Television at the Movies: Cinematic and Critical Responses to American Broadcasting

Description

The overview of television criticism, which this book provides, comes appropriately at a moment of change. Television is becoming dramatically different as a result of new and developing technologies such as cable, HDTV, satellite transmission and broadband distributions. By concentrating on the still-dominant notion of television, what the authors call "Classical Network Television," they argue that it is as important to understand this model as it is to understand Classical Hollywood Cinema. The co-authors have a unique approach to the study of television, viewing its history and reception not only through important articles about the medium, but also through analyzing how Hollywood auteur cinema has commented on television over the decades, in films such as Tootsie, Network, The Last Picture Show, A Face in the Crowd, Rollerball, The King of Comedy and others. Not only does this reflect the pervasive use of cinema theory to discuss television, it also helps to emphasize the importance of clarifying the distinctions between the criticisms of the two media. Television at the Movies argues that the study of television is a crucial aspect of understanding our recent and contemporary culture, and it provides an illuminating point of entry for students and researchers in the field.

Jon Nelson Wagner, PhD teaches film theory at the University of Southern California and Co-Directs the MFA Writing Program at California Institute of the Arts. Tracy Biga MacLean, Ph.D, is Academic Director of Intercollegiate Media Studies at the Claremont Colleges, where she also teaches film and television courses.

Having mated with its mother, radio, television set out to kill the father, the Movies - and this book by Jon Nelson Wagner and Tracy Biga MacLean chronicles the Oedipal standoff that's raged between the two media ever since. Insightful, brilliant and not a little subversive, Television at the Movies is instantly definitive, with new revelations about both movies and TV revealed in each other's glow. Steve Erickson, author of Zeroville (2007), Our Ecstatic Days (2006), and many more Jon Nelson Wagner and Tracy Biga MacLean have a style at once limpid and poetic, along with a judiciousness that allows them to make use of the best in the tradition of grand theory while being refreshingly critical of that theory's "overblown hostility" to its own objects of study. Through brilliant analyses of a half century's cinematic representations of TV, they show this hostility to be an essential ingredient of classic broadcast TV's "irresolute imaginary" and offer a history of the idea of television, a history of the framing of its reception for audiences and academic analysts alike. Rather than condemning TV or cinema for their ideological instrumentality, Wagner and MacLean challenge us to accept the "fearsome work of enjoyment," to understand and appreciate television's powers and its pleasures. Tom Lutz, author of Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears (1999); Cosmopolitan Vistas: American Regionalism and Literary Value (2004); Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers and Bums in America (2007)