Melodrama in Contemporary Film and Television debates the ways in which melodrama expresses and gives meaning to: trauma and pathos; memory and historical re-visioning; home and borders; gendered and queer relations; the family and psychic identities; the national and emerging public cultures; and morality and ethics.

Since the 1990s, the screening of sex on American, British and Asian television screens has become increasingly prolific. Considering not only the specificities of selected sexualised images in relation to popular series, this study also concerns itself with the ramifications of TV sex as well as discussing the various techniques that are used by TV producers/programme makers to establish the cultural worth of their texts in series such as "Shameless, The Tudors" and "True Blood."

The contributions draw attention to shifting representations of sex on television away from the authoritarian state and patriarchal order, toward a more democratic form of representation. As a significant and under-represented aspect of contemporary television studies, this is the first full-length academic collection to consider the wide-ranging representations of sex in society on contemporary television.

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"In recent years, an expanding wave of law and criminal justice programs has emerged on American television. Elayne Rapping proves a masterful guide in her overview of a wide range of TV narrative fiction series, Court TV, talk shows, news, and other programs that deals with law, order, criminality, and justice, contextualizing TV crime and justice in the context of fierce political battles over these topics in the past decades of American history."
--Douglas Kellner, author of "Media Culture and Media Spectacle"

"Lively and engagingly written, it explores as Rapping writes, "an interplay of aesthetics, politics, and legal history [that] come together in complex and often contradictory ways. Anyone who has watched these shows will appreciate seeing them in a new way. Much of the enjoyment in reading the book comes from Rapping's ability to draw on a wide range of cultural and intellectual interests and present them in down-to-earth language."
--"Trial"

"Accessible and lucid."
--"www.sirreadalot.org"

""Law and Justice as Seen on TV" is deliberately provocative."
--"Akron Beacon Journal"

""Law and Justice as Seen on TV" provides a comprehensive and sophisticated look at the ways law appears nightly in the living rooms of millions of Americans. Combining valuable insights about the workings of the television industry with an insightful argument about the criminalization of American life, Elayne Rapping has made a distinctive contribution to interdisciplinary legal scholarship. Her work shows how valuable the analysis of popular culture can be in illuminating some of the most important legal and socialissues of our time."
--Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

Law and Justice as Seen on TV examines the impact, significance, and social and political problems raised by the enormous onslaught of law-related television programming, both fiction and nonfiction, in the years since the rise of live televised trials as major media events. The book weaves together the various strands--media history and analysis, legal history and policy, and the national turn to the political right in the last decades--which gave birth to this trend and has kept it thriving and growing, by leaps and bounds, to the present day.

Beginning with the history of courtroom drama on TV and its various contradictions and shifts, since the late 1940s to the present, the book analyzes the various entertainment series and genres that have so proliferated in recent years, giving special attention to such popular and influential series as "Law and Order" and "Cops." The second section begins by charting the complex and contested history of the coming of cameras to the courtroom and the way in which that legal decision led to televised trials and to the rise of Court TV. It examines as especially interesting and important the major trials--such as those of the Menendez brothers, O.J. Simpson, and Timothy McVeigh--which helped to shape the way television came to frame trials and their social implications for public consumption. From there it examines major social issues--gender violence, youth crime, family dysfunction, victims' rights which, with the rise of the courtroom as a major political and television arena, have come to be viewed largely aslegal issues to be discussed and determined in legal terms by Americans in general.

Accessible and lucid, Law and Justice as Seen on TV concludes with an examination of the broad implications of this social and cultural trend, closing with some thoughts about its expansion, on television and in the actual legal arena, during the "war on terrorism" in the wake of 9/11.

Consuming Reality examines TV's response to the increasing pressure to brand content in a post-advertising era. June Deery's comprehensive analysis of the commercial practices found in popular reality programming reveals links to larger trends such as the sentimental dissemination of capitalist and nationalist ideologies, the professionalization of social relationships (including conceptions of self), and the mainstreaming of PR techniques in everyday life. Examining topics such as reality formats as pseudo-events, product placement, donorship, TV-web branding, making over homes/bodies as properties, consumer identity and pathology, Disney, and the American Dream, this book engages in a comprehensive examination of RTV's advertising and promotional strategies, as well as the commodification of viewers, of TV participants, of ideologies, dreams, and ideas.

What does it mean to live as a ghost? Exploring spectrality as a potent metaphor in the contemporary British and American cultural imagination, Peeren proposes that certain subjects - migrants, servants, mediums and missing persons - are perceived as living ghosts and examines how this impacts on their ability to develop agency. From detailed readings of films (Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things, Nick Broomfield's Ghosts and Robert Altman's Gosford Park), a television series (Upstairs, Downstairs) and novels (Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black, Sarah Waters's Affinity, Ian McEwan's The Child in Time and Bret Easton Ellis's Lunar Park) emerges an inventive account of how the spectral metaphor, in its association with various modes of invisibility, can signify both dispossession and empowerment. In reworking the spectral insights of, among others, Jacques Derrida, Antonio Negri and Achille Mbembe, Peeren suggests new responses to the practices of marginalization and exploitation that characterize our globalized world.

