Guy-Coms and the Hegemony of Juvenile Masculinity
“Guy-Coms” are making juvenile mascuinity hegemonic in U.S. culture.
Read moreA Critical Forum on Media and Culture
A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
“Guy-Coms” are making juvenile mascuinity hegemonic in U.S. culture.
Read moreIn addition to presenting viewers with images of urban mayhem, American television now offers a new vision of the city as a bourgeois playground—a bright-lights stage upon which popular fantasies of wealth, power, and distinction can be indulged. Yet, this said, there is still something about this recent celebration of the gentrified city that rankles.
Read moreThe most striking change on white supremacist websites involves mediacasts and post links to other media.
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Two of our senior editors take on HBO’s newest dramatic offering, Tell Me You Love Me.
What happened to the transgressive pleasures of Aeon Flux when it moved from small screen to large?
Durham County: “HBO can eat its heart out”
by: Michele Byers / Saint Mary’s University
Durham County (2007) is a hybrid creature–exportable Canadian drama stripped of all national and cultural
markers and defying generic conventions. The six-episode series about a cop and a serial killer competes with the US specialty cable market and is grabbing both audience approval and critical acclaim.
Pixarvolt – Animation and Revolt
by: Judith Halberstam / University of Southern California
In contemporary animated feature films for kids, a genre I call “pixarvolt,” certain topics which would never ever appear in adult films are central to the success and emotional impact of the narrative.
Notes from Economy Class
by: Eric Freedman / Florida Atlantic University
The airline seat is an often-overlooked signpost of convergence — a site of convergent media, convergent functionalities, convergent spaces, and convergent
subjects.
Watch Now: Netflix, Streaming Movies and Networked Film Publics
by: Chuck Tryon / Fayettesville State University
Computer access content results in new ways of viewing television and film.
“I was marrying sisters … that was my choice:” Big Love, Post-Feminist Choice, Scripted Lives and Judging Women
by: Kim Akass and Janet McCabe / Manchester Metropolitan University
Within the context of religious fundamentalism and right wing politics, HBO’s Big Love offers up some surprising critiques of feminism and female relationships. Here, women are represented as a source of empowerment as well as a site of feminine censure and policing.
The Joys of “Civic TV,” or
Television You Probably Don’t Watch
by: Jeffrey P. Jones / Old Dominion University
Government access television is often much more than boring city council meetings. With an increase in quality productions in communities across the nation, “Civic TV” may be as close as we get in the U.S. to the public
service broadcasting tradition of other nations.
Kyle-Time: You Can’t Touch This
by: Gareth Palmer / University of Salford
Britain’s Jeremy Kyle demonstrates why television’s need to maximize emotional performances and responses means that producers invest in those most likely to offer confessional behaviour for public consumption.