Re-enactment & mise-en-sc è ne in Japanese reality TV

[anne mcknight]

There's been a lot of writing lately on specific techniques used to
underwrite ideas/ideologies of historicity (photo-realism, special effects,
narrative bridges between different kinds of indexical reality come to
mind.) As a kind of sea change from the critiques of vision that structured
70s readings of political modernism, I find this very interesting; most of
it seems to be about Hollywood cinema, or purposely deviant alternatives to
it. 

I wondered if anyone had ever read anything about the conventions of
historicity in everyday Japanese media--the dramatic reconstructions that
crowd morning TV, the glut of wide shows, for instance (domestic disputes
seem especially ripe for fear-mongering here...). Or even on the news, where
re-enactments of disasters, crimes, or geographically significant events are
mapped or modelled, in both low- and high-tech ways. Does anyone have a
sense where, when, how re-enactment and modelling acquired what seems to be
their out-of-proportion presence? Do most of them, as my sense is, have to
do with managing fear in some way?

Thanks for any leads or speculations...

anne