An innovative and original new study, "Television, Memory and Nostalgia" re-imagines the relationship between the medium and its forms of memory and remembrance through a series of case studies of British and North American programmes and practices. These include "ER," "Grey's Anatomy," "The Wire," "Who Do You Think You Are?," and "Life on Mars."

An ambitious interpretation of the critically celebrated and widely popular crime drama Breaking Bad , this book argues that not only should the series be understood as a show that revolves around the dramatic stakes of dignity, but that to do so reveals - in new ways - central aspects of serial television drama as an art form.

"Public Service Media and Policy in Europe" provides an in-depth account of EU policies in the area of public service broadcasting, focusing mainly on the application of the European State aid rules. The book discusses when, how and with what impact the European Commission deals with public service broadcasting. There is an element of fear towards the intervention of the European Commission, and a worry that it is overly focused on economic goals to the detriment of public interest objectives. More specifically, the fear exists that 'Europe' might hamper the evolution from public service broadcasting to public service media and introduce harmonized European rules for public service broadcasting. Private media companies have lobbied extensively against the expansion of public broadcasters' tasks and for a European straitjacket in this regard. Karen Donders evaluates whether the European Commission has indeed satisfied private sector interests by marginalising public broadcasters, or whether it has in fact contributed to the emergence of a public service media project.

A richly illustrated companion volume to the acclaimed "7 Up" film series, this book is based on Michael Apted's award-winning documentaries which cover the lives of 14 British children from age seven until they turn 42. 100 photos.

"Fashion on Television" provides a comprehensive critical examination of the intersection between fashion, television and celebrity culture. The book brings together theoretical approaches to the symbolic force of television and fashion-forward programming on a global scale.Examining case studies such as Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, Ugly Betty and Mad Men, the book examines how TV has made style icons out of leading actresses and fashion-conscious consumers out of audiences. Using a varied methodology, including textual and contextual analysis, this study explores the cultural uses of onscreen fashion at the level of industry, text and intertext."Fashion on Television" is essential reading for those seeking to understand the cultural function of costume in a television context. Written accessibly with a multi-disciplinary approach, it will appeal to students and scholars from film and media, fashion and cultural studies, to sociology and women's studies.

.cs676C7CC9{text-align: left;text-indent:0pt;padding:12pt 0pt 0pt 0pt;margin:0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt}.csA62DFD6A{color: #000000;background-color: transparent;font-family: Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; }.cs5EFED22F{color: #000000;background-color: transparent;font-family: Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; }Deconstructing South Park: Critical Examinations of Animated Transgression is an edited collection by Brian Cogan that looks at the long and controversial run of one of the most subversive programs on television. South Park, while denounced by many as simply scatological, is actually one of the most nuanced and thoughtful programs on television. The contributors to South Park reveal that, through the lens of four foul-mouthed nine year olds, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have created one of the most astute forms of social and political commentary in television history.Deconstructing South Park, itself the most ambitious deconstruction of popular culture to date, analyzes how South Park is not only entertainment, but a commentary on American culture that tackles controversial issues far beyond the depth of most television. Specifically, the medium of animated sitcom allows the show's creators to contribute to cultural conversations regarding disability studies, religion, sexuality, celebrity, and more. If South Park deconstructs American culture, then Cogan and his contributors deconstruct the deconstructionists and reveal South Park in all its hilarious and often contradictory complexity.

While masculinity has been an increasingly visible field of study within several disciplines (sociology, literary studies, cultural studies, film and tv) over the last two decades, it is surprising that analysis of contemporary representations of the first part of the century has yet to emerge. Professor Brian Baker, evolving from his previous work Masculinities in Fiction and Film: Representing Men in Popular Genres 1945-2000, intervenes to rectify the scholarship in the field to produce a wide-ranging, readable text that deals with films and other texts produced since the year 2000. Focusing on representations of masculinity in cinema, popular fiction and television from the period 2000-2010, he argues that dominant forms of masculinity in Britain and the United States have become increasingly informed by anxiety, trauma and loss, and this has resulted in both narratives that reflect that trauma and others which attempt to return to a more complete and heroic form of masculinity. While focusing on a range of popular genres, such as Bond films, war movies, science fiction and the Gothic, the work places close analyses of individual films and texts in their cultural and historical contexts, arguing for the importance of these popular fictions in diagnosing how contemporary Britain and the United States understand themselves and their changing role in the world through the representation of men, fully recognising the issues of race/ethnicity, class, sexuality, and age. Baker draws upon current work in mobility studies and in the study of masculinities to produce the first book-length comparative study of masculinity in popular culture of the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Opinion Polls and the Media provides the most comprehensive analysis to date on the relationship between the media, opinion polls, and public opinion. Looking at the extent to which the media, through their use of opinion polls, both reflect and shape public opinion, it brings together a team of leading scholars and analyzes theoretical and methodological approaches to the media and their use of opinion polls. The contributors explore how the media use opinion polls in a range of countries across the world, and analyze the effects and uses of opinion polls by the public as well as political actors.

