Download or read book The Theology of Battlestar Galactica written by Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reimagined television series Battlestar Galactica (2005 to 2009 on the Sci Fi Channel), features religion and theology among its central concerns--but does not simply use its myriad faiths as plot devices or background material. Battlestar Galactica is, in and of itself, a theological text. Over the course of 87 episodes and two television movies, the series' narrative arc explores the meanings of salvation, prophecy, exile, apocalypse, resurrection, and messianism, and clearly demonstrates the working of a divine will in a material world. The book offers a systematic theology for each of Battlestar Galactica's invented religions and surveys echoes of American Christianity in the groundbreaking series.

Download or read book Transatlantic Television Drama written by Matt Hills and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2014, the UK science-fiction television series Black Mirror was released on Netflix worldwide, quickly becoming a hit with US audiences. Like other beloved British imports, this series piqued Americans' interest with hints of dark comedy, clever plotlines, and six-episode seasons that left audiences frantic for more. In Transatlantic Television Drama, volume editors Michele Hilmes, Matt Hills, and Roberta Pearson team up with leading scholars in TV studies and transnational television to look at how serial dramas like Black Mirror captivate US audiences, and what this reveals about the ways Americans and Brits relate to each other on and off the screen. Focusing on production strategies, performance styles, and audience reception, chapters delve into some of the most widely-discussed programs on the transatlantic circuit, from ongoing series like Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, Orphan Black, and Sherlock, to those with long histories of transnational circulation like Masterpiece and Doctor Who, to others whose transnational success speaks to the process of exchange, adaptation, and cooperation such as Rome, Parade's End, Broadchurch, and Gracepoint. The book's first section investigates the platforms that support British/American exchange, from distribution partnerships and satellite providers to streaming services. The second section concentrates on the shift in meaning across cultural contexts, such as invocations of heritage, genre shifts in adaptation, performance styles, and, in the case of Episodes, actual dramatized depiction of the process of transatlantic television production. In section three, attention turns to contexts of audience reception, ranging from fan conventions and fiction to television criticism, the effects of national branding on audiences, and the role of social media in de- or re-contextualizing fans' response to transnational programs.

Download or read book Battlestar Galactica and International Relations written by Nicholas J. Kiersey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking at a television franchise like Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is no longer news within the discipline of International Relations. A growing number of scholars in and out of IR are studying the importance of cultural artifacts – popular or otherwise – for the phenomena that make up the core of our discipline. The genre of science fiction offers the analyst an opportunity that cannot be matched by more mimetic genres, namely the chance to look at how sets of widely-circulating expectations of the social serve to constrain authors as they work to introduce as yet unexplored problematiques, the fantasy aspect in much of science fiction storytelling is premised simply on a material difference. As such, while the physical setting of a science fiction tale might appear novel, its imaginative life world will likely retain many elements of the world we already live in and which we can readily recognize as similar to our own. For Critical IR scholarship then, BSG presents an opportunity to examine how these purported homologies or elements of redundancy between the fantastic and the real have been drawn and perhaps to consider, too, whether the show can teach us things about world politics, its various logics and structures, which we might not otherwise be sensitive to. Tackling some of the key contemporary issues in IR, the writers of BSG have taken on a range of important political themes and issues, including the legitimacy of military government, the tactical utility of genocide, and even the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence technologies for the very category of what it means to be 'human'. The contributors in this book explore in depth the argument that one of the most important aspects of popular culture is to naturalize or normalise a certain social order by further entrenching the expectations of social behaviour upon which our mentalities of rule are founded. This work will be of interest to student and scholars of international relations, popular culture and security studies.

Download or read book Focus On 100 Most Popular Television Series by Universal Television written by Wikipedia contributors and published by e-artnow sro. This book was released on with total page 1162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Science Fiction Literature through History 2 volumes written by Gary Westfahl and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-07-19 with total page 681 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides students and other interested readers with a comprehensive survey of science fiction history and numerous essays addressing major science fiction topics, authors, works, and subgenres written by a distinguished scholar. This encyclopedia deals with written science fiction in all of its forms, not only novels and short stories but also mediums often ignored in other reference books, such as plays, poems, comic books, and graphic novels. Some science fiction films, television programs, and video games are also mentioned, particularly when they are relevant to written texts. Its focus is on science fiction in the English language, though due attention is given to international authors whose works have been frequently translated into English. Since science fiction became a recognized genre and greatly expanded in the 20th century, works published in the 20th and 21st centuries are most frequently discussed, though important earlier works are not neglected. The texts are designed to be helpful to numerous readers, ranging from students first encountering science fiction to experienced scholars in the field.

