Download or read book Masculinity in Contemporary Quality Television written by Michael Mario Albrecht and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen a rise in the popularity and quantity of ’quality’ television programs, many of which featuring complicated versions of masculinity that are informed not only by the women’s movement of the sixties and seventies, but also by several decades of backlash and debate about the effects of women’s equality on men, masculinity, and the relationship between men and women. Drawing upon studies of contemporary television programs, including popular series viewed internationally such as Mad Men, The League, Hung, Breaking Bad, Louie, and Girls, this book explores the ways in which popular cultural texts address widely circulating discourses of the ostensible ’crisis of masculinity’ in contemporary culture. A rich study of masculinity and its representation in contemporary television, Masculinity in Contemporary Quality Television will appeal to scholars and students of cultural and media studies, popular culture, television studies and cultural sociology with interests in gender, masculinities, and sexuality.
Download or read book Contemporary Quality TV written by LIT Verlag and published by LIT Verlag. This book was released on 2020-01-10 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since HBO's slogan "It's Not TV, It's HBO" launched in 1996, so-called quality television has reached a new level of marketing, recognition, and indeed quality. With other networks imitating the formula, the "HBO effect" triggered a wave of creative output. This turn to quality set off two shifts: (a) Contemporary television staged an international resurgence of the auteur, and (b) America transformed into an "on-demand nation." The chapters in this volume analyze new television lifestyles including marginalized perspectives, fan participation, and an emerging nostalgia correlated with trash aesthetics. Saskia M. Fürst is Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of The Bahamas. Ralph J. Poole is Professor of American Studies at the University of Salzburg, Austria.
Download or read book Crisis and Masculinity on Contemporary Cable Television Tracing the Western Hero in Breaking Bad The Walking Dead and Hell on Wheels written by Dominic Schmiedl and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2014 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: magna cum laude, Dresden Technical University, language: English, abstract: Both the "crisis of masculinity" and "quality TV" have been popular discourses in academia in recent years. Many of these contemporary quality TV series feature male anti-heroes at the center of their narratives. This dissertation argues that the constructions of masculinity in series such as "Breaking Bad" and "The Walking Dead" are informed by the Western hero. Furthermore, the dissertation links this recourse to an arguably outmoded model of masculinity to recent crisis tendencies in the USA, most notably the recent economic downturn and the aftermath of September 11 2001. Moreover, the return of the Western hero can be understood as a process of remasculinization in light of the crisis of masculinity.
Download or read book The Aesthetics of Nostalgia TV written by Alex Bevan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Aesthetics of Nostalgia TV explores the aesthetic politics of nostalgia for 1950s and 60s America on contemporary television. Specifically, it looks at how nostalgic TV production design shapes and is shaped by larger historical discourses on gender and technological change, and America's perceived decline as a global power. Alex Bevan argues that the aesthetics of nostalgic TV tell stories of their own about historical decline and progress, and the place of the baby boomer television suburb in American national memory. She contests theories on nostalgia that see it as stagnating, regressive, or a reversion to outdated gender and racial politics, and the technophobic longing for a bygone era; and, instead, argues nostalgia is an important form of historical memory and vehicle for negotiating periods of historical transition. The book addresses how and why the shows construct the boomer era as a placeholder for gender, racial, technological, and declensionist discourses of the present. The book uses Mad Men (AMC, 2007-2015), Ugly Betty (ABC, 2006-2010), Desperate Housewives (ABC, 2004-2012), and film remakes of 1950s and 60s family sitcoms as primary case studies.
Download or read book Reading Westworld written by Alex Goody and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-05-09 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading Westworld is the first volume to explore the cultural, textual and theoretical significance of the hugely successful HBO TV series Westworld. The essays engage in a series of original enquiries into the central themes of the series including conceptions of the human and posthuman, American history, gaming, memory, surveillance, AI, feminism, imperialism, free will and contemporary capitalism. In its varied critical engagements with the genre, narratives and contexts of Westworld, this volume explores the show’s wider and deeper meanings and the questions it poses, as well considering how Westworld reflects on the ethical implications of artificial life and technological innovation for our own futurity. With critical essays that draw on the interdisciplinary strengths and productive intersections of media, cultural and literary studies, Reading Westworld seeks to respond to the show’s fundamental question; “Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” It will be of interest to students, academics and general readers seeking to engage with Westworld and the far-reaching questions it poses about our current engagements with technology.
Download or read book Gender and Contemporary Horror in Film written by Samantha Holland and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2019-03-13 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection focuses on gender and contemporary horror in film, examining how and if representations of gender in horror have changed.
