Television Commons^™

Nature Vs. Nurture In Albuquerque: What Breaking Bad And Better Call Saul Teach Us About How We Talk About Criminals, Max Romanowski

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul focus on the criminal transformation of their two main characters, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk). While quite similar on the surface, Walter and Jimmy’s narratives represent two different criminal transitions, evoking the classic nature vs nurture conversation. Both of these shows bring the conversation to the idea of inevitability. The nature vs. nurture argument is a popular one because it acts as a teaching tool for how we think and talk about criminal behavior. At first, it follows that since criminality was in Walter White’s nature the whole time, his …

If Androids Dream, Are They More Than Sheep?: Westworld, Robots And Legal Rights, Amanda J. Dipaolo

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The robot protagonists in HBO’s Westworld open the door to several philosophical and ethical questions, perhaps the most complex being: should androids be granted similar legal protections as people? Westworld offers its own exploration of what it means to be a person and places emphasis on one’s ability to feel and understand pain. With scientists and corporations actively working toward a future that includes robots that can display emotion in a way that can convincingly pass as that of a person’s, what happens when androids pass the Turing test, feel empathy, gain consciousness, are sentient, or develop free will? The …

Making The Case For Teaching Character Change In Complex Tv: The Closer And Major Crimes, Emily C. Hoffman

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Jason Mittel’s 2015 book Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling offers enough material to sustain a semester-long undergraduate course. Because of its approachability and students’ interest in discussing characters, his chapter devoted to viewers’ parasocial relationships and characters’ potential for change is among the most teachable. However, teaching complex television that relies on intensely serialized story elements can make choosing televisual texts for study and discussion challenging. Therefore, series that skew episodic yet still incorporate serial elements, like police procedurals, can prove to be a practical alternative for classroom study. This article describes how using the interrelated …

A Gendered Perspective On Policing Violence In Happy Valley And Fargo, T. Allen Culpepper

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Portrayal of a police officer determined to fight crime and execute justice in a harsh, isolated environment has become a television and film subgenre, often featuring women facing gender-related challenges. The issues raised in Sally Wainwright’s British television series Happy Valley, can be made more accessible, particularly to American undergraduate students, via its commonalities with the Coen brothers film Fargo. In both, a tough but compassionate policewoman pursues the more sociopathic of a pair of criminals involved in a botched kidnapping attempt instigated by an inept businessman, taking on the case for personal and professional honor, and as …

We All Have Jobs Here: Teaching And Learning With Multiple Intelligences In The Walking Dead, Lizabeth Gartley

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

With the rise of cultural studies, positivism and formalism fell out of favor. But in recent years, altered versions of these methodologies have been suggested as solutions to the deficiencies of the ideological approach dominating the field. Where the ideological approach looks at the content of texts to determine their meaning, the aesthetic approach adopted by media scholars in recent years returns to the close textual readings of formalism (while abandoning its assertion that meaning resides in the text alone). Similarly, where the ideological approach tends to use textual analysis devoid of sociological empiricism, the use of “big data” in …

Deconstructing "Proper Condom Use" As An Introduction To Literary Analysis, Julie Stewart, Thomas D. Clark, Marilyn Clark

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Popular culture figures in television, movies, comics, and video games have captured the imaginations of young people. The themes and characters of shows students watch regularly help shape their views on contemporary issues, especially as they compare their personal experiences with those portrayed on their favorite shows. This paper examines how "Proper Condom Use," an episode of South Park, one of the most popular shows among young viewers, can be used as a springboard for in-class discussion of tools for literary analysis through an exposition of this episode’s visual and aural humor, themes, characters, audience, and genre.

Our experience …

Social Justice From The Twilight Zone: Rod Serling As Human Rights Activist, Hugh A. D. Spencer

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Rod Serling achieved critical acclaim in the First Golden Age of Television writing realist teleplays that express a strong moral sense and social consciousness. With the decline of anthology drama at the close of the 1950s, Serling created The Twilight Zone, which would become a forum for telling relevant stories while circumventing commercial and bureaucratic interference. As a means of exploring Serling’s use of drama as a tool for social justice, this paper compares themes from The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery with charter and constitutional statements of human rights. The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights is …

Applications In The Classroom: Teaching Disney/Pixar’S Inside Out Within The Tradition Of Allegorical Personification, Jason John Gulya

