American Studies Commons^™

Narratives Of Miami In Dexter And Burn Notice, Myles Mcnutt

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

In popular discourse around television, a series’ relationship with place is often marked through the suggestion its setting is “like a character in the show”, but this article argues against adopting this as a framework for analyzing television’s relationship with space and place. It articulates the relationship between this discourse of “spatial capital” and hierarchies of cultural capital within the television industry, limiting the types of series that are deemed to warrant closer investigation regarding issues of space and place and lacking nuanced engagement with place’s relationship with television narrative in particular. After breaking down the logic under which these …

"If You Want To Be The Man, You've Got To Beat The Man": Masculinity And The Rise Of Professional Wrestling In The 1990'S, Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This paper traces the relationship between the shifting representations of masculinity in professional wrestling programs of the 1990s and the contemporaneous shifts in conceptions of masculinity, examining the ways each of these shifts impacted the other. Most important among these was a growing sense that the biggest enemy in wrestling and in day-to-day life is one’s boss. Moreover, the corporate corruption theme continues to underscore the WWE’s on-screen and off-screen coverage, well into the second decade of the twenty-first century. Thus, the paper provides a template for considering a widely consumed popular cultural form in ways that challenge the determinism …

Polymediated Narrative: The Case Of The Supernatural Episode "Fan Fiction", Art Herbig, Andrew F. Herrmann

ETSU Faculty Works

Modern stories are the product of a recursive process influenced by elements of genre, outside content, medium, and more. These stories exist in a multitude of forms and are transmitted across multiple media. This article examines how those stories function as pieces of a broader narrative, as well as how that narrative acts as a world for the creation of stories. Through an examination of the polymediated nature of modern narratives, we explore the complicated nature of modern storytelling.

Transferential Poetics, From Poe To Warhol, Adam Frank

Literature

Transferential Poetics presents a method for bringing theories of affect to the study of poetics. Informed by the thinking of Silvan Tomkins, Melanie Klein, and Wilfred Bion, it offers new interpretations of the poetics of four major American artists: Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and Andy Warhol. The author emphasizes the close, reflexive attention each of these artists pays to the transfer of feeling between text and reader, or composition and audience— their transferential poetics. The book’s historical route from Poe to Warhol culminates in television, a technology and cultural form that makes affect distinctly available to perception. …

Got Lost Behind The Scenes: Underexposed Television Producers In Magazines, Jordan King

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Award-winning television shows are popularly depicted through digital media and magazine coverage. However, the strenuous efforts of TV producers are hidden behind the publicity of celebrities and plotlines of the show. Using Eugene Shaw's agenda-setting theory and Robert Entman's framing theory as a basis, the author created a case study analyzing how the producers of Lost and Game of Thrones are portrayed in magazines. The research shows that reporters tend to perpetuate the anonymity of these producers, which in effect, leads an audience to deem them as unimportant.

Where Have All The Good Men Gone? A Psychoanalytic Reading Of The Absent Fathers & Bad Dads On Abc's Lost, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Fictional fathers in narratives are often allegorical in nature and contemporary television is not immune from this. ABC’s groundbreaking television drama, Lost, offers a multitude of father figures that suggests not only a crisis concerning the role of the father in the 21st century but also the crisis of national security experienced by Americans after the attacks. In particular, the program showcases three specific types of troubled father/child relationships: those in which the father is absent and/or dead, those where the father is portrayed as abusive and/or evil, and those where the father and child are estranged and/or their relationship …

Where Have All The Good Men Gone? A Psychoanalytic Reading Of The Absent Fathers & Bad Dads On Abc's Lost, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Fictional fathers in narratives are often allegorical in nature and contemporary television is not immune from this. ABC’s groundbreaking television drama, Lost, offers a multitude of father figures that suggests not only a crisis concerning the role of the father in the 21st century but also the crisis of national security experienced by Americans after the attacks. In particular, the program showcases three specific types of troubled father/child relationships: those in which the father is absent and/or dead, those where the father is portrayed as abusive and/or evil, and those where the father and child are estranged and/or their relationship …

#Prettylittleliars: How Hashtags Drive The Social Tv Phenomenon, Melanie Brozek

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Twitter is used by many TV shows to promote discussion and encourage viewer loyalty. Most successfully, ABC Family uses Twitter to promote the teen drama Pretty Little Liars through the use of hashtags and celebrity interactions. This study analyzes Pretty Little Liars use of hashtags created by the network and by actors from the show. It examines how the Pretty Little Liars official accounts engage fans about their opinions on the show and encourage further discussion. Fans use the network-generated hashtags within their tweets to react to particular scenes and to hopefully be noticed by managers of official show accounts. …

Profiles Of Selected Mormon Actors, J. Michael Hunter

Faculty Publications

“Profiles of Selected Mormon Actors” provides brief profiles of over 80 Mormon actors and actresses, including some biographical information and career highlights. This chapter appears in the first volume of Mormons and Popular Culture: The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon (Praeger 2013), a comprehensive treatment of Mormons and popular culture, providing an introduction and wide-ranging overview of the topic.

