A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
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!
Everybody Hates Chris and the (Overdue) Return of the Working-Class Sitcom
by: Tim Gibson / George Mason University
On Everybody Hates Chris, class issues are largely explored in Chris’s home life, while the show’s writers
use Chris’s travails at Corleone to foreground questions
of race.
Do Good TV?
by: Laurie Ouellette / Queens College, CUNY
ABC’s programming shifts toward “do-good” reality shows. What can explain ABC’s foray into the helping culture?
TiVoing Childhood
by: Jason Mittell / Middlebury College
What is television to a child who only knows TiVo?
“Big Man on Campus Ladies”
by: Walter Metz / Montana State University
Metz discusses the Oxygen TV show Campus Ladies and the so-called outrageous collegiate lives, the politicization of academia and the “vitriol reserved at this moment of American culture for professors.”
Spouse Exchanges: I Know the Perfect People …
by: Megan Mullen / University of Wisconsin-Parkside
Is the families selecting process to participate in reality TV showing American entertainment preferences? Are you and your family eligible?
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?
The Worst Happened
by: Cynthia Fuchs / George Mason University
While remaining largely unnoticed, Discovery Times’ Off to War provides a much needed perspective on the war in Iraq.
Editorial: Mommy, Where do Presidents Come From?
by: Kristen Grant / Flow Staff
Scrape off the generous slathering of Velveeta and Commander in Chief reveals itself to be less about who we want the president to be than what we want them to be.
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.
Celebrity Nepotism, Family Values and E! Television
by: Diane Negra / University of East Anglia
A closer look at families, wealth and Filthy Rich Cattle Drive.