Television Commons^™

Agnew, Abc, And Richard Nixon's War On Television, Dale L. Cressman Phd

Faculty Publications

Less than a year into the presidency of Richard Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew launched a series of attacks on television journalists, accusing them of being biased and having too much power to determine what news millions of Americans watched on their televisions. Because the government licensed and regulated their stations, the networks considered Agnew's statements, and other White House criticisms, to be threats. As the smallest, most vulnerable network, ABC found itself at a confluence of relationships with the administration: It employed both Nixon's favorite and least favorite anchors, as well as a highly placed executive who lent sympathy …

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 …

Shakespeare And The Cultural Olympiad: Contesting Gender And The British Nation In The Bbc’S Hollow Crown, L Monique Pittman

Faculty Publications

As part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad celebrating both the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, the BBC launched a season of programs, entitled Shakespeare Unlocked, most notably presenting the plays of the second tetralogy in four feature-length adaptations released under the unifying title The Hollow Crown. These plays so obviously engaged with the question of English nationalism suited a year in which the United Kingdom wrestled with British identity in a post-colonial and post-Great Recession world. Through its adaptative and filmic vocabularies, however, The Hollow Crown advances a British nationalism unresponsive to the casualties — often women and …

A Prison For Others—A Burden To One's Self, Anne Collins Smith, Owen M. Smith

Faculty Publications

Women have come a long way since the mid-1960's, both in the real world and in the world of philosophy. Given the advances in society and the developments within feminism that took place between that decade and the first decade of the 21st century, we might reasonably expect the new Prisonerseries to present a more contemporary perspective on women than the original. Such is most emphatically not the case. If we compare the original Village to the new one, it looks as if those pennyfarthing wheels are spinning backwards instead of forwards.

Marked Woman (1937) And The Dialectics Of Art Deco In The Classical Gangster Genre, Drew Todd

Faculty Publications

In this article, I analyse the function of Art Deco designs in the 1930s gangster genre and, in particular, Warner Brothers' Marked Woman (Bacon, 1937). Like many gangster films of the period, it associates high-style Art Deco with excess and the criminal underworld. My findings, however, reveal a tension between the film's moralist stance and its visual excess. Compelling visual signifiers of leisure, style and social mobility, the modern designs are free to circumvent the film's critical message and reinforce American capitalist ideologies. My analyses underscore Art Deco as an emblematic style of commercial modernity. Marked Woman and other gangster …

Relationally Aggressive Media Exposure And Children’S Normative Beliefs: Does Parental Mediation Matter?, Jennifer Ruh Linder, Nicole E. Werner

Faculty Publications

Research indicates that relationally aggressive media exposure is positively associated with relational aggression in children. Theories of media effects suggest that these associations may be mediated by aggressive cognitions. Although parental mediation can attenuate the effects of violent media, it is unknown whether there are similar benefits of parental mediation of relationally aggressive media. The current study examined concurrent and longitudinal associations between relationally aggressive television and movie exposure and normative beliefs about relational aggression, and whether parental mediation moderates these associations. Participants were 103 children (50% female) in grades 3-6 and their parents. The following year, 48 children (52% …

A Content Analysis Of Indirect, Verbal, And Physical Aggression In Television Programs Popular Among School-Aged Girls, Jennifer Ruh Linder, Kelsey Ann Lyle

Faculty Publications

A content analysis of indirect, verbal, and physical aggression was conducted of 77 hours of television programming popular among fifth grade girls. Eighty-eight percent of programs contained aggression. Physical aggression occurred at a rate of 9.6 acts per hour, whereas indirect and verbal aggression occurred at a rate of 3.7 and 2.8 acts per hour, respectively. Rates of aggression varied by gender, age, and attractiveness of perpetrators, as well as by relationship between perpetrator and victim. Additionally, motivation and consequences of aggressive acts varied by form of aggression. Implications of the findings are discussed in light of current research and …

