The Sitcom

The Sitcom

In this guide, Butler analyses the sitcom's position as a major media artefact within American culture and provides a historical overview of the genre as it has evolved in the US. Butler examines discourses of gender, race, ethnicity, class ...

Author: Jeremy G. Butler

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 1138850969

Category:

Page: 224

View: 681

In this new Routledge Television Guidebook, Butler analyzes the sitcom's position as a major media artefact within American culture and will provide a historical overview of the genre as it has evolved in the US. Butler examines discourses of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation that are ever always at the core of humor in our culture and interprets how those discourses are embedded in television¿s relatively rigid narrative structures. The book is organized around the sub-genres through which the sitcom has cycled: for example, the rural sitcom, the workplace sitcom, the family sitcom, the "ethnic" sitcom, and so on, giving students and scholars alike a solid overview of TV comedy.
Categories:

Teen TV

Teen TV

This book will be of interest to students, scholars, and teachers interested in television aesthetics, TV genres, pop culture, and youth culture, as well as media and television studies.

Author: Stefania Marghitu

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781351859677

Category: Social Science

Page: 246

View: 664

Teen TV explores the history of television’s relationship to teens as a desired, but elusive audience, and the ways in which television has embraced youth subcultures, tracing the shifts in American and global televisual and teen media. Organized chronologically to cover each generation since the inception of the medium in the 1940s, the book examines a wide range of historical and contemporary programming: from the broadcast bottleneck, multi-channel era that included youth-targeted spaces like MTV, the WB, and the CW, to the rise of streaming platforms and global crossovers. It covers the thematic concerns and narrative structure of the coming-of-age story, and the prevalent genre formations of teen TV and milestones faced by teen characters. The book also includes interviews with creators and showrunners of hit network television teen series, including Degrassi’s Linda Schuyler, and the costume designer that established a heightened turn in the significance of teen fashion on the small screen in Gossip Girl, Eric Daman. This book will be of interest to students, scholars, and teachers interested in television aesthetics, TV genres, pop culture, and youth culture, as well as media and television studies.
Categories: Social Science

The Essential Cult TV Reader

The Essential Cult TV Reader

This Life: The Companion Guide. London: BBC Books/Penguin Books, 1997. McKain, Aaron. “Not Necessarily Not the News: Gatekeeping, Remediation, and The Daily Show.” Journal of American Culture 28.4 (Dec. 2005): 415–30. Medina, Victor.

Author: David Lavery

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

ISBN: 9780813181493

Category: Performing Arts

Page: 414

View: 360

The Essential Cult TV Reader is a collection of insightful essays that examine television shows that amass engaged, active fan bases by employing an imaginative approach to programming. Once defined by limited viewership, cult TV has developed its own identity, with some shows gaining large, mainstream audiences. By exploring the defining characteristics of cult TV, The Essential Cult TV Reader traces the development of this once obscure form and explains how cult TV achieved its current status as legitimate television. The essays explore a wide range of cult programs, from early shows such as Star Trek, The Avengers, Dark Shadows, and The Twilight Zone to popular contemporary shows such as Lost, Dexter, and 24, addressing the cultural context that allowed the development of the phenomenon. The contributors investigate the obligations of cult series to their fans, the relationship of camp and cult, the effects of DVD releases and the Internet, and the globalization of cult TV. The Essential Cult TV Reader answers many of the questions surrounding the form while revealing emerging debates on its future.
Categories: Performing Arts

The Age of Melodramatic Miniseries

The Age of Melodramatic Miniseries

London: Routledge, 1994: 71. Maclaine, Shirley. ... Marill, Alvin H. Movies Made for Television: The Tele-feature and the Mini-series 1964–1986. ... on the Small Screen, 1970–1995: The Complete Guide to Tele-Features and Mini-Series.

Author: Scott Humphries

Publisher: McFarland

ISBN: 9781476649825

Category: Performing Arts

Page: 217

View: 131

Glamour, power, champagne breakfasts in satin sheets--welcome to television's most dazzling and overlooked genre: women-centric melodrama miniseries of the 1980s and 1990s. Decades before Real Housewives, rags-to-riches fantasies depicting strong women overcoming tragedy to take charge of their destinies were a big hit with TV audiences.Reflecting the "greed is good" ethos of the day and encoded with feminist messaging, these glitzy, often camp stories depicted statuesque superwomen facing off with square-jawed men in boardrooms and bedrooms. This book explores the shows that epitomized the prime-time soap era and gave us such memorable scenes as Stefanie Powers trading lovers with her twin sister, Joan Collins fighting Nazis in haute couture and Phoebe Cates demanding, "Which one of you bitches is my mother?"
Categories: Performing Arts

Political TV

Political TV

This book serves as an accessible critical introduction to the broad category of American political television content.

Author: Chuck Tryon

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781317556947

Category: Social Science

Page: 220

View: 665

This book serves as an accessible critical introduction to the broad category of American political television content. Encompassing political news and scripted entertainment, Political TV addresses a range of formats, including interview/news programs, political satire, fake news, drama, and reality TV. From long-running programs like Meet the Press to more recent offerings including Veep, The Daily Show, House of Cards, Last Week Tonight, and Scandal, Tryon addresses ongoing debates about the role of television in representing issues and ideas relevant to American politics. Exploring political TV’s construction of concepts of citizenship and national identity, the status of political TV in a post-network era, and advertisements in politics, Political TV offers an engaging, timely analysis of how this format engages its audience in the political scene. The book also includes a videography of key and historical series, discussion questions, and a bibliography for further reading.
Categories: Social Science

Science Fiction TV

Science Fiction TV

The first in the Routledge Television Guidebooks series, Science Fiction TV offers an introduction to the versatile and evolving genre of science fiction television, combining historical overview with textual readings to analyze its ...

