A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
The cottagecore trend is finding new expression on Tiktok as users present highly curated visions of domesticity. Caroline N. Bayne explores the myths in cottagecore aesthetics and the ways in which they present the home as a sacred space untroubled by the world of work.
Read moreAnnie Berke discusses Mary Tyler Moore’s portrayal of Laura Petrie to examine the fluid boundary between work and home in The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Read moreGreg Clinton considers apocalyptic futures, survivalism, and “crazy preppers” as responses to changing social mores through 10 Cloverfield‘s representation of bunkers as fortified domestic spaces.
Read moreI Lost my Wife to Facebook, and Other Myths that Might be True
by: Michele Byers / Saint Mary’s University
Facebook anyone? Looking to the online community, Facebook, the author considers how nostalgia and irony simultaneously figure into this current trend.
Children Playing in Hollywood
by: Judith Halberstam / University of Southern California
Let’s see how Little Children manages to sneak normativity into the plot as resolution for the problem of the community enforcement of …normativity!
Trauma Time: Family, Community and Criminality in Close to Home
by: Diane Negra / University of East Anglia
How CBS’ Close to Home redefines motherhood, community and family values.
TV Revisiting TV: Why TV Does the “Remake” Better than Movies Do
by: Sharon Ross / Columbia College Chicago
How film remakes TV, and how TV remakes TV, too.
Marriage as the New Trend
by: Moya Luckett / New York University
Marriage and motherhood seem to be both desirable and scarce for women in today’s current television programs. Examples are found in such shows as Desperate Housewives, My Fair Brady, Breaking Bonaduce and others.
Desperate Citizens
by: John McMurria / DePaul University
Extreme Makeover Home Edition contestants are portrayed as good and deserving citizens who are the victims of misfortunes beyond their control. However, while EMHE helps these deserving citizens, the corporate sponsored show fails to recognize the irony inherent in the fact that it is these very corporations that contribute to these problems in the first place.
I Love Lucy in the Sixties
by: Heather Hendershot / Queens College
How are our televisual memories and self-perceptions challenged when we revisit the shows of our youth?