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Several years ago, I noticed that the widespread distinction between high and low culture was wreaking havoc on my classroom. My students would read and analyze texts like Robinson Crusoe and Pride and Prejudice with little to no prompting because (in their minds) these texts were already part of the recognized canon and it was therefore permissible to pick them apart and analyze them closely. But I would get strange looks when I asked undergraduates to think critically about how the mock-news programs The Daily Show and The Colbert Report worked or when I asked them to discuss how the …

More Than Simple Plagiarism: Ligotti, Pizzolatto, And True Detective’S Terrestrial Horror, Jonathan Elmore

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Of course, True Detective is neither a philosopher’s bedtime story nor supernatural horror, and yet there remains a productive affinity between Ligotti’s work and the HBO series. Where Ligotti provides substantial portions of the hallmark character’s identity and dialogue, True Detective puts Ligotti’s thought experiment to far more practical uses than does Ligotti himself. By intertwining hurricanes and flooding alongside industry and pollution into the background and negative space of the setting, the series implicates the urgent material reality of climate change and environmental collapse into the setting: “all of this is going to be under water in thirty years” …

Destructive Plasticity, “Surplus Of Consciousness,” And The “Monster” In True Detective, Courtney Patrick-Weber

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The first season of HBO's cult hit True Detective introduced viewers to a southern gothic murder mystery that many will not easily forget. Since many of us focused primarily on the whodunit narrative, we may have missed the narrative of trauma simmering under the surface of the story. This narrative of trauma reveals a deeper layer to the story between Detective Rust Cohle and serial killer Errol Childress, one that also reveals our own fears regarding trauma in our lives. By applying first the nihilist philosophies of Peter Zapffe with Cohle and Catherine Malabou's concept on destructive plasticity in Childress, …

“If You Want To Be The Man, You’Ve Got To Beat The Man”: Masculinity And The Rise Of Professional Wrestling In The 1990s, Marc A. Ouellette

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

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 …

Applications In The Classroom: Pop Culture And Ed Psychology: What I Learned From Larry David, Rick Grimes, And Hank Hill, Melissa Vosen Callens

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In teacher education courses, it is common to teach educational psychology concepts using case studies. Many publishers provide these case studies in textbooks and/or in ancillary materials, and there are many advantages to using them. For example, an instructor does not have to spend extra time finding or writing the case studies, both of which can be very time consuming. In addition, if students have the textbook, they have immediate access. One major disadvantage, however, is that students may find themselves uninterested and disengaged with the cases, depending on the students’ interests and the cases. This paper argues that studying …

(Re)Learning About Learning: Using Cases From Popular Media To Extend And Complicate Our Understandings Of What It Means To Learn And Teach, Kelli Bippert, Dennis Davis, Margaret Rose Hilburn, Jennifer D. Hooper, Deepti Kharod, Cinthia Rodriguez, Rebecca Stortz

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article utilizes sociocultural and socio-constructivist learning theories to analyze incidents of learning, and by extension teaching, in six different popular media selections. The authors describe their shared theoretical framework and the nature of the original analyses, which were completed as part of a doctoral course assignment. Each of the six excerpts is then described and discussed employing unique theoretical perspectives. The use of popular culture as the context for examining learning and teaching provides a space untethered from traditional notions of schooling through which typically accepted assumptions about pedagogy are revealed, re-examined, and reframed.

Book Review Of Lazzaro: A Man And His Machines. By Ron Moshier. Newburyport, Ma: Coastal 101, 2023. 180 Pages., Elton G. Mcgoun

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.

Traversing Realities: Genres, Histories, And Politics In Popular Culture [Dialogue, Volume 2, Issue 1 (Spring 2015)], Lynnea Chapman King, Anna Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Editorial

Examining Perspectives and Applications, Lynnea Chapman King and A.S. CohenMiller

Articles

A Field Guide to Teaching Agency and Ethics: The West Wing and American Foreign Policy, Kayce Mobley and Sarah Fisher

Survivor Skills: Why I Want to Teach Reality TV, May Friedman

Girls, Guns, and Zombies: Five Dimensions of Teaching and Learning in The Walking Dead, Anthony Neely

“Can you imagine, a real, live Indian right here in Walnut Grove?”: American Indians in Television Adaptations of Little House on the Prairie, Amy S. Fatzinger

The Gentle Tongue: How Language Affected the World of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, …

Book Review: M. J. Trow, A Brief History Of Vampires, Myha Do

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Review of M. J. Trow's A Brief History of Vampires. Philadelphia: Running Press Book Publishers, 2010. xv, 368 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-0-7624-3988-1.

