A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
Editorial: Now That We've Found Internet Programming, What Are We Gonna Do With It?
By: David M. Gurney / University of Texas at Austin
A meditation on where viewing habits are migrating at a time when the profile of internet broadcasting is increasing by the day.
The Lure of American Idol Explained: Parasocial Relationships and Emotional Vicarious Living in Live TV
By: Carol Morgan / Wright State University
It may be “mindless” television, but the relationships formed between the home audience and the contestants of American Idol illuminate the current state of the American Dream.
Life on Animal Planet
By: Mark Andrejevic / University of Iowa
Animal Planet documentaries offer a disturbing mirror through which to view the pathologies of our current social reality.
Attend the Flow Conference!
By: Flow Staff
Join one of the roundtables at the upcoming Flow conference!
Where the Boys Are: Postfeminism and the New Single Man
By: Diane Negra / Brown University
In films such as Wedding Crashers and Failure to Launch, the emergent “problem” single man offers an opportunity to think about the nature and function of postfeminist masculinities in current popular culture.
Introducing Television
By: Jonathan Gray / Fordham University
The key to any television program’s themes, characters and stylistic characteristics are often mapped out within the first few moments of every episode, in the introductory sequence.
À la carte Culture
By: John McMurria / DePaul University
What are the cultural repercussions of an à la carte cable? And does anyone in the FCC care?
(TV)antipathy: A Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Television Hating, Part One
By: David Lavery / Middle Tennessee State University
Part One of Two–An evolving commentary on the mind-numbing role of TV in individual and social life.
Food for Thought
By: Dana Polan / New York University
The sushi’s on us: How The Sopranos is “assailing the very demographic that makes up its preferred fan base,” via our stomachs.
Micro-Ethnographies of the Screen: The Last Screen on Earth
By: Dan Leopard / University of Southern California
How photographs connect us with the imagined consciousness of the photographer.
By: L.S. Kim / University of California, Santa Cruz
We’ve seen people trade spaces and trade spouses on television to varying degrees of success, exploitation, and humor. But is it actually possible to trade races? The new program, Black. White., puts this question to the test.
Our Television-Made Parents, or Watching TV with My Mother
by: Mary Desjardins / Dartmouth College
In paying attention to the generation of media audiences who were among the first studied by media researchers we have an opportunity to think about how media address and media consumption has been sustained and changed in the course of a single generation’s life time.