In 1995, United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said of the Cable News Network, "CNN is the sixteenth member of the [15 member United Nations] Security Council." Scholars as well as diplomats have recognized the existence of a link between communications and diplomacy, but up until now the implications of this relationship have been left unexplored. This work examines the historic interconnectedness between communications and diplomacy, how communications have historically determ...
Star Trek is an enduring icon in American popular culture. For many viewers, the science fiction series represents the bold exploration of the unknown and the humanistic respect of the foreign and the alien. In fact, it is Star Trek's vision of a utopian future where humans no longer engage in racism, sexism, capitalism, among other "-isms" that many fans claim is the main reason for their loyalty. But is the visionary Trek future world truly colorblind? Star Trek and History traces the shiftin...
Heroism, Celebrity and Therapy in Nurse Jackie (Routledge Focus on Television Studies)
by Christopher Pullen
This book presents an examination of the television series Nurse Jackie, making connections between the representational processes and the audience consumption of the series. A key point of reference is the political and performative potential of Nurse Jackie with regards to its progressive representation of prescription drug addiction and its relationship to the concept of quality television. It deconstructs Nurse Jackie ’s discursive potential, involving intersections with contemporary notions...
On November 20, 1983, a three-hour made-for-TV movie The Day After premiered on ABC. Set in the heartland of Lawrence, Kansas, the film depicted the events before, during, and after a Soviet nuclear attack with vivid scenes of the post-apocalyptic hellscape that would follow. The film was viewed by over 100 million Americans and remains the highest rated TV movie in history. After the premiere, ABC News aired an episode of Viewpoint, a live special featuring some of the most prominent public int...
George Clayton Johnson was an up-and-coming short story writer who broke into Hollywood in a big way when he co-wrote the screenplay for Ocean’s Eleven. More legendary works followed, including Logan’s Run and classic scripts for shows like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek. In the meantime, he forged friendships with some of the era’s most visionary science fiction writers, including Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson, and Rod Serling. Later in life, Johnson befriended comics...
"Contains everything a fan might want to know about the 1960s TV series, Bewitched. It has background information, cast and staff biographies, script summaries, awards, trivia, etc. Includes information on the later Tabitha TV series"--Provided by publisher.
Torchwood Declassified (Investigating Cult TV)
Torchwood started its life on television as a spin-off from Doctor Who, bringing Captain Jack to join new colleagues in a television series that quickly established itself as fresh and watchable television. It's fourth series, subtitled 'Miracle Day', continued its move from the niche channel of BBC3 to metamorphose into an international production between the BBC and the US network Starz. Torchwood has continued to entertain, provoke and attract large audiences and an expanding fandom. This is...
Sense8
This collection explores the many ways in which the Netflix series Sense8 transcends television. As its characters transcend physical and psychological borders of gender and geography, so the series itself transcends those between television, new media platforms and new screen technologies, while dissolving those between its producers, stars, audiences and fans. Sense8 united, inspired and energized a global community of fans that realized its own power by means of online interaction and a succe...
British television's pre-eminent playwright - latterly a novelist and film-maker - talks with passionate erudition, disarming candour and acerbic wit about the early influences that shaped him and led to his pioneering use of non-naturalism, to his self-reflexive subversion of film and TV cliches, his controversial approach to sex, politics, religion and the double-edged puritanism of the English condition. The book presents a remarkable portrait of a man for whom writing is, first and foremost,...
Television Criticism presents an original treatment of television criticism with a foundational approach to the nature of criticism, an understanding of the business of television, production background in creating television style, in-depth chapters on storytelling and narrative theories and television genres, the interaction of rhetoric and cultural studies theories, representation, and postmodernism. It presents new and comprehensive guidelines for analysis and criticism, and it has a sample...
Apart from its brilliance as television, it's amazing what "Deadwood" gets away with. This acclaimed series from HBO, which premiered in 2004, is set in the teeming outlaw camp of 'Deadwood'. It has been described by "Variety" as 'a vulgar, gritty, at times downright nasty take on the Old West brimming with all the dark genius that series creator and sceenwriter extraordinaire David Milch has at his fingertips'. All this and more. The international cast of authoritative contributors assess "Dead...
Alan Bennett is one of the UK’s most well-known and successful writers. His oeuvre is one where populist art forms and intellectually complex arguments co-exist seamlessly, allowing the work to appeal to a wide audience. Bennett’s familiar voice combines both an appreciation for the past with a critical assessment of contemporary Britain, often through relentlessly detailed observation of himself and of others. Bennett has acted, written, directed, presented or edited in almost every conceivable...
Inventing Jerry Lewis (Smithsonian studies in the history of film & media)
by Frank Krutnik
This title explores the development of local television news and the economic and social factors that elevated it to prominence.As the chief source of information for many people and a key revenue stream for the country's broadcast conglomerates, local television news has grown from a curiosity into a powerful journalistic and cultural force. In ""A Newscast for the Masses"", Tim Kiska examines the evolution of television news in Detroit, from its beginnings in the late 1940s, when television wa...
For the first time in one volume, the varied history of British television drama is considered from its beginnings on the BBC in the 1930s and 1940s to its position at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as television enters a multi-channel digital era. This book examines the significant developments during sixty years of British television drama, including: live television drama before the 1960s, including the legendary Nineteen Eighty-Four, the important shift to pre-recorded and filmed...
Hugely enjoyable, long awaited book by top world authority on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Buffy is still on screens and on DVD in home television libraries of a wide array of TV watchers and fans. This is also the student text for TV and cultural studies at colleges and universities where Buffy is widely taught. Rhonda Wilcox is a world authority on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", who has been writing and lecturing about the show since its arrival on our screens. This book is the distillation of thi...
American Science Fiction TV (Popular Television Genres)
by Jan Johnson-Smith
From "The Next Generation" and "The X-Files", to "Farscape" and "Enterprise", sci-fi television series in the US have multiplied since the 1980s. Jan Johnson-Smith shows how, in line with national political upheavals, this vibrant and perplexing genre set about expanding the myth of the Western frontier into deep space. She looks at the "sense of wonder" or sublime that infuses much Frontier art and science fiction, and traces a possible historical precedent to the genre in the fabulous and hero...
This is a pictorial celebration of American television, arranged chronologically from the first broadcast to the present day. It provides the answers to questions such as: When did NBC open its first TV studio? When did the Beatles first appear on "The Ed Sullivan Show"?, and what do Tracey Ullman and "The Simpsons" have in common? Notable events such as Kennedy's assassination and the moon landing are covered, and statistics relating to American TV are provided. The captioned pictures are selec...
Worlds without End
by Ron Simon, Robert J. Thompson, Louise Spence, Jane Feuer, Laura Stempel Mumford, Robert C Allen, and James Thurber
The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu (East Asian Popular Culture)
by Linda C Ehrlich
The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema draws readers into the first 13 feature films and 5 of the documentaries of award-winning Japanese film director Kore-eda Hirokazu. With his recent top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Shoplifters, Kore-eda is arguably Japan’s greatest living director with an international viewership. He approaches difficult subjects (child abandonment, suicide, marginality) with a realistic and compassionate eye.The lyrical tone of the writing of Japanese...