Download or read book Conflicting Masculinities written by Katherine Byrne and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Never before has period drama offered viewers such an assortment of complex male characters, from transported felons and syphilitic detectives to shell shocked soldiers and gangland criminals. Neo-Victorian Gothic fictions like Penny Dreadful represent masculinity at its darkest, Poldark and Outlander have refashioned the romantic hero and anti-heritage series like Peaky Blinders portray masculinity in crisis, at moments when the patriarchy was being bombarded by forces like World War I, the rise of first wave feminism and the breakdown of Empire. Scholars of film, media, literature and history explore the very different types of maleness offered by contemporary television and show how the intersection of class, race, history and masculinity in period dramas has come to hold such broad appeal to twenty-first-century audiences.
Download or read book Masculinities in the US Hangout Sitcom written by Greg Wolfman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-25 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masculinities in the US Hangout Sitcom examines how four sitcoms – Friends, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, and New Girl – mediate the tense relationship between neoliberalism and masculinities. Why is Ross in Friends so worried about everything? This book argues that the men in Friends and similar shows that follow young, straight, mostly white twentysomethings in major US cities are beset by a range of social and economic concerns about their place in society. Using multiple methods of analysis to examine these shows – including conjunctural analysis, historiographical method, and critical discourse analysis – a range of topics in these shows are examined, from sexuality through to homosociality, from race through to nationality. This book makes an insightful contribution to work on the television sitcom and on neoliberalism in culture and society. It will be an ideal resource for upper-level undergraduates, post-graduates, and researchers in a range of disciplines including television and screen studies, critical studies on men and masculinities and humor studies.
Download or read book Watching Sympathetic Perpetrators on Italian Television written by Dana Renga and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-02-11 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first comprehensive study of recent, popular Italian television. Building on work in American television studies, audience and reception theory, and masculinity studies, Sympathetic Perpetrators and their Audiences on Italian Television examines how and why viewers are positioned to engage emotionally with—and root for—Italian television antiheroes. Italy’s most popular exported series feature alluring and attractive criminal antiheroes, offer fictionalized accounts of historical events or figures, and highlight the routine violence of daily life in the mafia, the police force, and the political sphere. Renga argues that Italian broadcasters have made an international name for themselves by presenting dark and violent subjects in formats that are visually pleasurable and, for many across the globe, highly addictive. Taken as a whole, this book investigates what recent Italian perpetrator television can teach us about television audiences, and our viewing habits and preferences.
Download or read book The New Audience for Old TV written by Alexander H. Beare and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-18 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2020-21, the classic HBO show The Sopranos (1999-2007) saw a rapid increase in viewership and was proclaimed to be one of the “hottest shows of lockdown” by outlets like The Guardian and GQ. This resurgent popularity of The Sopranos raises important analytical questions for media scholars—how do audiences understand a complex text like The Sopranos in a radically different televisual and cultural context? Did they adapt the show to fit the particularities of the present moment or was it simply a nostalgic escape from the bleak conditions of the pandemic? Perhaps most importantly though, did the distinct televisual environment of the 2020s bring with it markedly new ways for audiences to understand ‘old’ shows? The New Audience for Old TV is the first book to investigate how audiences re-read and re-interpret resurgent shows when watching in new cultural contexts. Based on a series of original research interviews with young fans, it considers how new contexts of interpretation, including the COVID-19 pandemic, Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD), and post #MeToo gender politics, informed the unique experience of watching. Using the metaphor of the anamorphic painting, it introduces the analytical framework of a ‘retrospective reading’ to reveal the new meanings that are being made available for ‘old’ TV. Ultimately, The New Audience for Old TV uncovers fresh insights into audiences’ experiences with ‘prestige’ TV and the new avenues of meaning-making in the age of streaming.
Download or read book Persevering during the Pandemic written by Deborah A. Macey and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-08-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection highlights how people connected with friends and family, students and colleagues, and leaders and communities, in their quest to persevere during the pandemic. The chapters describe how people enjoyed their passions for the arts in new and unexpected ways, given the restrictions of COVID-19 safety protocols, and how scripted and reality television programming helped them escape, however briefly, from the traumas of the pandemic, the racial injustice, the political machismo and divisiveness of this time. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of communication, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, and gender studies.
