This second edition of a trend-setting volume provides an updated examination of the interaction between families and the most pervasive mass medium: television. Charting the dynamic developments of the American family and television over the past decade, this volume provides a comprehensive representation of programmatic research into family and television and examines extensively the uses families make of television, how extensions of television affect usage, families' evolving attitudes toward television, the ways families have been and are portrayed on television, the effects television has on families, and the ways in which families can mediate its impact on their lives. The volume is an invaluable resource for scholars and students in the areas of media and society, children and media, and family studies.
This second edition of a trend-setting volume provides an updated examination of the interaction between families and the most pervasive mass medium: television. Charting the dynamic developments of the American family and television over the past decade, this volume provides a comprehensive representation of programmatic research into family and television and examines extensively the uses families make of television, how extensions of television affect usage, families' evolving attitudes toward television, the ways families have been and are portrayed on television, the effects television has on families, and the ways in which families can mediate its impact on their lives. The volume is an invaluable resource for scholars and students in the areas of media and society, children and media, and family studies.
The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom examines the evasive depictions of sexuality in domestic and family-friendly sitcoms. Tison Pugh charts the history of increasing sexual depiction in this genre while also unpacking how sitcoms use sexuality as a source of power, as a kind of camouflage, and as a foundation for family building. The book examines how queerness, at first latent, became a vibrant yet continually conflicted part of the family-sitcom tradition. Taking into account elements such as the casting of child actors, the use of and experimentation with plot traditions, the contradictory interpretive valences of comedy, and the subtle subversions of moral standards by writers and directors, Pugh points out how innocence and sexuality conflict on television. As older sitcoms often sit on a pedestal of nostalgia as representative of the Golden Age of the American Family, television history reveals a deeper, queerer vision of family bonds.
Before 1973, the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California, lived in the privacy of their own home. With the airing of the documentary An American Family, that "privacy" extended to every American home with a television. This book is the first to offer a close look at An American Family -- the documentary that blurred conventions, stirred passions, revised impressions of family life and definitions of private and public, and began the breakdown of distinctions between reality and spectacle that culminated in cultural phenomena from The Oprah Winfrey Show to Survivor.
Between 1948 and 1955, nearly two-thirds of all American families bought a television set—and a revolution in social life and popular culture was launched. In this fascinating book, Lynn Spigel chronicles the enormous impact of television in the formative years of the new medium: how, over the course of a single decade, television became an intimate part of everyday life. What did Americans expect from it? What effects did the new daily ritual of watching television have on children? Was television welcomed as an unprecedented "window on the world," or as a "one-eyed monster" that would disrupt households and corrupt children? Drawing on an ambitious array of unconventional sources, from sitcom scripts to articles and advertisements in women's magazines, Spigel offers the fullest available account of the popular response to television in the postwar years. She chronicles the role of television as a focus for evolving debates on issues ranging from the ideal of the perfect family and changes in women's role within the household to new uses of domestic space. The arrival of television did more than turn the living room into a private theater: it offered a national stage on which to play out and resolve conflicts about the way Americans should live. Spigel chronicles this lively and contentious debate as it took place in the popular media. Of particular interest is her treatment of the way in which the phenomenon of television itself was constantly deliberated—from how programs should be watched to where the set was placed to whether Mom, Dad, or kids should control the dial. Make Room for TV combines a powerful analysis of the growth of electronic culture with a nuanced social history of family life in postwar America, offering a provocative glimpse of the way television became the mirror of so many of America's hopes and fears and dreams.
The American family has come a long way from the days of the idealized family portrayed in iconic television shows of the 1950s and 1960s. The four volumes of The Social History of the American Family explore the vital role of the family as the fundamental social unit across the span of American history. Experiences of family life shape so much of an individual’s development and identity, yet the patterns of family structure, family life, and family transition vary across time, space, and socioeconomic contexts. Both the definition of who or what counts as family and representations of the “ideal” family have changed over time to reflect changing mores, changing living standards and lifestyles, and increased levels of social heterogeneity. Available in both digital and print formats, this carefully balanced academic work chronicles the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of American families from the colonial period to the present. Key themes include families and culture (including mass media), families and religion, families and the economy, families and social issues, families and social stratification and conflict, family structures (including marriage and divorce, gender roles, parenting and children, and mixed and non-modal family forms), and family law and policy. Features: Approximately 600 articles, richly illustrated with historical photographs and color photos in the digital edition, provide historical context for students. A collection of primary source documents demonstrate themes across time. The signed articles, with cross references and Further Readings, are accompanied by a Reader’s Guide, Chronology of American Families, Resource Guide, Glossary, and thorough index. The Social History of the American Family is an ideal reference for students and researchers who want to explore political and social debates about the importance of the family and its evolving constructions.
Big World, Small Screen assesses the influence of television on the lives of the most vulnerable and powerless in American society: children, ethnic and sexual minorities, and women. Many in these groups are addicted to television, although they are not the principal audiences sought by commercial TV distributors because they are not the most lucrative markets for advertisers. This important book illustrates the power of television in stereotyping the elderly, ethnic groups, gays and lesbians, and the institutionalized and, thus, in contributing to the self-image of many viewers. They go on to consider how television affects social interaction, intellectual functioning, emotional development, and attitudes (toward family life, sexuality, and mental and physical health, for example). They illustrate the medium's potential to teach and inform, to communicate across nations and cultures?and to induce violence, callousness, and amorality. Parents will be especially interested in what they say about television viewing and children. Finally, they offer suggestions for research and public policy with the aim of producing programming that will enrich the lives of citizens all across the spectrum. Nine psychologists, members of the Task Force on Television and Society appointed by the American Psychological Association, have collaborated on Big World, Small Screen.
During the 1980s, U.S. television experienced a reinvigoration of the family sitcom genre. In TV Family Values, Alice Leppert focuses on the impact the decade's television shows had on middle class family structure. These sitcoms sought to appeal to upwardly mobile “career women” and were often structured around non-nuclear families and the reorganization of housework. Drawing on Foucauldian and feminist theories, Leppert examines the nature of sitcoms such as Full House, Family Ties, Growing Pains, The Cosby Show, and Who's the Boss? against the backdrop of a time period generally remembered as socially conservative and obsessed with traditional family values.
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.
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.
