A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
TV Legal Drama Speaks to U.S. Citizens
by: Mary Beth Haralovich / University of Arizona
In the early 1970s, Dirty Harry famously took on the issue of constitutional rights for US citizens suspected of crimes. Clint Eastwood’s cop movie launched the popular narrative enigma that would influence decades of television legal drama . . .
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.
Media Left Out?
by: Thomas Streeter / University of Vermont
Never has the need for media reform been more obvious, more urgent, or — judging by everything from Moveon.org surveys to downloads of the Jon Stewart Crossfire clip — more popular.
Right Turn: Talk TV and Contemporary Politics
by: Rhonda Hammer and Douglas Kellner
Talk television has become increasingly political in the past years.
Taming the Global on Italian Television
by: Michela Ardizzoni / Indiana University
The famous Dutch television producer, Endemol, will probably go down in the annals of history as a catalyst of standardized television programming across the globe.
Why Fox News is a Good Thing
by: Toby Miller / University of California, Riverside
A closer look at the supposed differences between Fox News and its cable news competitors.
Funny Politics
by: Jim McGuigan / Loughborough University
It is commonplace to observe that television, like everything else, is increasingly global these days. What is happening on the other side of the world is shown and commented upon instantaneously in news programming.
Fairness Doctrine Now! Will it really hush Rush?
by: Frederick Wasser / Brooklyn College
We cannot blame this one on the media. There was no spin, no agenda setting, and no spiral of silence powerful enough to excuse the electorate.
My Own Private TV
by: Erin MacLeod / McGill University
With the “TV on DVD” phenomenon in full effect almost any show you’ve ever loved that’s been either relegated to reruns or sporadic glimpses on various cable channels is available.
To Pee or Not to Pee: On the Politics of Cultural Appropriation
by: Brian L. Ott / Colorado State University
Although I appreciate the courtesy of my fellow drivers letting me know what pisses them off and whom they’d like to piss on, I can’t help but notice that they have adopted the same cultural icon to convey, at times, very divergent targets of distaste.
“Citizen versus Consumer”: Rethinking Core Concepts
by: Michele Hilmes / University of Wisconsin-Madison
Every so often a core concept emerges in an historical or theoretical field that serves a purpose at the time of its invention but slowly loses its explanatory power…
Apology
by: Cynthia Fuchs / George Mason University
Apologizing is an art. And apologizing for TV is something else.