Born in 1916 in La Jolla, California, Gregory Peck took up acting in college on a lark that would lead to a career. In his early years, he appeared in a series of summer stock engagements and Broadway shows. He became a star within a year after arriving in Hollywood during World War II, and he won an Academy Award nomination for his second film. From the 1940s to the present, he has played some of film's most memorable and admired characters. This volume provides complete information about Gregory Peck's work in film, television, radio, and the stage. Entries are included for all of his performances, with each entry providing cast and credit information, a plot summary, excerpts from reviews, and critical commentary. A biography and chronology highlight significant events in his life, while a listing of his honors and awards summarizes the recognition he has received over the years. For researchers seeking additional information, the book includes descriptions of special collections holding material related to Peck's work, along with an extensive bibliography of books and articles.

This volume brings together a range of voices from across the global environmental media community to build a comparative international set of perspectives on 'green' film and television production. Through this, it provides a necessary intervention in environmental media studies that actively foregrounds media infrastructure, production, policy, and labour - that is, the management and practice of media production cultures. Due to its immense sociocultural influence and economic resources, the global screen media industry is at the forefront of raising awareness for the political and social issues resulting from accelerated environmental instability. However, the 21st century relationship between screen media and the environment has another face that demands urgent scrutiny. The advent of the digital age and the vast electrical and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructures required to support digital production, distribution, and archiving has resulted in the rapid expansion and diversification of the industry's resource use, infrastructure construction, energy dependency, and consequent waste and emissions production. Addressing these structures is essential to alleviating their environmental and social impact and ensuring that the industry's rhetoric on environmental responsibility is reflected in its practice. As a mitigating counterbalance to the above trends, there has been a heightenedpush for sustainability measures along various lines of industry management, policy, and practice. These initiatives-including the cultural values they reflect, the political economies that form their logic, the managerial and marketing tactics that orchestrate them, and the environmental realities of their implementation-form the central object of inquiry for this collection.

The detective, as a preeminent figure in all forms of American popular culture, has become the subject of a variety of theoretical exploration. By investigating that figure, these essays demonstrate how the genre embodies all the contradictions of American society and the ways in which literature and the media attempt to handle those contradictions. Issues of class, gender, and race; the interaction of film and literature; and generic evolution are fundamental to any understanding of the American detective in all of his or her forms. Beginning with essays about Raymond Chandler's treatment of women, Part I concentrates on writers of the genre whose detectives embody aspects of American culture in the 20th century. Through examination of the work of Elmore Leonard, Chester Himes, Sue Grafton, and others, these essays look at the influence of film on literature, how ethnicity affects the genre's conventions, and gender issues. Part II looks closely at specific detectives in the media and demonstrates how the film detective has gone from one who upholds the moral order to one who contributes to the continuation of evil. A study of television detectives confirms the necessity of formula and variation to sustain a detective over many seasons.

The way detectives access and attain the 'truth' about a crime is an important indicator of how they relate to contemporary political developments. This book explores these methods of detection and positions the genre in a specific political, aesthetic, narrative and industrial context.

This unique book explores the social processes which shape fictional representations of police and crime in television dramas. Exploring ten leading British and European police dramas from the last twenty-five years, Colbran, a former scriptwriter, presents a revealing insight into police dramas, informed by media and criminological theory.

(Applause Books). Television history was made on April 30, 1997, when comedian Ellen DeGeneres and her sitcom alter-ego Ellen Morgan, "came out" to her close friends and 36 million viewers. This groundbreaking episode represented a significant milestone in Amerian television. For the first time, a TV series centered around a lesbian character who was portrayed by an openly gay actor. The millions of viewers who tuned in that historic night were witnesses to a new era in television. THE PRIME TIME CLOSET offers an entertaining and in-depth glimpse into homosexuality on television from the 1950s through today. Divided into four sections, each devoted to a major television genre, this unique book explores how gay men and lesbians have been depicted in over three hundred television episodes and made-for-TV films. These include medical series, police/detective shows, situation comedies and TV dramas. THE PRIME TIME CLOSET also reveals how television's treatement of homosexuality has reflected and reinforced society's ignorance about and fear of gay men and lesbians. At the same time, it celebrates programs like Ellen and Will & Grace that have broken new ground in their sensitive and enlightened approach to homosexuality and gay-related themes. This book is witty and insightful, accessible and illuminating, a look into what has become an integral part of American media culture.

A Functional Analysis of Political Television Advertisements examines theory and research on election advertisements. William Benoit employs the Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse to understand the nature or content of television spots in election campaigns. Beginning with a look at American presidential spots from 1952-2012, Benoit investigates the three functions-acclaims, attacks, and defenses-and the topics of policy and character for these groups of political commercials. The following chapters are devoted to reporting similar data on presidential primary advertisements, presidential third party spots, other theories including Issue Ownership Theory and Functional Federalism Theory, as well as nonpresidential and non-U.S. election advertising. Benoit considers the data, discusses the development of political advertising over time, and finally, presents areas for further research. This book is a uniquely comprehensive examination of the value and use of television spots in political election rhetoric.