Download or read book Mediating Sexual Citizenship written by Anita Brady and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mediating Sexual Citizenship considers how the neoliberal imperatives of adaptation, improvement and transformation that inform the shifting artistic and industrial landscape of television are increasingly indexed to performed disruptions in the norms of sexuality and gender. Drawing on examples from a range of television genres (quality drama, reality television, talk shows, sitcoms) and outlets (network, cable, subscription video on demand), the analysis in this book demonstrates how, as one of the most dominant cultural technologies, television plays a critical role in the production, maintenance and potential reconfiguring of the social organisation of embodiment, be it within gender identities, kinship structures or the categorisation of sexual desire. It suggests that, in order to understand television’s role in producing gendered and sexual citizenship, we must pay critical attention to the significant shifts in how television is produced, broadcast and consumed.
Download or read book Gender and Action Films 1980 2000 written by Steven Gerrard and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2022-11-24 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender and Action Films 1980-2000 offers insights into the intertwined concepts of gender and action, and how their portrayal developed in the Action Movie genre during the final two decades of the twentieth century. A necessity for academics, students and lovers of film and media and those interested in gender studies.
Download or read book Detoxing Masculinity in Anglophone Literature and Culture written by Sara Martín and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume rethinks Masculinity Studies by breaking away from the notion of the perpetual crisis of masculinity. It argues that not enough has been done to distinguish patriarchy from masculinity and proposes to detox masculinity by offering a collection of positive representations of men in fictional and non-fictional texts. The editors show how ideas of hegemonic and toxic masculinity have been too fixed on the exploration of dominance and subservience, and too little on the men (and the male characters in fiction) who behave following other ethical, personal and socially accepted patterns. Bringing together research from different periods and genres, this collection provides broad, multidisciplinary insights into alternative representations of masculinity.
Download or read book Cable Guys written by Amanda D. Lotz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence of "male-centered serials" such as The Shield, Rescue Me, and Sons Of Anarchy and the challenges these characters face in negotiating modern masculinities. From the meth-dealing but devoted family man Walter White of AMC’s Breaking Bad, to the part-time basketball coach, part-time gigolo Ray Drecker of HBO’s Hung, depictions of male characters perplexed by societal expectations of men and anxious about changing American masculinity have become standard across the television landscape. Engaging with a wide variety of shows, including The League, Dexter, and Nip/Tuck, among many others, Amanda D. Lotz identifies the gradual incorporation of second-wave feminism into prevailing gender norms as the catalyst for the contested masculinities on display in contemporary cable dramas. Examining the emergence of “male-centered serials” such as The Shield, Rescue Me, and Sons of Anarchy and the challenges these characters face in negotiating modern masculinities, Lotz analyzes how these shows combine feminist approaches to fatherhood and marriage with more traditional constructions of masculine identity that emphasize men’s role as providers. She explores the dynamics of close male friendships both in groups, as in Entourage and Men of a Certain Age, wherein characters test the boundaries between the homosocial and homosexual in their relationships with each other, and in the dyadic intimacy depicted in Boston Legal and Scrubs. Cable Guys provides a much needed look into the under-considered subject of how constructions of masculinity continue to evolve on television.
Download or read book Sport Alcohol and Social Inquiry written by Sarah Gee and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-06 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a collection of works from both expert and emerging scholars with an empirical focus on case studies and ‘real-world’ examples in the sociological study of sport and alcohol that would appeal to a global audience. Implications drawn from the chapters in the book will offer new insights and critiques on the sport-alcohol nexus.
Download or read book The New Politics of Fatherhood written by Ana Jordan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-05 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes a unique contribution to contemporary research into masculinities, men’s movements, and fathers’ rights groups. It examines the role of changing masculinities in creating equality and/or reinforcing inequality by analysing diverse men’s movements, their politics, and the identities they (re)construct. Jordan advances a typology for categorising men’s movements (‘feminist', ‘postfeminist', and ‘backlash’ movements) and addresses debates over the construction of ‘masculinity-in-crisis’, arguing that ‘crisis’ is frequently invoked in problematic ways. These themes are further explored through original analyses of material produced by ‘feminist’, ‘postfeminist’, and ‘backlash’ men’s groups. The main empirical contribution of the book draws on interviews with fathers’ rights activists to explore the (gendered) implications of the ‘new’ politics of fatherhood. The nuanced examination of fathers’ rights perspectives reveals multiple, complex narratives of masculinity, fatherhood, and gender politics. The cumulative effect of these is, at best, postfeminist and depoliticising, and, at worst, another vitriolic ‘backlash’. The New Politics of Fatherhood expands scholarly understandings of gender, masculinities, and social movements in the under-researched UK context, and will appeal to readers with interests in these areas.
