Television Culture

Sous le regard émerveillé de leur fils, ils dansent sur "Mr. Bojangles" de Nina Simone. Leur amour est magique, vertigineux, une fête perpétuelle. Chez eux, il n'y a de place que pour le plaisir, la fantaisie et les amis. Celle qui donne le ton, qui mène le bal, c'est la mère, feu follet imprévisible et extravagant. C'est elle qui a adopté le quatrième membre de la famille, Mademoiselle Superfétatoire, un grand oiseau exotique qui déambule dans l'appartement.

In his first memoir, Josh Widdicombe tells the story of a strange rural childhood, the kind of childhood he only realised was weird when he left home and started telling people about it. From only having four people in his year at school, to living in a family home where they didn't just not bother to lock the front door, they didn't even have a key. Using a different television show of the time as its starting point for each chapter, Watching Neighbours Twice a Day... is part-childhood memoir, part-comic history of '90s television and culture.

Darwin had his theory of evolution, and David Bianculli has his. Bianculli's theory has to do with the concept of quality television: what it is and, crucially, how it got that way. In tracing the evolutionary history of our progress toward a Platinum Age of Television - our age, the era of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad and Mad Men and The Wire and Homeland and Girls - he focuses on the development of the classic TV genres.

From the Emmy Award-winning Squid Game to streaming sensations like The Glory and Crash Landing on You, Korean television has emerged onto the global pop culture scene as compelling television—but what exactly makes these shows so irresistibly bingeable? And what can we learn about our...

Los Angeles in 1974 exerted more influence over popular culture than any other city in America. Rock Me on the Water traces the confluence of movies, music, television, and politics in Los Angeles month by month through that transformative, magical year. Ronald Brownstein reveals how 1974 represented a confrontation between a massive younger generation intent on change, and a political order rooted in the status quo. Brownstein shows how the voices resistant to change may win the political battle for a time, but they cannot hold back the future.

International business requires a deep level of industry insight but also a keen understanding of the cultural differences that impact how business is done. If you’re an American working in China or Japan for the first time, you may not realize the way each culture thinks and reasons is quite different from your own, which can lead to frequent misunderstandings. You may be unaware, for example, that Americans reason in a linear manner, Chinese in a lateral manner, and Japanese intuitively.

"If you love storytelling in the style of David Sedaris, this audiobook—narrated by Janetti himself—is for you." — Yahoo Lifestyle This program is read by the author. Fans of David Sedaris, Jenny Lawson, and Tina Fey… meet your new friend Gary Janetti. Gary Janetti, the writer and...

Few American television series are as deeply entrenched in twentieth-century popular culture as M*A*S*H, a Korean War medical comedy characterized by its dark tone and finesse in tackling serious social and political issues. By the end of its run, M*A*S*H had been a mainstream hit for several seasons and won fourteen Emmys, leading it to be called, "the most popular pre-Seinfeld series in television history." In this comprehensive study of M*A*S*H, David Scott Diffrient analyzes the series' contextual issues such as its creation, reception, and circulation as well as textual issues like its formal innovations, narrative strategies, and themes.

What is the smartest, most celebrated game show of all time? In this insider's guide, discover the rich history of Jeopardy! -- the beloved game show that has shaped our culture and entertained audiences for years. Jeopardy! is a lot of things: record-setting game show, beloved family tradition...

In September 1994, six friends sat down in their favorite coffee shop and began bantering about sex, relationships, jobs, and just about everything else. A quarter of a century later, new fans are still finding their way into the lives of Rachel, Ross, Joey, Chandler, Monica, and Phoebe, and thanks to the show’s immensely talented creators, its intimate understanding of its youthful audience, and its reign during network television’s last moment of dominance, Friends has become the most influential and beloved show of its era, and this is the story of how it all happened.

In February 1958, the Herrmann family began to experience strange events at their home in Seaford, New York. The first occurrences were harmless—just caps popping off of bottles. But soon things escalated. Dishes were smashed, bookshelves toppled over, and objects moved. Could these unexplained events have been the work of a devious poltergeist named Popper?

Andy Griffith and Don Knotts met on Broadway in the 1950s. When Andy went to Hollywood to film a TV pilot about a small-town sheriff, Don called to ask if the sheriff could use a deputy. The comedic synergy between Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife ignited The Andy Griffith Show, elevating a folksy sitcom into a timeless study of human friendship, as potent off the screen as on.

Inspired by the most popular subjects on Isaac Weishaupt’s podcast, Conspiracy Theories & Unpopular Culture, this book explores familiar topics that have an insidious truth hidden from the masses. Using occult doctrine cited from Freemasonry, Kabbalah, and Gnosticism; Isaac guides the listener through the symbolism of the concepts most frequently discussed by the conspiracy theory community.

From a former MSNBC host and NAACP award-winning podcaster, a deeply personal narrative for Black women about their well-being and place in a failing democracy. Not only are Black women not being centered, we’re being silenced. There are fewer conscious Black women on TV and in leadership...

Culture has become the hottest word in today's organizational lexicon. From boardrooms to locker rooms, everyone's talking about the critical link between culture and extraordinary team performance. Yet, as clear as that link may be, understanding what culture is, and what to do about it, has always been so murky. Until now. In this game-changing audiobook, David Friedman cuts through the fog and provides a simple, clear, and practical roadmap for building a high-performing culture - in any organization.

This book introduces important concepts in philosophy through the vast array of provocative issues raised by the series, such as the ethics of the Prime Directive, Star Trek's philosophy of peace, Data and Voyager's Doctor as persons, moral relativism and the Federation's quest for liberation, the effect of alternate universes on reality and identity, the Borg as transhumanists, Federation Trekonomics, Star Trek's secular society, and much, much more!

In celebration of the Brady Bunch's 50th anniversary, TV writer Kimberly Potts writes a Seinfeldia-like definitive history of the show that changed the family sitcom and made an indelible impact on pop culture. There isn't a person in this country who hasn't heard of The Brady Bunch. Whether...

The syndicated columnist and bestselling author of Brainwashed, Porn Generation, and Project President tells the shocking true story of how the most powerful medium of mass communication in human history became a vehicle for spreading the radical agenda of the left side of the political spectrum. Similar to what Bernard Goldberg’s Bias and A Slobbering Love Affair did for the liberal news machine, Shapiro’s Primetime Propaganda is an essential exposé of corrupting media bias, pulling back the curtain on widespread and unrepentant abuses of the Hollywood entertainment industry.

Journalist Rick Bowers has contributed to Time, The Washington Post, and USA Today, and his fascinating Spies of Mississippi—about the spy network that tried to take down the Civil Rights Movement—earned a starred review from Booklist. Here, Bowers examines how, in the late 1940s, The Adventures of Superman radio show struck a powerful blow to the Ku Klux Klan when Superman aired episodes pitting the hero against the Klan in an effort to teach young listeners to stand up to bigotry.

What do we see when we watch reality television? Sociologist and TV lover Danielle J. Lindemann takes a long, hard look in the “funhouse mirror” of this genre, from countless rose ceremonies on The Bachelor to the White House and more (so much more!). Beginning with the first episodes of The Real World, reality TV has not only remade our entertainment and cultural landscape—it also uniquely refracts our everyday experiences and social topography.