Download or read book U S Television as a Cultural Force The Americanization of Cultures written by Mieke Schüller and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-02-08 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Fachbereich 05 - Philosophie und Philologie), language: English, abstract: The advent of electronic media in the 1920s marked the beginning of the information age and contributed to the formation of modern mass society. The introduction of new communication media, which allowed for the mass production and distribution of information and entertainment services, had wide-reaching consequences for social and cultural life: it transformed human cognition; it changed the organization of everyday life; it linked the world more closely together by means of a global media network. Particularly the television medium opened up a new perspective on the world and revolutionized entertainment, and it soon started its triumphant advance throughout the world. The U.S. played a prominent role in the development and global distribution of television technology and programming. America began early to experiment with television technology, but for the time being, it was commercial radio that “quickly grew to become the primary entertainment and information source for Americans throughout the Great Depression and World War II” (Emmert, “Broadcast Media”). At last, television was introduced to the public at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, which had “Tomorrow - Now!” (Campbell et al. 13) as a motto. The public gave the new medium an enthusiastic reception, and soon after World War II, “television's visual images replaced the audio-only limitation of radio as the predominant entertainment and news vehicle” (Emmert, “Broadcast Media”). During the 1940s and 1950s, television technology and broadcasting transmission techniques were further refined: The cable system was rapidly enhanced and soon stretched across the U.S., thereby gradually replacing the transmission by over-the-air broadcasting signals, which is extremely susceptible to interferences. But only the advent of the cost-effective satellite broadcasting technology made the global transmission of mass media services possible: The invention and continuous improvement of satellite communications, computers and computer networks, cable television and fiber optics offer the means of blanketing any part of the world instantaneously with a torrent of imagery and data.
Download or read book Americanization of History written by Kathleen McDonald and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays searches for how history and literature translate into filmic texts that then reflect the time and place of the translation. Major motion pictures as well as television movies and series are the sites of this exploration. The opening essay surveys what films tell us it means to be set in a medieval time, while the second looks at one of the most powerful movie studios since the earliest days of movie-making, Walt Disney Studios. The second section investigates classic Americana by delving specifically into the hegemonic power of Walt Disney Studios, by considering the union between the American pastime of baseball and the great white way of Broadway, and by discovering the constantly morphing relationship of the icons of the Wild West. Section three looks at characters living outside of roles considered socially appropriate in their world: vampire slayers, mobsters, and those with multiple personalities. The fourth section studies how present-day mores of power and beauty control revisions of historically-based stories through issues of vengeance, race, sexuality, and the notion of beauty itself. The final section takes up the question of what it means to historicize the present moment, and analyzes the current period via a very popular and long-running show’s depiction of sexuality as accepted or rejected within a paradigm that appears not merely to tolerate, but actively to promote, deviance. The last essay questions the very concepts of time and history themselves. The articles do not reach one conclusion regarding this topic, but instead provide a variety of perspectives which help to theorize the issue for the discerning reader.
Download or read book Television as a Cultural Force written by Richard Adler and published by Praeger Publishers. This book was released on 1976 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Television and American Culture written by Jason Mittell and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Prime Time Families written by Ella Taylor and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1989-09-14 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prime-Time Families provides a wide-ranging new look at television entertainment in the past four decades. Working within the interdisciplinary framework of cultural studies, Ella Taylor analyzes television as a constellation of social practices. Part popular culture analysis, part sociology, and part American history, Prime-Time Families is a rich and insightful work the sheds light on the way television shapes our lives.
Download or read book Demographic Vistas written by David Marc and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-11-24 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Demographic Vistas, David Marc shows how we can take television seriously within the humanist tradition while enjoying it on its own terms. To deal with the barrage of messages from television's chaotic history, Marc adapts tools of theatrical and literary criticism to focus on key personalities and genres in ways that reward serious students and casual viewers alike. This updated edition includes a new foreword by Horace Newcomb and a new introduction by the author that discusses the ways in which the nature of television criticism has changed since the book's original publication in 1984. A new final chapter explores the paradox of the diminishing importance of over-the-air broadcasting during the period of television's greatest expansion, which has been brought about by complex technologies such as cable, videocassette recorders, and online services.
