"Guess What?": On Hidden-Camera Pranks' Revelation Sequences

Abstract

Conceived as public communication objects, hidden-camera pranks (HCPs) are a type of documentary on ordinary pranks. Defined versus classical Garfinkelian breaching experiments, HCPs also offer a natural form of ethnomethodological experimentation. Here I present some results of an analysis of a sample of forty-nine HCPs' revelation sequences (RSs). These little clips of five to fifty seconds long allow for the description of audio-visual details of the interactional work that actors, accomplices and victims of a HCP have to perform, in a finely coordinated manner in order "to put an end" to an artificially constructed social situation. My study focuses on a set of practical relevances of the work of revelation (offering) and awakening (acceptation/rejection) endogenously pointed at and topicalized by the agents enmeshed in the HCP situation. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0402126