Author : Paul Arras
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 25,73 MB
Release : 2024-06-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1666932647
This book analyzes the narratives and news coverage of 9/11 across ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News, arguing that television coverage shaped the cultural meaning, collective memory, and language of 9/11 in ways that continue to resonate throughout American culture.
Author : Stacy Takacs
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 38,60 MB
Release : 2012-04-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0700618384
The Fox-TV series 24 might have been in production long before its premier just two months after 9/11, but its storyline—and that of many other television programs—has since become inextricably embedded in the nation's popular consciousness. This book marks the first comprehensive survey and analysis of War on Terror themes in post-9/11 American television, critiquing those shows that—either blindly or intentionally—supported the Bush administration's security policies. Stacy Takacs focuses on the role of entertainment programming in building a national consensus favoring a War on Terror, taking a close look at programs that comment both directly and allegorically on the post-9/11 world. In show after show, she chillingly illustrates how popular television helped organize public feelings of loss, fear, empathy, and self-love into narratives supportive of a controversial and unprecedented war. Takacs examines a spectrum of program genres—talk shows, reality programs, sitcoms, police procedurals, male melodramas, war narratives—to uncover the recurrent cultural themes that helped convince Americans to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and compromise their own civil liberties. Spanning the past decade of the ongoing conflict, she reviews not only key touchstones of post-9/11 popular culture such as 24, Rescue Me, and Sleeper Cell, but also less remarked-upon but relevant series like JAG, Off to War, Six Feet Under, and Jericho. She also considers voices of dissent that have emerged through satirical offerings like The Daily Show and science fiction series such as Lost and Battlestar Galactica. Takacs dissects how the War on Terror has been broadcast into our living rooms in programs that routinely offer simplistic answers to important questions—Who exactly are we fighting? Why do they hate us?—and she examines the climate of fear and paranoia they've created. Unlike cultural analyses that view the government's courting of Hollywood as a conspiracy to manipulate the masses, her book considers how economic and industry considerations complicate state-media relations throughout the era. Terrorism TV offers fresh insight into how American television directly and indirectly reinforced the Bush administration's security agenda and argues for the continued importance of the medium as a tool of collective identity formation. It is an essential guide to the televisual landscape of American consciousness in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Author : Eve Bennett
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 49,45 MB
Release : 2019-01-10
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1501331094
In the years following 9/11, American TV developed a preoccupation with apocalypse. Science fiction and fantasy shows ranging from Firefly to Heroes, from the rebooted Battlestar Galactica to Lost, envisaged scenarios in which world-changing disasters were either threatened or actually took place. During the same period numerous commentators observed that the American media's representation of gender had undergone a marked regression, possibly, it was suggested, as a consequence of the 9/11 attacks and the feelings of weakness and insecurity they engendered in the nation's men. Eve Bennett investigates whether the same impulse to return to traditional images of masculinity and femininity can be found in the contemporary cycle of apocalyptic series, programmes which, like 9/11 itself, present plenty of opportunity for narratives of damsels-in-distress and heroic male rescuers. However, as this book shows, whether such narratives play out in the expected manner is another matter.
Author : Vanessa Ossa
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 43,2 MB
Release : 2023-01-01
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 3031115163
This book examines the figure of the sleeper agent as part of post-9/11 political, journalistic and fictional discourse. There is a tendency to discuss the terroristic threat after 9/11 as either a faraway enemy to be hunted down by military force or, on the other hand, as a ubiquitous, intangible threat that required constant alertness at home. The missing link between these two is the sleeper agent – the foreign enemy hiding among US citizens. By analyzing popular television shows, several US comic books, and a broad variety of Hollywood films that depict sleeper agents direct or allegorically, this book explores how a shift in perspective—from terrorist to sleeper agent—brings new insights into our understanding of post-9/11 representations of terrorism. The book’s interdisciplinary focus between media studies, cultural studies, and American studies, suggests that it will find an audience in a variety of fields, including historical research, narratology, popular culture, as well as media and terrorism studies.
Author : Amy M. Damico
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 45,67 MB
Release : 2016-02-12
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1440833451
In its exploration of some of the most influential, popular, or critically acclaimed television dramas since the year 2000, this book documents how modern television dramas reflect our society through their complex narratives about prevailing economic, political, security, and social issues. Television dramas have changed since the turn of the 21st century—for the good, many would say, as a result of changes in technology, the rise of cable networks, and increased creative freedom. This book approaches the new golden age of television dramas by examining the programs that define the first 15 years of the new century through their complex narratives, high production value, star power, popularity, and enthusiastic fan culture. After an introduction that sets the stage for the book's content, thematic sections present concise chapters that explore key connections between television dramas and elements of 21st-century culture. The authors explore Downton Abbey as a distraction from contemporary class struggles, patriarchy and the past in Game of Thrones and Mad Men, and portrayals of the "dark hero protagonist" in The Sopranos, Dexter, and Breaking Bad, as a few examples of the book's coverage. With its multidisciplinary perspectives on a variety of themes—terrorism, race/class/gender, family dynamics, and sociopolitical and socioeconomic topics— this book will be relevant across the social sciences and cultural and media studies courses.