Applications In The Classroom: Hardly Elementary—Frontiers For Freshman Composition With Conan Doyle’S A Study In Scarlet, Kate M. Donley

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Three recent television and !lm adaptations testify to the continuing popularity of Arthur Conan Doyle’s consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. The fast-paced novella that introduces detective duo Holmes and Watson, A Study in Scarlet involves some astonishing elements, and not just in the plot. With just a little probing, collegiate readers may wonder whether Conan Doyle plagiarized his most famous character, invented forensic science, despised Mormons, and accidentally wrote a Western.

The novel was adapted as A Study in Pink, the !rst episode of the BBC’s series Sherlock created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Their vision of Holmes set …

“Can You Imagine, A Real, Live Indian Right Here In Walnut Grove?”: American Indians In Television Adaptations Of Little House On The Prairie, Amy S. Fatzinger

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House novels have been adapted into two major television series: Michael Landon’s well-known series, which aired from 1974-1983, and a more recent Disney adaptation, which aired as a miniseries in 2005. The premier movie, which preceded Landon’s series, and the Disney miniseries both focus on the events in Wilder’s 1935 novel, Little House on the Prairie, which covered the period from 1869-1871 during which the Ingalls family lived among the Osage in Kansas Indian Territory. Wilder’s portrayal of the Osage in her novel is controversial, but she does also include some literary devices that allow …

Survivor Skills: Authenticity, Representation And Why I Want To Teach Reality Tv, May Friedman

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This paper will consider the pedagogical potential in constructing a class on the phenomenon of reality television by exploring the possibilities and pitfalls of a shared viewing of these “texts” as a site of critical engagement with popular culture. A course on reality TV would require a deep analysis of the topics of representation, authenticity, and audience reactions. The course I would like to teach would also consider the ways that reality TV is simultaneously emblematic of, and contributes to, the foregrounding of neoliberal discourses. This paper addresses some of the pedagogical implications of an analysis of reality TV by …

(Dis)Connecting Incommensurable Relationalities: Aesthetics Of Desirable Citizenship & Interethnic Solidarity In Vietnamese/American Diasporic Media, Anh A. T. Nguyen

Communication ETDs

Employing critical diasporic rhetoric to articulate the pull and push glimmer of essentialist and nationalistic agendas of constructing Vietnamese diasporic subjectivities, I elucidate the complicated structure of diasporic nationalism that gives shape to ambiguities, paradoxes, and contradictions of Vietnamese diasporic withdrawal and regroupment in interethnic politics. Through three case studies explicating Vietnamese diasporic responses to the Chinese virus rhetorics, the appearance of the South Vietnamese flag on January 6 Capitol grounds, and the Atlanta shootings in Saigon Broadcasting Television Networks (SBTN), I highlight how Vietnamese diasporic authorities perform and enact citizenships of becoming desirable, which elevates oppressive forces of ideological …

The Good White Guise: Rhetorical (Re)Constructions Of White Allies On U.S. Television, Dakota J. Sandras

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

In this dissertation, I observe how white allyship has been (re)constructed in media by analyzing its representations on mainstream television amidst peak moments of racial reckoning in the United States. In light of heightened demands for antiracist solidarity, I interrogate how such popular texts contribute to gaps between the theory and practice of allyship within the white imaginary. By attending to episodic samples from three distinct genres of American television, I dissect how various interactions and characters coded to signify white allyship rhetorically function to create meaning regarding its contested im/possibilities in both media and in the real world. In …

Coming Home Again: Television Sitcom Revivals, Brandon K. Hedgepeth

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis argues that the success of television situational comedy revivals correlates with television’s technological affordances as they have evolved over the past half-century. Specifically, three revival series are examined within this study, consisting of The New Leave it to Beaver (1983-1989), Fuller House (2016-2020), and The Conners (2018-Present). This paper uses the revival case studies to showcase their parallel relationship with the introduction of cable television and streaming media, alongside the resurgence of broadcast television to highlight the changing media landscape and the intertwined nature between technological advancement and the revival form. The study’s investigation of how nostalgia intersects …

Identifying Youth Appeals In Alcohol Alternative Social Media Content Through Framing, Melina Oneal