Download or read book The Cold War and Entertainment Television written by Lori Maguire and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-17 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential dimension of the Cold War took place in the realm of ideas and culture. While much work exists on cinema, relatively little research has been conducted on this subject in relation to television, despite the latter being a technology and popular cultural form that emerged during this period. This book rectifies that absence by examining the impact of the Cold War on entertainment television, and underlines the comparative aspect by studying programs from both blocs – without forgetting, of course, the outsize impact of American television. Although most of the focus is on the two main protagonists, the US and the USSR, chapters also consider programming from the UK, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and both East and West Germany. This book represents a contribution to the debate about the cultural Cold War through a rigorously comparative analysis of the two blocs. For this reason, the approach used is thematic. The study begins by considering the subject of censorship, and then goes on to look at the very particular case of the two Germanys. A series of comparative genre studies follow, including police and war, variety shows, and documentaries and docudramas. Perhaps surprisingly, the similarities are often greater than the differences between television in the two blocs.

Download or read book The Last Midnight written by Leisa A. Clark and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-10-13 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you find yourself contemplating the imminent end of the world? Do you wonder how society might reorganize itself to cope with global cataclysm? (Have you begun hoarding canned goods and ammunition...?) Visions of an apocalypse began to dominate mass media well before the year 2000. Yet narratives since then present decidedly different spins on cultural anxieties about terrorism, disease, environmental collapse, worldwide conflict and millennial technologies. Many of these concerns have been made metaphorical: zombie hordes embody fear of out-of-control appetites and encroaching disorder. Other fears, like the prospect of human technology's turning on its creators, seem more reality based. This collection of new essays explores apocalyptic themes in a variety of post-millennial media, including film, television, video games, webisodes and smartphone apps.

Download or read book World Politics on Screen written by Mark A. Sachleben and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasingly resistant to lessons on international politics, society often turns to television and film to engage the subject. Numerous movies made in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries reflect political themes that were of concern within the popular cultures of their times. For example, Norman Jewison's The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966) portrays the culture of suspicion between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, while several of Alfred Hitchcock's movies as well as the John Wayne film Big Jim McLain (1952) and John Milius's Red Dawn (1984) helped to raise and sustain skepticism about the Soviet Union. World Politics on Screen: Understanding International Relations through Popular Culture uses films and television shows like these as well as contemporary including 24, The Simpsons, South Park, and The Daily Show to guide readers to a deeper understanding of enduring issues in international politics. In this unique and insightful volume, author Mark Sachleben demonstrates that popular culture reflects societal beliefs about the world, and that the messages captured on television and film transcend time and place. Using films such as Secret Ballot (2001), Under the Bombs (2007), and Wall E (2008), he addresses topics such as international relations and diplomacy, the study of war, nuclear weapons, poverty, immigration and emigration, human rights, and genocide. An engaging read for students and for anyone with a general interest in politics and popular culture, World Politics on Screen succeeds in its argument by illuminating unexplored assumptions about international policy.

Download or read book Divine Programming written by Charlotte E. Howell and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-04 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the mid-90s to the present, television drama with religious content has come to reflect the growing cultural divide between white middle-America and concentrated urban elites. As author Charlotte E. Howell argues in this book, by 2016, television narratives of white Christianity had become entirely disconnected from the religion they were meant to represent. Programming labeled 'family-friendly' became a euphemism for white, middlebrow America, and developing audience niches became increasingly significant to serial dramatic television. Utilizing original case studies and interviews, Divine Programming investigates the development, writing, producing, marketing, and positioning of key series including 7th Heaven, Friday Night Lights, Rectify, Supernatural, Jane the Virgin, Daredevil, and Preacher. As this book shows, there has historically been a deep ambivalence among television production cultures regarding religion and Christianity more specifically. It illustrates how middle-American television audiences lost significance within the Hollywood television industry and how this in turn has informed and continues to inform television programming on a larger scale. In recent years, upscale audience niches have aligned with the perceived tastes of affluent, educated, multicultural, and-importantly-secular elites. As a result, the televised representation of white Christianity had to be othered, and shifted into the unreality of fantastic genres to appeal to niche audiences. To examine this effect, Howell looks at religious representation through four approaches - establishment, distancing, displacement, and use - and looks at series across a variety of genres and outlets in order to provied varied analyses of each theme.

Download or read book Television and the Genetic Imaginary written by Sofia Bull and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-05-30 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the complex ways in which television articulates ideas about DNA in the early 21st century. Considering television’s distinct aesthetic and narrative forms, as well as its specific cultural roles, it identifies TV as a key site for the genetic imaginary. The book addresses the key themes of complexity and kinship, which function as nodes around which older essentialist notions about the human genome clash with newly emergent post-genomic sensibilities. Analysing a wide range of US and UK programmes, from science documentaries, science fiction serials and crime procedurals, to family history programmes, sitcoms and reality shows, Television and the Genetic Imaginary illustrates the extent to which molecular frameworks of understanding now permeate popular culture.

Download or read book Armageddon Films FAQ written by Dale Sherman and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (FAQ). Mankind has been predicting its own demise through various methods, from fables and religious scriptures to hard-core scientific studies since the dawn of time. And if there is one thing Hollywood knows how to exploit, it is the fears of Things to Come. Movies about the end of the world have been around since the early days of cinema, and Armageddon Film FAQ is a look into the various methods we have destroyed ourselves over the years: zombies, mad computers, uptight aliens, plunging objects from space, crazed animals, Satan, God, Contagions, the ever-popular atomic bomb, sometimes even a combination of these in the same movie! Armageddon Films FAQ goes from the silent days of filmmaking to the most recent (literally) earth-shattering epics, from cinema to television and even the novels, from comedies to dramas, from supernatural to scientific. It also explores other aspects of the genre, such as iconic but unfilmable apocalyptic novels, postnuclear car-racing flicks, domestic dramas disguised as end-of-the-world actioners, and more from the most depressing to the happiest Armageddons ever!