Author : Sara E. Quay
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 342 pages
File Size : 49,72 MB
Release : 2010-09-14
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0313355061
This book offers an exploration of the comprehensive impact of the events of September 11, 2001, on every aspect of American culture and society. On Thanksgiving day after September 11, 2001, comic strip creators directed readers to donate money in their artwork, generating $50,000 in relief funds. The world's largest radio network, Clear Channel, sent a memo to all of its affiliated stations recommending 150 songs that should be eliminated from airplay because of assumptions that their lyrics would be perceived as offensive in light of the events of 9/11. On the first anniversary of September 11th, choirs around the world performed Mozart's Requiem at 8:46 am in each time zone, the time of the first attack on the World Trade Center. These examples are just three of the ways the world—but especially the United States—responded to the events of September 11, 2001. Each chapter in this book contains a chronological overview of the sea of changes in everyday life, literature, entertainment, news and media, and visual culture after September 11. Shorter essays focus on specific books, TV shows, songs, and films.
Author : Ralph Izard
Publisher : Transaction Publishers
Page : 157 pages
File Size : 17,18 MB
Release : 2011-12-31
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1412844096
It ranked among journalism’s finest hours. That is what was heard in the weeks following September 11, 2001. They made mistakes, of course, but in covering one of the biggest disasters ever to hit the United States, journalists used their training, their experience, their understanding, and their sensitivity to provide coverage that helped bring understanding and a sense of calm to the chaos. Their performance did not end with reporting the immediate impact of the catastrophe. They continued to analyze what happened, the impact to property and human lives, the impact on government and foreign relations. Lessons from Ground Zero’s examines journalism’s efforts to cover a crisis, while analyzing journalism itself. Many lessons were evident to journalists as they sought to cope with the challenges of covering 9/11. The long-term question, however, is whether the answers they found served as catalysts for better journalism in the future, or whether they have been forgotten, put into the closet of old memories with no noticeable long-term impact. This book analyzes journalists’ response to 9/11 through scholarly research and interviews with many of the journalists who covered 9/11. Sometimes they do not agree, but all are thoughtful and each adds to understanding. Public opinion polls show clearly that citizens appreciated and responded to media coverage. Given that this occurred in a time frame in which public approval of American journalism had declined, it is reasonable to ask what the media did that was different from their normal practices. This book provides some of the answers.
Author : Sujata Moorti
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 40,17 MB
Release : 2016-12-18
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1786731614
Law and Order Special Victims Unit (SVU) is more popular than any other American police procedural television series, but how does its unique focus on sex crimes reflect contemporary popular culture and feminist critique, whilst also recasting the classic crime narrative? All-American TV Crime Drama is the first dedicated study of SVU and its treatment of sexual violence, gender and criminality. The book uses detailed textual and visual analyses of episodes to illuminate the assumptions underpinning the programme. Although SVU engages with issues pertaining to feminism and gender it still relies upon traditional and misogynistic tropes such as false rape charges and the monstrous mother to undermine positive views of the feminine. The show, and its backdrop, New York City thus become a stage on which national concerns about women, gender roles, the family and race are carried out. Moorti and Cuklanz unpack how the show has become a crucible for examining current attitudes towards these issues and include an analysis of its reception by its many fans in over 30 countries.
Author : Jeffrey C. Alexander
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 689 pages
File Size : 48,57 MB
Release : 2016-01-08
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1317264991
The first edition of A Contemporary Introduction to Sociology was the first truly new introductory sociology textbook in decades. Written by two leading sociologists at the cutting edge of theory and research, the text reflected the idioms and interests of contemporary American life and global social issues. The second edition continues to invite students to reflect upon their lives within the context of the combustible leap from modern to postmodern life. The authors show how culture is central to understanding many world problems as they challenge readers to confront the risks and potentialities of a postmodern era in which the futures of both the physical and social environment seem uncertain. As culture rapidly changes in the 21st century, the authors have broadened their analysis to cover developments in social media and new data on gender and transgender issues.
Author : Nick Marx
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 295 pages
File Size : 10,1 MB
Release : 2013-10-02
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 025301090X
Thought-provoking and “undeniably interesting” essays on this cultural institution of comedy and what it says about our society (Booklist). Since 1975, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” has greeted late night–TV viewers looking for the best in sketch comedy and popular music. SNL is the variety show that launched the careers of countless comedians, including Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Adam Sandler. Week after week, SNL has produced everything from unforgettable parodies to provocative political satire—adapting to changing times decade after decade while staying true to its original vision of performing timely topical humor. With essays that address issues ranging from race and gender to authorship and comedic performance, Saturday Night Live and American TV follows the history of this iconic show, and its place in the shifting social and media landscape of American television.
