Adapting Detective Fiction is a study of specific instances of adaptation, with close readings of both the originating sources and adapted texts. But it is also more than this. It is a study of the politics of representation in the last decades of the twentieth century, and the role television detective fiction plays in this. It is about the mutually-informing interrelation of cultural texts and political rhetoric, about the connection between the popular-cultural depiction of crime and criminality and how we come to understand human behaviour and culpability; most of all, it is a detailed consideration of what the process of adaptation reveals about the shifting nature of the world in which we live. With specific reference to television series such as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Miss Marple. A Touch of Frost Cadfael, and Midsomer Murders Adapting Detective Fiction uses adaptation as the basis for an exercise in later twentieth-century cultural history, illustrating the fundamental role detective fictions play in popular beliefs about the nature of crime and Englishness.

Exemplary Representations of African American Women on Television: Queen Sugar On Screen and Behind the Scenes argues that the Oprah Winfrey Network's program Queen Sugar is a significant contribution to mainstream media that creates a space for deeper conversations concerning Black/African American women's social roles, social class, and social change. Ollie Jefferson provides a unique analysis of the television drama by using the exemplary representations conceptual framework, which is designed to define exemplars represented as characters that illustrate the complex humanity of Black lives-in this case, multidimensional female characters. Jefferson highlights the best practices used by female African American producers Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay, using Queen Sugar as a case study that broadens understanding of the media industry's need for culturally sensitive and conscious inclusion of people of color behind the scenes-as media owners, creators, writers, directors, and producers-to put an end to the persistent and pervasive misrepresentations of African American women on camera. Scholars of television studies, media studies, women's studies, and race studies will find this book particularly useful.

In this examination of violence and masculinity in George R. R. Martin's fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire and its television adaptation Game of Thrones, Tobi Evans offers a queer reading that revises the idea that the texts glorify violence. Moving from monstrous men characters and sovereigns to female, disabled, and genderqueer masculinities, Violent Fantasies understands the novels and television series to offer a complex and ambiguous negotiation of different types of violence. Deploying queer feminist poststructuralist and psychoanalytic approaches to the acts of violence that masculine characters use, Evans views hegemonic violence as part of a destructive cycle wherein characters use violence to dominate others but have their violence turned against them in such a way that their bodies become disgusting and they are unable to enter into systems of patriarchal reproduction. The only characters who succeed in proliferating their values and knowledges are those who use violence to care for others. These characters are also threatened with a bodily undoing when they use violence, but their bodily borders are secured because of their connections to others and their queer kinship bonds. Violence transforms the body, Evans argues, in ways that are both circular and ideologically ambivalent.

Offering a critical introduction into LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) transnational identity in the media, this book examines performances and representations within documentary and fiction oriented texts. An interdisciplinary approach is put forward, revealing new potentials for non western queer identity.

Television and streamed series that viewers watch on their TVs, computers, phones, and tablets are a crucial part of popular culture They have an influence on viewers and on law. People acquire values, behaviors, and stereotypes, both positive and negative, from television shows, which are relevant to people's acquisition of beliefs and to the development of law.. In this book, readers will find the first transnational, empirical look at ethnicity, gender, and diversity on legally-themed TV shows. Scholars determine the three most watched legally-themed shows in Brazil, Britain, Canada, Germany, Greece, Poland, Switzerland and the United States and then examine gender, age, ability, ethnicity, race, class, sexual orientation and nationality in those shows and countries. As such, this book provides an important link between law, TV, and what is going on in real life.

Focusing on Netflix's child and family-orientated platform exclusive content, this book offers the first exploration of a controversial genre cycle of dark science-fiction, horror, and fantasy television under Netflix's 'Family Watch Together TV' tag. Using a ground-breaking mix of methods including audience research, interface, and textual analysis, the book demonstrates how Netflix is producing dark family telefantasy content that is both reshaping child and family friendly TV genres and challenging earlier broadcast TV models around child-appropriate, family viewing. It illuminates how Netflix encourages family audiences to "watch together" through intergenerational dynamics that work on and offscreen. Chapters explore how this 'Netflixication' of family television developed across landmark examples including Stranger Things, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and even Squid Game. The book outlines how Netflix is consolidating a new dark family terrain in the streaming sector which is unsettling older concepts of family viewing leading to considerable audience and critical confusion around target audiences and viewer expectations. This book will be of particular interest to upper level undergraduates, graduates and scholars in the fields of television studies, screen genre studies, childhood studies, and cultural studies.