Memories Cloaked In Magic: Memory And Identity In Tin Man, Anne Collins Smith

Faculty Publications

In Replications: A Robotic History of the Science Fiction Film [Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995], J. P. Telotte argues that "through its long history, one that dates back to the very origins of film, this genre [science fiction] has focused its attention on the problematic nature of human being and the difficult task of being human." [1-2] The thesis of the book, he states, is "relatively simple—that the image of human artifice ... is the single most important one in the genre. [...] Through this image of artifice, our films have sought to reframe the human image …

Pointing The Finger Of Blame: News Media Coverage Of Popular-­Culture Culpability, Erica Scharrer, Lisa M. Weidman, Kimberly Bissell

Faculty Publications

In the 1990s, three relatively high-profile tragedies occurred in which popular media products (including movies, recorded music, television talk shows, the Internet, tabloid newspapers, and video games) were argued to be the primary cause. This study analyzes the discourse surrounding the culpability that was placed on popular culture in major newspaper coverage of the car crash that killed Princess Diana, the murder associated with the “Jenny Jones” show, and the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The analysis reveals patterns in the assignment of blame—and relatively more rarely of exoneration—of popular culture, interpreting why and how popular culture …

Smith On Hanley, 'The Metaphysics Of Star Trek, Anne Collins Smith

Faculty Publications

Review by Anne Collins Smith on the H-PCAACA mailing list, June 1998.

The Metaphysics of Star Trek by Richard Hanley. New York: Basic Books, 1997. xviii + 253 pp. $18.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-465-09124-9.

Richard Hanley's The Metaphysics of Star Trek is an engaging examination of certain philosophical issues raised within the Star Trek universe. Its title, however, is overly broad; it would be more correctly titled, The Twentieth-Century Applied Metaphysics of Star Trek. The earliest reference in the bibliography is an article written in 1950; the next earliest, 1960. The vast majority of sources are from the 1980's and …

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 …

Smith On Bacon-Smith, 'Enterprising Women: Televisionfandom And The Creation Of Popular Myth, Anne Collins Smith

Faculty Publications

In Enterprising Women scholar Camille Bacon-Smith describes the underground culture of "media fandom," that is, the network of fans who create fiction, poetry, art, and other creative works based on favorite television shows and then gather to circulate these works. Because I have been an active participant in this culture for twenty years, Bacon-Smith's book was of particular interest to me, not only as an academic, but as a fan.

Bacon-Smith has taken on a daunting task: reporting on a cultural phenomenon both as an engaged participant and as an unbiased observer. Her position is typical of the ethnologist who …

Smith On Krauss, 'The Physics Of Star Trek', Anne Collins Smith

Faculty Publications

Review of Lawrence M. Krauss.The Physics of Star Trek. New York: Basic Books, 1995. xvi + 188 pp. $20.00(cloth), ISBN 978-0-465-00559-8.

Reviewed by Anne Collins Smith (Austin Community College) Published on H-PCAACA (May, 1996)

Gamma And Dynamic Range Needs For An Hdtv Electronic Cinematography System, Harry Mathias

Faculty Publications

A cinematographer's perspective regarding gamma and contrast manipulation in video and film is given. In film, a selective exposure can be used; the negative characteristic is the cinematographer's creative tool. The use of film as a video medium is considered, both negative and positive transfer. Contrast reproduction in the video medium is explained, and film and video gammas are compared. Also compared with the film gamma is the gamma obtained with an HDTV camera. Future trends are sketched, and current HDTV specifications are compared with the characteristics of film. Predictability and consistency of results, that is, the final image on …

A Proven Method Of Establishing Exposure Indexes For Video Cameras, Harry Mathias

Faculty Publications

This article discusses a production-tested method for determining exposure indexes for video cameras. Also discussed are exposure control methods, camera sensitivity, waveform monitors, lighting, and other factors. The importance of this procedure in practical production situations is described.

Point Of View: Image Quality From A Non-Engineering Viewpoint, Harry Mathias

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.