Download or read book Global Television written by Barbara Selznick and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The face of U.S. television broadcasting is changing in ways that are both profound and subtle. Global Television uncovers the particular processes by which the international circulation of culture takes place, while addressing larger cultural issues such as identity formation. Focusing on how the process of internationally made programming such as Highlander: The Series and The Odyssey—amusingly dubbed “Europudding” and “commercial white bread”—are changing television into a transnational commodity, Barbara Selznick considers how this mode of production—as a means by which transnational television is created—has both economic rewards and cultural benefits as well as drawbacks. Global Television explores the ways these international co-productions create a “global” culture as well as help form a national identity. From British “brand” programming (e.g, Cracker) that airs on A&E in the U.S. to children’s television programs such as Plaza Sesamo, and documentaries, Selznick indicates that while the style, narrative, themes and ideologies may be interesting, corporate capitalism ultimately affects and impacts these programs in significant ways.
Download or read book America As Seen on TV written by Clara E. Rodríguez and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist, 2020 Latino Book Awards, Best Academic Themed Book The surprising effects of American TV on global viewers As a dominant cultural export, American television is often the first exposure to American ideals and the English language for many people throughout the world. Yet, American television is flawed, and, it represents race, class, and gender in ways that many find unfair and unrealistic. What happens, then, when people who grew up on American television decide to come to the United States? What do they expect to find, and what do they actually find? In America, As Seen on TV, Clara E. Rodríguez surveys international college students and foreign nationals working or living in the US to examine the impact of American television on their views of the US and on their expectations of life in the United States. She finds that many were surprised to learn that America is racially and economically diverse, and that it is not the easy-breezy, happy endings culture portrayed in the media, but a work culture. The author also surveys US-millennials about their consumption of US TV and finds that both groups share the sense that American TV does not accurately reflect racial/ethnic relations in the US as they have experienced them. However, the groups differ on how much they think US TV has influenced their views on sex, smoking and drinking. America, As Seen on TV explores the surprising effects of TV on global viewers and the realities they and US millennials actually experience in the US.
Download or read book Understanding Television written by Richard Adler and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1981 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Yankee Go Home Take Me With U written by George McKay and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1997-09-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Yeah to Yo! our language bears traces of American influence. We can do little to escape the experience of America through many media: TV, pop music, youth culture, Hollywood, fast food. How do these traces and images affect us? Do we internalize them, want to be American? Do we (can we?) resist them, see America as still at cultural Cold War? Is our desire for them a symptom of European pop culture's crisis? From blackface minstrelsy, rap music and fiction to McDonald's, rock festivals and Star Trek, the cultural conception of America is critically unpacked by contributors from Europe, Israel and the USA. George McKay rounds off the picture by offering a comprehensive introduction that explains theoretical approaches to Americanization from the thesis of Yankee cultural imperialism to America as site of liberation or fantasy.
Download or read book Parody and Taste in Postwar American Television Culture written by Ethan Thompson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this original study, Thompson explores the complicated relationships between Americans and television during the 1950s, as seen and effected through popular humor. Parody and Taste in Postwar American Television Culture documents how Americans grew accustomed to understanding politics, current events, and popular culture through comedy that is simultaneously critical, commercial, and funny. Along with the rapid growth of television in the 1950s, an explosion of satire and parody took place across a wide field of American culture—in magazines, comic books, film, comedy albums, and on television itself. Taken together, these case studies don’t just analyze and theorize the production and consumption of parody and television, but force us to revisit and revise our notions of postwar "consensus" culture as well.
