but also leads to a dangerous line beyond which there is no longer a difference between media text and real life, and when they are equally responsible for all the events that happen in the family and with each her member. In this regard, tragedyfarce turns as a strange discourse and threat of the destruction of the surface of meaning.