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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Dark Shadows: Monster Culture On Daytime Television, Bill Svitavsky
Dark Shadows: Monster Culture On Daytime Television, Bill Svitavsky
Faculty Publications
The soap opera Dark Shadows (ABC, 1966–71) gradually took on elements from horror movies, including an immensely popular vampire character. This article examines how the mixing of genre elements took place and how it changed the show’s audience and messaging.
Identity And Scene: Alterity And Authenticity In Taxicab Confessions, Steven W. Schoen
Identity And Scene: Alterity And Authenticity In Taxicab Confessions, Steven W. Schoen
Faculty Publications
This essay examines the visual rhetoric of HBOs reality TV program Taxicab Confessions, New York, New York (2005). Drawing on Burke’s rhetorical understanding of scene and Straw’s approach to scene as a category for the analysis of urban culture, I argue that the taxicab interior and nighttime street images of New York City structure a scene of indeterminacy, intimacy, and “reality,” thus framing the passengers’ self-presentations within a context of “authenticity.” The program’s visual structure locates passengers simultaneously outside of and within social norms and reinforces hegemonic notions of race, gender, and sexuality. Passengers are situated within a scene that …