Requiem for a Blue-Balled Predator

Abstract:     
This working manuscript examines Dateline NBC's installments of To Catch a Predator for a critique of the Anglo-American rubric of child sexual abuse, especially its fate in the apparent televisual “reality turn” of perversion. It uses work by Jean Baudrillard and René Girard in arguing that the medicolegal concept of the pedophile was launched as a ritualistic scapegoating but assumed what is theorized as a “fatal” escalation at the scene of its mass mediation.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 63

Keywords: child sexual abuse, incest theory, Dateline NBC To Catch a Predator, Jean Baudrillard, René Girard, pedophilia, queer theory, scapegoat theory

working papers series