Masculinities in the US Hangout Sitcom examines how four sitcoms - Friends, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, and New Girl - mediate the tense relationship between neoliberalism and masculinities. Why is Ross in Friends so worried about everything? This book argues that the men in Friends and similar shows that follow young, straight, white twentysomethings in major US cities, are beset by a range of social and economic concerns about their place in society. Using multiple methods of analysis to examine these shows - including conjunctural analysis, historiographical method, and critical discourse analysis - a range of topics in these shows are examines, from sexuality through to homosociality, from race through to nationality. This book makes an insightful contribution to work on the television sitcom and on neoliberalism in culture and society. It will be an ideal resource for upper-level undergraduates, post-graduates, and researchers in a range of disciplines including television and screen studies, critical studies on men and masculinities and humor studies.

The 1960s (a.k.a. the 60s) remains a terrain of contemporary politics-with the values of the period embraced or rejected, as well as differently interpreted. Popular culture (movies, television) is an important means to understand and analyze the political issues and controversies surrounding the 60s-egalitarianism, equality (civil rights, feminism), as well as anti-communism (including the American war in Vietnam). In important and key instances popular culture (especially Star Trek [1966-1969]) was at the forefront of the progressive politics of the 60s. This book engages and analyzes the ongoing 60s through popular culture. The 60s is a pivotal period in American and world history-as the United States during this time turned away from white supremacy as official ideology. Also, the American public decidedly soured on U.S. military adventurism-as evidenced by broad public opposition to a military draft. Additionally, women (as a result of the feminism of the era) gained greater access to the public sphere and increased personal autonomy-non-discrimination (and anti-harassment) rules, abortion rights, and no fault divorce. Popular culture is philosophically significant because it allows people to cogitate reasons in the world-especially in the social, political realm. The creators of popular culture will often seek to offer the public authentic art, and much of the public seeks out authentic art. This makes American popular culture (in its finer forms) a viable source material about reason in the world. In this book the author doesn't seek to deconstruct popular culture; instead, he seeks to identify and analyze the reasons in the world depicted in it.

This book provides an in-depth study of pinboards in contemporary television series and develops the interdisciplinary and innovative concept of Serial Pinboarding. Pinboards are character attributes; they visualize thought processes; are used for conspiracy theories, as murder walls, or for complex cases in any genre. They significantly condition, and are conditioned by, seriality. This book discusses how the pinboards in Castle, Homeland, Flash Forward, and Heroes connect evidence, knowledge, and seriality and how through transmediality and fan practices an "age of pinboarding" has formed. Serial Pinboarding in Contemporary Television will appeal to TV enthusiasts, professionals and researchers, and students of TV and production studies, fan studies, media studies, and art theory.

In nineteenth-century Toronto, people took to the streets to express their jubilation on special occasions, such as the 1860 visit of the Prince of Wales and the return in 1885 of the local Volunteers who helped to suppress the Riel resistance in the North-West. In a contrasting mood, people also took to the streets in anger to object to government measures, such as the Rebellion Losses bill, to heckle rival candidates in provincial election campaigns, to assert their ethno-religious differences, and to support striking workers. Expressive Acts examines instances of both celebration and protest when Torontonians publicly displayed their allegiances, politics, and values. The book illustrates not just the Victorian city's vibrant public life but also the intense social tensions and cultural differences within the city. Drawing from journalists' accounts in newspapers, Expressive Acts illuminates what drove Torontonians to claim public space, where their passions lay, and how they gave expression to them.

- An accessible introduction to sports media that is intended for students. - Offers a specific definition of sports media and presents a corresponding (re)framing of the study of the topic that creates connections between initially disparate seeming areas within sport media. - Explores key contemporary topics such as athlete activism on Twitter, fantasy football fandom, gender in sports commentary, and more.

Though unjustly neglected by English-language audiences, Spanish film and television not only represent a remarkably influential and vibrant cultural industry; they are also a fertile site of innovation in the production of "transmedia" works that bridge narrative forms. In Spanish Lessons, Paul Julian Smith provides an engaging exploration of visual culture in an era of collapsing genre boundaries, accelerating technological change, and political-economic tumult. Whether generating new insights into the work of key figures like Pedro Almodovar, comparing media depictions of Spain's economic woes, or giving long-overdue critical attention to quality television series, Smith's book is a consistently lively and accessible cultural investigation.

