Border theatre and security spectacles: Surveillance, mobility and reality-based television

Long central to the exercise of sovereignty and symbolic power, border surveillance and policing are not only being amplified in the name of crime control and counter-terrorism, but exist as mass-mediated sources of fascination and entertainment. Interrogating Border Security: Australia's Front Line as an example of the emergent genre of border-based reality television, this article examines the program's cultural meanings and political functions. Through media spectacles that construct government authorities as heroic defenders protecting the nation from an array of external threats and fearful others, the program: legitimates state agendas; addresses anxieties associated with neoliberal globalization; and enrolls citizens as co-producers of national security. Accordingly, beyond representing, the program constitutes and prefigures the reality' of border enforcement, rendering it inevitable, necessary, and desirable.