A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
Playboy Feminism? Hugh Hefner and The Girls Next Door
by: Moya Luckett / New York University
The Girls Next Door plays with significant ideological contradictions as it tries to address the prevailing popularity of the Playboy bunny image with a new generation of women while trying to remove any taint of sexual exploitation from its girls.
Devils in the Details
by: Christine Becker / University of Notre Dame
HDTV and the future of television — what are the possibilities?
What a Long, Bad Trip It’s Been
by: Mark Andrejevic / University of Iowa
The voyeurism and surveillance of MTV’s One Bad Trip become inverted after the first season, leaving audiences to wonder; who’s watching, and who’s performing?
Football Talk
by: Jim McGuigan / Loughborough University, UK
Jim McGuigan examines why the ubiquitous presence of football chatter in the UK is a crucial source of pleasurable release.
Broadcasting Is Dead, Long Live Broadcasting
by: John McMurria / DePaul University
As Internet companies move towards increasing video content they have begun to look to television as a model. What lessons can be learned from the history of broadcast as Internet/TV convergence gains momentum? In 4 case studies of Internet/TV convergence, the issues of access, fair use and public initiatives are explored and critiqued.
Speculation with Spoilers
by: Jonathan Gray / Fordham University
It is now possible to discover upcoming plot twists in your favorite television series with a little internet research. How does the proliferation of “spoilers” in online fan communities change the way we understand television spectatorship?
Micro-Ethnographies of the Screen: Flatworld
by: Dan Leopard / St. Mary’s College of California
In the second part in his discussion of screens in our daily lives, Leopard considers the implicit training and conditioning of ICT’s virtual and miltary-funded Flatworld Project.
“You Got to Know When to Hold Em”: Notes Against the Academicization of Television
by: Walter Metz / University of Montana-Bozeman
The relentless pressure to be taken seriously must not prevent TV scholars from admitting that on occasion, like the average viewers, they do slack in front of the tube. Metz watches “Poker TV” or even the Simpson’s just for their saccharine appeals and for relaxation purposes.
“AZN Television: The Network for Asian America”
by: L. S. Kim / University of California, Santa Cruz
It’s a good time to consider the emergence, significance, and implications of television targeted towards Asian Americans.
Reflections on Katrina in Brazil
by: Vicki Mayer / Tulane University
Vicki Mayer watches New Orleans endure Hurricane Katrina while on sabbatical in the Amazon.
Editorial: Why The Amazing Race: Family Edition Doesn’t Suck
by: Joanna Slimmer / FLOW Staff
Formal innovations and family drama…Who cares where they go next?
Comedy is a Woman in Trouble
by: Heather Hendershot / Queens College
Questioning Comedy Central’s fixation on the male audience.