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This essay argues from a Lacanian perspective as to why “reality television” has become so pervasive in postmodern consumerist society. Against the widely held claim that such reality programming is democratically therapeutic in its effects to provide citizens a public forum to be seen and heard, another thesis is presented: such television programs reinforce the very perversity they claim to cure. By focusing on the film, The Truman Show, this perversity is exposed through a Lacanian reading of its redemptive fantasy. The essay ends with the question of impossibility: to what extent can the fantasy of “reality television” be traversed?