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Proposed regulations for alcohol advertising prevent beverage companies from targeting people under the legal drinking age. However, similar regulations for alcohol alternative beverages are less explored, which could allow alcohol alternative products to create awareness for alcoholic beverages among youth. Alcohol alternatives beverages, including no-alcohol and low-alcohol products, are increasing in popularity and can function as compliments to alcoholic products to decrease the total alcohol volume consumed or as substitutes for alcoholic products. Framing theory can be operationalized through the Content Appealing to Youth Index, an index of content elements found in research literature to be appealing to youth, to …

Ensemble Storytelling In How To Get Away With Murder, Deidre Pribram

Communications: Faculty Publications

The usually large number of scriptwriters associated with contemporary television’s dramatic serials renders the attribution of primary creative or authorial ownership particularly difficult.  The result has been to ascribe written imprimatur for a series to the head writer/showrunner.  Yet, there are other, conflicting ways to understand authorial influence or control over a TV series, for example, through producing entities.  Thus, How to Get Away with Murder (2014-2020) is a Shondaland production, part of the Shonda Rhimes collection, and readily identifiable as a significant entry in the Rhimes compendium.

Although an executive producer for How to Get Away with Murder, but …

Gender And Nostalgia In Period Drama: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel And Mad Men, Deidre Pribram

Communications: Faculty Publications

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-2023) and Mad Men (2007-2015) share a common genre, location, and era.  Both are period dramas, set in New York City, as the waning 1950s transition into the 1960s.  Additionally, both television serials address changing cultural conditions, especially surrounding gender.  Yet, when analyzed through the prism of nostalgia, the two programs deviate in significant ways.  This essay uses Grainge’s (2000) distinction between nostalgia as mood and nostalgia as aesthetic style, applying it to the two television serials.  It also incorporates concepts of nostalgia as critique (Cook, 2005), as well as imagined nostalgia as the longing “for …

The Regenarrative: How To Change The Story In Order To Change The Future, S. Rose Bigheart O'Leary

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Abstract

In the era of Climate Change, many are concerned that the end of the Anthropocene, or the end of the era of human life on Earth, is upon us. Western European colonialism and its subsequent systems (settler-colonialism, colonial-capitalism, and globalization - sometimes termed “neocolonialism”) have all been implicated in contributing to unsustainable behaviors linked to accelerating climate change. In searching for possible solutions, some have called for listening to Indigenous Peoples, citing ethics of sustainability found among many Indigenous cultures. However, the cultural products of settler-colonialism are still dominant in ways that do not allow for Indigenous worldviews to …

From Screen To Classroom: The Role Of Televised Narratives In Enhancing Educational Belongingness For Black American Students, Feyi Oshinyemi

Masters Theses

This creative thesis examines the influence of televised narratives on shaping the educational experiences of Black American students, exploring the interplay between media representation and educational belonging. It proposes how televisual narratives can better reflect and support the educational identities of Black American students, aiming to foster a greater sense of belonging and representation in educational media. This document serves as an accompaniment to the center of this work, a twelve minute pilot episode that explores the challenges and triumphs of students navigating their educational journeys. This work not only provides a detailed breakdown of the episode's narrative and production …

Media Literacy Policy In Morocco: A Strategic Milestone Missing, Abderrahim Chalfaouat, Karim Essoufi

Journal of Media Literacy Education

In the digital age, diverse walks of human life have reconfigured profoundly. In the Moroccan society, digitalisation plans and the skyrocketing numbers of internet users necessitate coping literacy policies. While several community initiatives have been taken to improve the quality of media literacy, they, as bottom-up efforts, cannot suffice to meet the needs of the whole Moroccan population. Rather, the absence of a central, nationwide, cross-sectoral media literacy policy significantly challenges the effective coordination of official strategies and community initiatives in media education. This article investigates current practices in media literacy in Morocco. Using document analysis, it delves into data …

The Crusading Days Of Jackie Stewart: Evaluating The Development Of Safety In Motor Racing During The 1960s., Alex Twitchen

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

This article critically evaluates the contribution of Jackie Stewart in making motor racing a safer sport for competitors. It challenges the validity of the popular assumption that Jackie Stewart by himself developed a ‘culture of safety’ that transformed the sport. Instead, the role of other individuals are identified alongside the importance of three social processes. These processes are identified as the changing balance of power between different masculine identities, the development of commercial sponsorship and a growth in the coverage of the sport on television.

The development of motor racing from the 1960s onwards as a safer sport in which …

Book Review: I Was A Nascar Redneck: Recollections Of The Transformation Of A Yankee Farm Boy To A Southern Redneck In The Golden Era Of Nascar And Beyond., Quinn Beekwilder, Daniel Dean

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.