Download or read book Planet Auschwitz written by Brian E. Crim and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Planet Auschwitz explores how the Holocaust has influenced science fiction and horror film and television. These genres explore important Holocaust themes - trauma, guilt, grief, ideological fervor and perversion, industrialized killing, and the dangerous afterlife of Nazism after World War II.

Download or read book Narratives at the Beginning of the 3rd Millennium written by Jessica Homberg-Schramm and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-12-14 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a cross-disciplinary approach to narratives in the 21st century, in response to the growing scholarly concern with the decreasing explanatory capacity of theoretical concepts and narrative configurations originating in postmodernism. The essays collected here meet this conceptual gap by offering cutting-edge research from a variety of disciplines, such as literary studies and design and media studies, as well as social sciences, all of which employ narrative models to explore the distinctive patterns which shape contemporary conceptions of the 3rd millennium.

Download or read book Another Me written by Heather Duerre Humann and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A figure from ancient folklore, the doppelganger--in fiction a character's sinister look-alike--continues to appear in literature, television and film. The modern-day version (of the Doppelganger, or "double-goer" in German) is typically depicted in a form adapted to reflect present-day social anxieties. Focusing on a broad range of narratives, the author explores 21st century representations in novels (such as Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry, Jose Saramago's The Double), television shows (Orphan Black, Battlestar Galactica, Ringer) and movies (The Island, The Prestige, Oblivion).

Download or read book Thinking about Movies written by Peter Lehman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 1006 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete introduction to analyzing and enjoying a wide variety of movies, for film students and movie lovers alike Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying, Fourth Edition is a thorough overview of movie analysis designed to enlighten both students and enthusiasts, and heighten their enjoyment of films. Readers will delve into the process of thinking about movies critically and analytically, and find how doing so can greatly enhance the pleasure of watching movies. Divided roughly into two parts, the book addresses film studies within the context of the dynamics of cinema, before moving on to a broader analysis of the relationship of films to the larger social, cultural, and industrial issues informing them. This updated fourth edition includes an entirely new section devoted to a complete analysis of the film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, along with many in-depth discussions of important films such as Citizen Kane and Silence of the Lambs. The chapter on television integrates a major expansion distinguishing between television in the digital era of the convergence of the entertainment and technology industries in comparison to the era of broadcast analogue television. The final chapter places film within the current context of digital culture, globalization, and the powerful rise of China in film production and exhibition. The authors clearly present various methodologies for analyzing movies and illustrate them with detailed examples and images from a wide range of films from cult classics to big-budget, award-winning movies. This helps viewers see new things in movies and also better understand and explain why they like some better than others. Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying, Fourth Edition is ideal for film students immersed in the study of this important, contemporary medium and art form as well as students and readers who have never taken a class on cinema before.

Download or read book Joss Whedon The Complete Companion written by PopMatters and published by Titan Books (US, CA). This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 782 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HE ESSENTIAL UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO THE WHEDONVERSE Joss Whedon’s importance in contemporary pop culture can hardly be overstated, but there has never been a book providing a comprehensive survey of his career as a whole – until now. The Complete Companion covers every aspect of the Whedonverse through insightful essays and interviews, including fascinating conversations with key collaborators Jane Espenson and Tim Minear. Over 40 contributors have been brought together by PopMatters, the acclaimed international magazine of cultural criticism, to provide an irresistible mix of analysis, interpretation and sheer celebration. Whether you’re a student looking for critical approaches to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or a Browncoat who follows Nathan Fillion on Twitter (or, let’s face it, both) there is plenty here to enjoy. Covers all the TV series, movies, and comic books, including: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Fray, Astonishing X-Men, The Avengers... and more!

Download or read book American Science Fiction Television and Space written by Joel Hawkes and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-03-05 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection reads the science fiction genre and television medium as examples of heterotopia (and television as science fiction technology), in which forms, processes, and productions of space and time collide – a multiplicity of spaces produced and (re)configured. The book looks to be a heterotopic production, with different chapters and “spaces” (of genre, production, mediums, technologies, homes, bodies, etc), reflecting, refracting, and colliding to offer insight into spatial relationships and the implications of these spaces for a society that increasingly inhabits the world through the space of the screen. A focus on American science fiction offers further spatial focus for this study – a question of geographical and cultural borders and influence not only in terms of American science fiction but American television and streaming services. The (contested) hegemonic nature of American science fiction television will be discussed alongside a nation that has significantly been understood, even produced, through the television screen. Essays will examine the various (re)configurations, or productions, of space as they collapse into the science fiction heterotopia of television since 1987, the year Star Trek: Next Generation began airing.