Author: J. P. Telotte

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781135968854

Category: Performing Arts

Page: 202

View: 862

The first in the Routledge Television Guidebooks series, Science Fiction TV offers an introduction to the versatile and evolving genre of science fiction television, combining historical overview with textual readings to analyze its development and ever-increasing popularity. J. P. Telotte discusses science fiction’s cultural progressiveness and the breadth of its technological and narrative possibilities, exploring SFTV from its roots in the pulp magazines and radio serials of the 1930s all the way up to the present. From formative series like Captain Video to contemporary, cutting-edge shows like Firefly and long-lived popular revivals such as Doctor Who and Star Trek, Telotte insightfully tracks the history and growth of this crucial genre, along with its dedicated fandom and special venues, such as the Syfy Channel. In addition, each chapter features an in-depth exploration of a range of key historical and contemporary series, including: -Captain Video and His Video Rangers -The Twilight Zone -Battlestar Galactica -Farscape -Fringe Incorporating a comprehensive videography, discussion questions, and a detailed bibliography for additional reading, J. P. Telotte has created a concise yet thought-provoking guide to SFTV, a book that will appeal not only to dedicated science fiction fans but to students of popular culture and media as well.
Categories: Performing Arts

Fairy Tale TV

Fairy Tale TV

The global reach and popularity of fairy tales is reflected in the book's selection of diverse examples from genres such as political, lifestyle, reality, and science fiction TV. With a select mediagraphy, discussion questions, and detailed ...

Author: Jill Terry Rudy

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 0429326718

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 258

View: 824

"This concise and accessible critical introduction examines the world of popular fairy-tale television, tracing how fairy tales and their social and cultural implications manifest within series, television events, anthologies, and episodes, and as freestanding motifs. Providing a model of televisual analysis, Rudy and Greenhill emphasize that fairy-tale longevity in general, and particularly on TV, results from malleability-morphing from extremely complex narratives to the simple quotation of a name (like Cinderella) or phrase (like "happily ever after")-as well as its perennial value as a form that is good to think with. The global reach and popularity of fairy tales is reflected in the book's selection of diverse examples from genres such as political, lifestyle, reality, and science fiction TV. With a select mediagraphy, discussion questions, and detailed bibliography for further study, this book is an ideal guide for students and scholars of television studies, popular culture, and media studies, as well as dedicated fairy-tale fans"--
Categories: Literary Criticism

Cult British TV comedy

Cult British TV comedy

Dalton, M.M. and Linder, L.R. (eds) (2005) The Sitcom Reader: America Viewed and Skewed, Albany: State University of New York Press. ... Douglas, M. (1975) Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology, London and New York: Routledge.

Author: Leon Hunt

Publisher: Manchester University Press

ISBN: 9781526102362

Category: Social Science

Page: 256

View: 468

This book is the first sustained critical analysis of Cult British TV comedy from 1990 to the present day. The book examines ‘post-alternative’ comedy as both ‘cult’ and ‘quality’ TV, aimed mostly at niche audiences and often possessing a subcultural aura (comedy was famously declared ‘the new ‘rock’n’roll’ in the early ‘90s). It includes case studies of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer and the sitcom writer Graham Linehan. It examines developments in sketch shows and the emergence of ‘dark’ and ‘cringe’ comedy, and considers the politics of ‘offence’ during a period in which Brass Eye, ‘Sachsgate’ and Frankie Boyle provoked different kinds of media outrage. Programmes discussed include Vic Reeves Big Night Out, Peep Show, Father Ted, The Mighty Boosh, The Fast Show and Psychoville. Cult British TV Comedy will be of interest to both students and fans of modern TV comedy.
Categories: Social Science

The Television Genre Book

The Television Genre Book

Murray, Susan and Ouellette, Laurie (eds) (2004), Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, New York: New York University Press. ... Neale, Steve and Krutnik, Frank (1990), Popular Film and Television Comedy, London: Routledge.

Author: Glen Creeber

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

ISBN: 9781911239024

Category: Performing Arts

Page: 256

View: 288

Genre is central to understanding the industrial context and visual form of television. This new edition of the key textbook on television genre brings together leading international scholars to provide an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the debates, issues and concerns of the field. Structured in eleven sections, The Television Genre Book introduces the concept of 'genre' itself and how it has been understood in television studies, and then addresses the main televisual genres in turn: drama, soap opera, comedy, news, documentary, reality television, children's television, animation and popular entertainment. This third edition is illustrated throughout with case studies of classic and contemporary programming from each genre, ranging from The Simpsons to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and from Monty Python's Flying Circus to Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. It also features new case studies on contemporary shows, including The Only Way Is Essex, Homeland, Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, Planet Earth, Grey's Anatomy and QVC, and new chapters covering topics such as constructed reality, travelogues, telefantasy, stand-up comedy, the panel show, 24-hour news, Netflix and video on demand.
Categories: Performing Arts