- An accessible introduction to sports media that is intended for students. - Offers a specific definition of sports media and presents a corresponding (re)framing of the study of the topic that creates connections between initially disparate seeming areas within sport media. - Explores key contemporary topics such as athlete activism on Twitter, fantasy football fandom, gender in sports commentary, and more.

While women have long been featured in leading roles in film and television, the intellectual depictions of female characters in these mediums are out of line with reality. Women continue to be marginalized for their choices, overshadowed by men, and judged by their bodies. In fact, the intelligence of women is rarely the focus of television or film narratives, and on the rare occasion when smart women are showcased, their portrayals are undermined by socially awkward behavior or their intimate relationships are doomed to perpetual failure. While Hollywood claims to offer a different, more evolved look at women, these movies and shows often just repackage old character types that still downplay the intelligence and savvy of women. In Smart Chicks on Screen: Representing Women's Intellect in Film and Television, Laura Mattoon D'Amore brings together an impressive array of scholarship that interrogates the portrayal of females on television and in movies. Among the questions that the volume seeks to answer are: In what ways are women in film and television limited, or ostracized, by their intelligence? How do female roles reinforce standards of beauty, submissiveness, and silence over intellect, problem solving, and leadership? Are there women in film and television who are intelligent without also being objectified? The thirteen essays by international, interdisciplinary scholars offer a wide range of perspectives, examining the connections-and disconnections-between beauty and brains in film and television. Smart Chicks on Screen will be of interest to scholars not only of film and television but of women's studies, reception studies, and cultural history, as well.

"The Scandinavian Invasion offers an important and timely interrogation of Nordic Noir. Putting the concept under a microscope in a series of diverse chapters, it reveals that Nordic Noir is still teeming with vigorous life as it has emerged, proliferated and travelled across borders, becoming in the process a cultural phenomenon that has had significant implications for global television in the new millennium." (Sue Turnbull, University of Wollongong) You might think you know what Nordic Noir is. Brutal crimes. Harsh landscapes. Brilliant but socially dysfunctional protagonists. Stylish knitwear. Yet, as a generic category and cultural phenomenon, Nordic Noir has always been far more complex. The story of its success owes as much to adaptation and evolution as it does to geographical migration or cosmopolitan curiosity. But how did this happen? What was it about the genre that struck such a chord with international audiences and readers? How did it build on previous trends and influences? And how has the category changed in order to survive in a cutthroat commercial landscape? Has it become less "Nordic "? Less "noir "? Has its proverbial moment in the sun passed? Featuring twelve original chapters and an editorial introduction, The Scandinavian Invasion brings together leading media and literature scholars from the UK, Denmark and Australia to critically examine how the phenomenon took shape and what we can learn from it. By exploring the cultural, aesthetic and industrial forces that propelled Nordic Noir across borders, the book provides a kaleidoscopic look at a disruptive cultural phenomenon in transition. Nordic Noir is dead. Long live Nordic Noir!

While imagological works in the field of American Studies have traditionally focused on the construction of America by outsiders, this study takes a new approach by examining U.S. self-imaging efforts in the context of U.S. international broadcasting to Iran. The author traces the history of the Voice of America's Persian Service and illustrates its conflict-prone organizational framework and modus operandi by considering legal documents, government reports, and personal interviews. As the inductive programming analysis and the case study of Simaye Amrica show, the Persian Service pursues a twofold image cultivation strategy by aiming to shape Iranian perceptions of the U.S. government in its news and political shows and perceptions of the American people in its arts and cultural programs.

This timely collection of accessible essays interrogate queer television at the start of the twenty-first century. The complex political, cultural and economic milieu requires new terms and conceptual frameworks to study television and media through a queer lens. Gathering a range of well-known scholars the book takes on the relationship between sexual identity, desire, and television, breaking new ground in a context where existing critical vocabularies and research paradigms no longer hold sway in the ways they used to. The anthology sets out to confound conventional categories used to organize queer television scholarship, like "programming," "industry," "audience," "genre," and "activism." Instead, the anthology mobilizes three new terms - resonance, narrative affordance, and representational repair - creating new queer tools for studying digital television in the contemporary age. This collection is suitable for scholars and students studying queer media studies, television studies, gender studies and sexuality studies.

