Public spectacles of private spheres: an introduction to the special issue

This introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Family Issues, titled 'Spaces and Places of Family Life: Cultural and Popular Cultural Representations of Homes and Families,' calls attention to the intersections of conceptions of families and homes and to the cultural and popular cultural representations of both. Two themes make up the focus of the collection of articles contained in the special issue. First, the included articles explore the pieced-together media production of real and fictional families and homes. It is here we see the location of home and family as not quite real, not quite fictional, even if the families and homes represented are nonfictional (such as within the reality television genre). Second, this issue focuses on the relationship between media-produced images of homes and families and real everyday experiences, including whether real families use fictional and nonfictional media representations to situate and define themselves as families. The collection presented here begins to answer the question, What are the forms and locations in which popular culture and cultural definitions of homes and families shape each other? Keywords: space and place; popular culture; public and private; home; family; culture: reality television