Download or read book Media Imperialism Reconsidered written by Chin-Chuan Lee and published by SAGE Publications, Incorporated. This book was released on 1980-08 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lee contrasts the 'media imperialism' view with the liberal 'free flow of information' view of the international effects of mass media by making studies of television in Canada, Taiwan and the People's Republic of China. '...deserves a central place in any course dealing with international communication or with the societal effects of mass communication.' -- Journalism Quarterly, Vol 58 No 2, Summer 1981 'It is a very impressive piece of work which has the potential of being an outstanding contribution to the literature. There is no question it is first-rate.' -- Muriel G Cantor 'In both conception and conclusions, Lee's book provides reassuring evidence that empirical research really pays.
Download or read book Television Globalization and Cultural Identities written by Chris Barker and published by Open University Press. This book was released on 1999-07 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attention is given to television and cultural identities in the context of globalization. The representation of sex, gender, race and nation on television is analysed.
Download or read book Comic Visions written by David Marc and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comic Visions by David Marc is the most influential critical history of American television comedy. This Second Edition updates the subject matter and takes into account how new technology, especially cable TV, has affected this popular form of home entertainment.Marc examines the roots of television comedy beginning with the influence of Vaudeville, cinema and radio on the variety shows and sitcoms of the 1940's and 1950's. He then moves into television's response to the turbulent 1960's and the great expansion of situational comedy popular in the 1970's. A completely new chapter looks at recent developments such as Comedy Central and the proliferation of stand-up comedy and also includes an engaging analysis of why shows like Seinfeld and The Simpsons are such major hits in the 1990s.Witty, lucid, and engaging, Marc combines historical research with cultural analysis to provide a study of television comedy that is deeply rooted in the diversity in American society.
Download or read book Cold War Cool Medium written by Thomas Doherty and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-10 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom holds that television was a co-conspirator in the repressions of Cold War America, that it was a facilitator to the blacklist and handmaiden to McCarthyism. But Thomas Doherty argues that, through the influence of television, America actually became a more open and tolerant place. Although many books have been written about this period, Cold War, Cool Medium is the only one to examine it through the lens of television programming. To the unjaded viewership of Cold War America, the television set was not a harbinger of intellectual degradation and moral decay, but a thrilling new household appliance capable of bringing the wonders of the world directly into the home. The "cool medium" permeated the lives of every American, quickly becoming one of the most powerful cultural forces of the twentieth century. While television has frequently been blamed for spurring the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy, it was also the national stage upon which America witnessed—and ultimately welcomed—his downfall. In this provocative and nuanced cultural history, Doherty chronicles some of the most fascinating and ideologically charged episodes in television history: the warm-hearted Jewish sitcom The Goldbergs; the subversive threat from I Love Lucy; the sermons of Fulton J. Sheen on Life Is Worth Living; the anticommunist series I Led 3 Lives; the legendary jousts between Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy on See It Now; and the hypnotic, 188-hour political spectacle that was the Army-McCarthy hearings. By rerunning the programs, freezing the frames, and reading between the lines, Cold War, Cool Medium paints a picture of Cold War America that belies many black-and-white clichés. Doherty not only details how the blacklist operated within the television industry but also how the shows themselves struggled to defy it, arguing that television was preprogrammed to reinforce the very freedoms that McCarthyism attempted to curtail.
Download or read book Cultural Transfer Or Electronic Imperialism written by Christian Werner Thomsen and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Electronic Hearth written by Cecelia Tichi and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1991 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cecilia Tichi argues that TV is not simply another appliance like the refrigerator or toaster oven, but that it is actually an environment--a pervasive screen world that saturates almost every aspect of modern life. In Electronic Hearth, she looks at how that environment evolved, and how it, in turn, has shaped the American experience. Tichi explores almost fifty years of writing about television--in novels, cartoons, journalism, advertising, and critical books and articles--to define the role of television in the American consciousness. The television set, she writes, has emerged as a new electronic hearth--the center of family activity. Ranging far beyond the bounds of the broadcast industry, Tichi provides a history of contemporary American culture, a culture defined by the television environment.
