Transform Me, Please…
by: Tara McPherson / University of Southern California
I have to confess that the chance to ‘look ten years younger’ in ten days has its appeal.
Tag: Femininity
Domestic Reality TV
by: Allison McCracken / DePaul University
I have finally found a reality program that I can watch without cringing with embarrassment for the participants and/or becoming enraged at the producers. Not surprisingly, it’s trailing in the ratings and on the brink of cancellation.
Women Watching Sports
by: Janet Staiger / University of Texas at Austin
I knew something had changed when I called my then-mid-70-year-old mom in Omaha several years ago on a Saturday afternoon before Christmas to ask her about clothing sizes for gifts and she responded: “I can’t talk now. Texas is beating Nebraska for the Big XII Championship.”
The Boob Tube
by: Heather Hendershot / Queens College CUNY
“It’s like Jell-O on springs!” Jack Lemmon declares as he ogles Marilyn Monroe’s fleshy derriere in Some Like It Hot (1959). Lemmon himself is in drag, and watching this film recently for the umpteenth time, I am struck again by its strange combination of heterosexual prurience and queer exuberance. I am also struck by Monroe’s plumpness.
Super Freaks
by: Heather Hendershot / Queens College
Whatever TV lacks in form it sometimes makes up for in content. TV may not look good, but it feels good.
Casting Shirley Partridge: The Reality TV Audience as Talent Scout
by: Mary Beth Haralovich / University of Arizona
Reality television is developing a new force on the creative side of television production as the TV audience joins television executives in the creation of entertainment programming.
Small Pleasures
by: Mimi White / Northwestern University
Can you love and hate a television show at one and the same time?
Diary of a Political Tourist
by: Anna McCarthy / New York University
Must political documentaries always return to shopworn chiches?