Social Learning Theory In The Frontline Documentary “The Merchants Of Cool”, Alixe A. Wiley

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

In the Frontline documentary The Merchants of Cool, the relationship between major media conglomerates and their hedonistic teenage customers is examined through exploring the different tactics industries use to discover and market the next “cool” thing. Industries maintain what the documentary refers to as a “feedback loop” with their customers, which is a cyclic, supply-and-demand relationship that blurs the line between fiction and reality. It has become impossible to tell which side is imitating the other: who do the products and trends that define popular youth culture belong to? What's more, are the sexual and aggressive hormone-fueled behaviors on …

Television, Kathleen Collins

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Citizen Bunker: Archie Bunker As Working-Class Icon., Kathleen Collins

Publications and Research

Archie Bunker, the central character and patriarch of Norman Lear’s “All in the Family,” (1971-1979) has been referred to as an “everyman” and an “angry-man prototype” with “hard had prejudice.” The name Archie Bunker itself has become synonymous with a blue-collar, racially chauvinistic mentality. The title of the show’s pilot and theme song, “Those Were the Days,” emphasized Archie’s dream of a simpler (though idealized) time, a world that he could understand and upon which he could exert some control. In 1970s America, Archie seemed to feel that the world was against him – economically, socially, politically and culturally – …

Time In Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality In 21st Century Programming, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

This collection analyzes twenty-first-century American television programs that rely upon temporal and narrative experimentation. These shows play with time, slowing it down to unfold the narrative through time retardation and compression. They disrupt the chronological flow of time itself, using flashbacks and insisting that viewers be able to situate themselves in both the present and the past narrative threads. Although temporal play has existed on the small screen prior to the new millennium, never before has narrative time been so freely adapted in mainstream television. The essayists offer explanations for not only the frequency of time play in contemporary programming, …

When Predator Becomes Prey: The Gendered Jargon Of Popular Culture, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century the vernacular of popular culture has been bombarded by sexualized terminology. Although these terms are often formed with humorous intent, their staying power and use as cultural descriptive categories is both intriguing and disturbing. Also troubling is the fact that the majority of these new terms, such as puma (a thirty-something female “dating” a younger male), cougar (a forty-plus female “dating” a younger male), and MILF (“mother I’d like to fuck”), are restricted to the female gender alone. This article analyzes the etymology of these terms, their use in popular culture (ranging …

Harbolt, Tami (Fa 394), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 394. Paper: "'I'm Not a Real Doctor, But I Play One on T.V...'": The Use of Folklore in Representations of Occupational Stereotypes in Television Advertising" written by Tami Harbolt for a Western Kentucky University folk studies class.

The Hillbilly In The American Imagination, Anthony Harkins

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Smith On Jenkins, 'Textual Poachers: Television Fans And Participatory Culture', Anne Collins Smith

Faculty Publications

Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture by Henry Jenkins. New York: Routledge, 1992. viii + 343 pp. $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-415-90571-8; $38.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-415-90572-5.

In Textual Poachers, Henry Jenkins examines the underground world of the media fandom, people who create fiction, artwork, and other forms of expression based on television shows. Drawing on a rich theoretical background with sources ranging from feminist literary criticism to cultural anthropology, Jenkins applies and adapts Michel de Certeau's model of "poaching," in which an audience appropriates a text for itself. Taking a stand against the stereotypical portrayal of fans as obsessive …

Interview With Mary Bryant (Benton) Fitts Regarding Her Life (Fa 154), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Oral Histories

Transcription of an interview with Mary Brant (Benton) Fitts conducted by Karen Owen for an oral history project titled "A Generation Remembers, 1900-1949." Fitts discusses her life and times, including information about growing up in Utica and Owensboro, Daviess County, Kentucky, her children, social life and customs, race relations, World War II, and sundry other topics. Mrs. Fitts was a housewife and mother of two.

Interview With Allyene Gregory Regarding Her Life (Fa 154), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Oral Histories

Transcription of an interview with Allyene Gregory conducted by Steve Vied for an oral history project titled "A Generation Remembers, 1900-1949." Gregory discusses her life and times, including information about growing up in Sorgho, Daviess County, Kentucky, education, childhood games, her father's farm, African Americans, social customs and historic events in the community, as well as her teaching career.

Interview With Lattie Edds And Essie Thomason Regarding Their Lives (Fa 154), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Oral Histories

Transcription of an interview with Lattie Edds and Essie Thomason conducted by Judi Hetrick for an oral history project titled "A Generation Remembers, 1900-1949." They discuss their life and times, including information about growing up in McLean County and Hancock County, Kentucky, social life and customs, weaving, childhood chores and games, teachers and teaching, one-room schools, farms and farming, courtship, televisions, radios, the Great Depression, floods, and influenza.

Interview With Lena Stolsworth Regarding Her Life (Fa 154), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Oral Histories

Transcription of an interview with Lena Stolsworth conducted by Kim Parson for an oral history project titled "A Generation Remembers, 1900-1949." Stolsworth discusses her life and times, including information about growing up on a farm in Ohio County, Kentucky, education, social life and customs, floods, the Great Depression and World War II.

Interview With Carrye Abell Regarding Her Life (Fa 154), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Oral Histories

Transcription of an interview with Carrye Abell conducted by Keith Smith for a oral history project titled "A Generation Remembers, 1900-1949." Abell discusses her life and times, including information about education, rural life, courtship, and Prohibition in Thurston, a small community in Daviess County, Kentucky.

Interview With Charlie Earl Coy Regarding His Life (Fa 154), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Oral Histories

Transcription of an interview with Charlie Earl Coy conducted by Keith Smith for an oral history project titled "A Generation Remembers, 1900-1949." Coy discusses his life and times, including information about his childhood in Daviess County, Kentucky, farms and farming, the Great Depression, tobacco, social life and customs, airplanes, radios, television, tractors and other farm equipment, women's suffrage and influenza.