Having been an avid viewer of Homeland since it began, it's interesting to analyze how it mediates real vs. unreal. Based around events that were very much real, that of the aftermath of 9/11 and the ongoing war/conflict in Afghanistan, the show deals with the subject of terrorism in a visceral way, with depictions of brutal interrogations and torture, as well as 'realistic' depictions of murder or killings.
As a normal citizen, we cannot be sure how real any of these depictions are, but as Zero Dark Thirty (2012) also shows, it is likely that for the viewer it is less traumatic to view the images as performed (Smelik 312), than it is to see real images such as from Abu Ghraib and so forth. That said, if as Smelik notes "a paradoxical effect of frequent repetitions is that they actually make the image unreal and present it as performed" (309) then those images from Abu Ghraib are just as unreal to us as those we see in Homeland. I find the use of real audio from the past quite interesting in this context (seen at the introduction of the show), as do we find it as real or unreal due to repetition, or do we lend more credence to its authenticity as it is not a visual image but rather sound?
Smelik, Anneke. "Mediating Memories: The Ethics of Post-9/11 Spectatorship." Arcadia 45.2 (2010): 307-312. Web. 20 May 2013.
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