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Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status explores how and why television is gaining a new level of cultural respectability in the 21st century. Once looked down upon as a "plug-in drug" offering little redeeming social or artistic value, television is now said to be in a creative renaissance, with critics hailing the rise of Quality series such as Mad Men and 30 Rock. Likewise, DVDs and DVRs, web video, HDTV, and mobile devices have shifted the longstanding conception of television as a household appliance toward a new understanding of TV as a sophisticated, high-tech gadget. Newman and Levine argue that television’s growing prestige emerges alongside the convergence of media at technological, industrial, and experiential levels. Television is permitted to rise in respectability once it is connected to more highly valued media and audiences. Legitimation works by denigrating "ordinary" television associated with the past, distancing the television of the present from the feminized and mass audiences assumed to be inherent to the "old" TV. It is no coincidence that the most validated programming and technologies of the convergence era are associated with a more privileged viewership. The legitimation of television articulates the medium with the masculine over the feminine, the elite over the mass, reinforcing cultural hierarchies that have long perpetuated inequalities of gender and class. Legitimating Television urges readers to move beyond the question of taste—whether TV is "good" or "bad"—and to focus instead on the cultural, political, and economic issues at stake in television’s transformation in the digital age.
Updated Edition—Ten Years Later The scene of this enchanting (and true) story is the Ramble, an unknown wilderness deep in the heart of New York's fabled Central Park. There an odd and amiable band of nature lovers devote themselves to observing and protecting the park's rich wildlife. When a pair of red-tailed hawks builds a nest atop a Fifth Avenue apartment house across the street from the model-boat pond, Marie Winn and her fellow "Regulars" are soon transformed into obsessed hawkwatchers. The hilarious and occasionally heartbreaking saga of Pale Male and his mate as they struggle to raise a family in their unprecedented nest site, and the affectionate portrait of the humans who fall under their spell will delight and inspire readers for years to come.
Television and American Culture: An Overview introduces students to the study of television by looking at American television from a cultural perspective. The book is written for intermediate undergraduate and beginning graduate students for a range of television studies courses. Specifically, Mittell discusses television within the following contexts: the economics of the television industry, television's role within American democracy, the formal attributes of a variety of television genres, television as a site of gender and racial identity formation, television's role in everyday life, and the medium's technological and social impacts. The topical arrangement and comprehensive scope of the book differs from other television textbooks, arguing that we must incorporate a range of economic, political, aesthetic, and sociological perspectives to fully comprehend the medium of television.
A startling expos of Britain's growing addiction to television and why and what should be done to stop it, the author looks at the statistics that show television has become an obsession even more influential than parents inside the household. In this insightful and shockingly perceptive assessment of the relationship with the small screen, the author reveals the alarming reality of what television is actually doing physically, emotionally, intellectually, and socially. He provides evidence as to how television contributes to the rising global obesity rate by actually slowing our metabolic rate, stunts children's brain development, and is responsible for over half of all rapes and murders in the industrialized world.
How does the passive act of watching television and other electronic media-regardless of their content-affect a developing child's relationship to the real world? Focusing on this crucial question, Marie Winn takes a compelling look at television's impact on children and the family. Winn's classic study has been extensively updated to address the new media landscape, including new sections on: computers, video games, the VCR, the V-Chip and other control devices, TV programming for babies, television and physical health, and gaining control of your TV.
A media ecologist's view of the US's love affair with television and its effects on social and familial structures, as well as her impassioned arguments for turning the TV off. Pawlowski (speech communication, U. of Northern Colorado) outlines, for the general reader, the problems with television programming for regular viewers and, particularly, their families. She traces the history of TV viewing, including how programs have changed and what societal values this reflects or creates; the many roles the TV now fulfills that were previously occupied by people (family manager, gender mentor, sexual advisor, hero, friend, etc.); and what the future holds and how people may wean themselves from watching. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
"To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace." MALCOLM X In Harlem's tumultuous history, there are many tragedies. For those growing up in this part of New York City, a young man known simply as Fritz from West 112th Street became an urban legend in Harlem. In the 1970s, Richard "Fritz" Simmons is introduced to the drug trade, by an associate of the Lucchese crime family, one of the five families of La Cosa Nostra (the Mafia). After negotiating a deal with the Medellín Cartel, Fritz becomes New York's Cocaine Consignment King. The lucrative deal unlocks a lavish lifestyle with more money than Fritz's family and Harlem could've imagined. Now, distributing kilos of cocaine on a kingpin level to many well-known Harlem heavyweights, Fritz employs hundreds throughout the five boroughs of New York City and neighboring states. Fritz further extends his generosity in ways few from the community had ever seen. Fritz reigns supreme for over a decade in the drug game, making millions under the radar of the NYPD and he never got busted. Some look at Fritz as the Keyser Soze of the 80s. The most enigmatic drug dealer of that time. HARLEM HOLIDAY brings her readers the inside scoop after almost three decades of silence, speculation, and secrecy. This biography is the in-depth story of Fritz never before told; the tale of how a lowly street hustler rises to orchestrate a one-man syndicate. It's an account of events, as told by Fritz's family and closest friends, and details gathered from newspaper clippings, magazine articles, court transcripts, and social media. Fritz's truth, joy, and despair are fully disclosed, while circumstances surrounding his death still remain a mystery.