How are audiovisual translations made and received? This is just one of the questions this book offers answers to. Bringing together research on various forms of audiovisual translation, the range of issues treated is wide: How are discourse features translated in dubbed and subtitled programmes? Does subtitling enhance foreign language learning? Can the quality of audiovisual translation be assessed in a relevant way? What should we know about the audience? How should we audio describe? Audiovisual Translation in Close-up addresses these issues from a variety of perspectives: from discourse analysis and pragmatics to cognitive science, second language acquisition, actor-network theory and speech recognition, amongst others. Most contributions to this volume originate from the international bilingual conference "Audiovisual Translation: Multidisciplinary Approaches/La traduction audiovisuelle : Approches pluridisciplinaires" held in Montpellier, France, in 2008.

This book examines the historical development of Korean food TV and its articulation of Koreanness in the era of globalization. Jaehyeon Jeong defines the evolution of Korean food TV as an outcome of the conjuncture between the television industry's structural changes, the shift in food's landscape and cultural legitimacy, and various sociocultural, political, and economic transformations. In addition, Jeong reveals how the state appropriates the banality of food to raise South Korea's global image and how it utilizes domestic television to disseminate statist discourse of the nation. Understanding discourses of national cuisine as reflective of and formative of discourses of the nation, he argues that the growth of discourses of national cuisine is symptomatic of the struggle for nationness in a globalized world.

Russian TV Series in the Era of Transition examines contemporary Russian television genres in the age of transition from broadcast to post-broadcast television. Focusing on critical debates and the most significant TV series of the past two decades, the volume's contributors-the leading US and European scholars studying Russian television, as well as the leading Russian TV producers and directors-focus on three major issues: Russian television's transition to digital post-broadcast economy, which redefined the media environment; Russian television's integration into global television markets and their genre systems; and major changes in the representation of gender and sexuality on Russian television.

In recent years, there has been a rise in diverse racial representation on television. In particular, Black characters have become more actualized and have started extending beyond racial stereotypes. In this collection of essays, the representation of Black characters in professionally defined careers is examined. Commentary is also provided on the portrayal of Black people in relation to stereotypes alongside the importance of Black representation on screen. This work also introduces the idea of Black-collar, a category which highlights the Black experience in white-collar jobs. The essays are divided into six parts based on themes, including profession, and focuses on a select number of Black characters on TV since the 1990s.

Transmedia Character Studies provides a range of methodological tools and foundational vocabulary for the analysis of characters across and between various forms of multimodal, interactive, and even non-narrative or non-fictional media. This highly innovative work offers new perspectives on how to interrelate production discourses, media texts, and reception discourses, and how to select a suitable research corpus for the discussion of characters whose serial appearances stretch across years, decades, or even centuries. Each chapter starts from a different notion of how fictional characters can be considered, tracing character theories and models to approach character representations from perspectives developed in various disciplines and fields. This book will enable graduate students and scholars of transmedia studies, film, television, comics studies, video game studies, popular culture studies, fandom studies, narratology, and creative industries to conduct comprehensive, media-conscious analyses of characters across a variety of media.

This culturally and politically timely collection examines new Black films and moving images that have, once again, excited and possibly shifted the global media landscape. At a moment some scholars have described as post-post-racial, Black Cinema & Visual Culture provides new, urgent definitions and theories for Black cinema and furthers the development of its critical discourses. Gathering some of the leading scholars and critics in the field, this book enriches and advances the study of Black film and media and its social and political implications at a breakthrough period of expansion in the twenty-first century. This anthology tackles a wide-range of topics from social justice, new media, and Afrofuturism, to race, gender, sexuality, mass incarceration, cultural memory, and Afrosurrealism, exploring the current climate of Black cinematic art that has proven wildly popular with domestic and global audiences, including hit films like Get Out and Marvel's Black Panther. Together, these essays deepen understandings of Black visual culture, its creative imagemakers, the political economy of Hollywood, and the cultural politics at the intersection of modern cinema, streaming platforms, and digital technologies. Black Cinema & Visual Culture will serve as an important learning tool for university courses spanning topics in film studies, American film and television, cultural studies, American studies, African Diaspora studies, media activism, social analysis, and African-American studies. This volume will also provide a benchmark in popular and intellectual circles for anyone interested in popular culture, Black-American cinema, media, issues of race in Hollywood, or Black culture and the conditions that shape both its art and politics.