Very Special Episodes examines how the quintessential “very special episode” format became a primary way in which the television industry responded to and shaped social change, cultural traumas, and industrial transformations. With essays covering shows ranging from the birth of Desi Arnaz, Jr. on I Love Lucy to contemporary examples such as a delayed episode of Black-ish and the streaming-era phenomenon of the “Very Special Seasons” of UnReal and 13...

Examines the bleak television comedies that illustrate the obsession of the white left with its own anxiety and sufferingAt the same time that right-wing political figures like Donald Trump were elected and reactionary socio-economic policies like Brexit were voted into law, representations of bleakly comic white fragility spread across television screens. American and British programming that featured the abjection of young, middle-class, liberal white people—such...

Named a Best Nonfiction Book of 2022 by EsquireA sociological study of reality TV that explores its rise as a culture-dominating medium—and what the genre reveals about our attitudes toward race, gender, class, and sexualityWhat do we see when we watch reality television?In True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us, the sociologist and TV-lover Danielle J. Lindemann takes a long, hard look in the “funhouse mirror” ...

Brings together the highlights of a decade and a half of groundbreaking research into the cultural life of media consumersHenry Jenkins's pioneering work in the early 1990s promoted the idea that fans are among the most active, creative, critically engaged, and socially connected consumers of popular culture and that they represent the vanguard of a new relationship with mass media. Though marginal and largely invisible to the general public at the time, today, med...

Introduces key terms, research traditions, debates, and their histories, and offers a sense of the new frontiers and questions emerging in the field of media studiesKeywords for Media Studies introduces and aims to advance the field of critical media studies by tracing, defining, and problematizing its established and emergent terminology. The book historicizes thinking about media and society, whether that means noting a long history of “new media,” or tracing how...

Since first going on the air in 1972, HBO has continually attempted to redefine television as we know it. Today, pay television (and HBO in particular) is positioned as an alternative to network offerings, consistently regarded as the premier site for what has come to be called "quality television."This collection of new essays by an international group of media scholars argues that HBO, as part of the leading edge of television, is at the center of television studies’ interests in...

Simultaneously celebrated and denigrated, celebrities represent not only the embodiment of success, but also the ultimate construction of false value. Celebrity and Power questions the impulse to become embroiled with the construction and collapse of the famous, exploring the concept of the new public intimacy: a product of social media in which celebrities from Lady Gaga to Barack Obama are expected to continuously campaign for audiences in new ways. In a new Introductio...

Utilizing each chapter to present core topical and timely examples, Pop Culture Freaks highlights the tension between inclusion and individuality that lies beneath mass media and commercial culture, using this tension as a point of entry to an otherwise expansive topic. He systematically considers several dimensions of identity—race, class, gender, sexuality, disability—to provide a broad overview of the field that encompasses classical and contemporary theory, original data, topi...

This book is an essential resource for media educators working to promote critical thinking, creativity, and civic engagement through their teaching. Connecting theory and research with creative projects and analyses of pop culture, it models an integrated and practical approach to media education.In order to prepare learners to successfully navigate rapid shifts in digital technology and popular culture, media educators in both secondary and university settings need to develop fre...

Since the show's debut in 2007, Mad Men has invited viewers to immerse themselves in the lush period settings, ruthless Madison Avenue advertising culture, and arresting characters at the center of its 1960s fictional world. Mad Men, Mad World is a comprehensive analysis of this groundbreaking TV series. Scholars from across the humanities consider the AMC drama from a fascinating array of perspectives, including fashion, history, architecture, civil rights, feminism, con...

Television entertainment rules supreme, one of the world’s most important disseminators of information, ideas, and amusement. More than a parade of little figures in a box, it is deeply embedded in everyday life, in how we think, what we think and care about, and who we think and care about it with.But is television entertainment art? Why do so many love it and so many hate or fear it? Does it offer a window to the world, or images of a fake world? How is it political and how does ...

Winner of the Popular Culture Association's 2018 John G. Cawelti Award for the Best Textbook / PrimerWhat is popular culture? Why study popular culture in an academic context? An Introduction to Popular Culture in the US: People, Politics, and Power introduces and explores the history and contemporary analysis of popular culture in the United States. In situating popular culture as lived experience through the activities, objects, and distractions of every...