Television and the Self: Knowledge, Identity, and Media Representation

by Kathleen M. Ryan (Editor), Deborah A. Macey (Editor), Tanja N. Aho (Contribution by), Andrée E. C. Betancourt (Contribution by), Amy C. Duvall (Contribution by)

Overview

Sitting prominently at the hearth of our homes, television serves as a voice of our modern time. Given our media-saturated society and television’s prominent voice and place in the home, it is likely we learn about our society and selves through these stories. These narratives are not simply entertainment, but powerful socializing agents that shape and reflect the world and our role in it. Television and the Self: Knowledge, Identity, and Media Representation brings together a diverse group of scholars to investigate the role television plays in shaping our understanding of self and family. This edited collection’s rich and diverse research demonstrates how television plays an important role in negotiating self, and goes far beyond the treacly “very special” episodes found in family sit-coms in the 1980s. Instead, the authors show how television reflects our reality and helps us to sort out what it means to be a twenty-first-century man or woman.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739179574
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	04/05/2013
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Kathleen M. Ryan spent more than twenty years in network and local news production and she continues to work as an active multimedia director and producer. She holds a PhD in communication and society from University of Oregon, an MA in broadcast journalism from University of Southern California, and a BA in political science from University of California, Santa Barbara. She is an associate professor at the University of Colorado.

Deborah A. Macey holds a PhD in communication and society from the University of Oregon, an MA in Communication and a BS in Business Administration from Saint Louis University. She is a visiting assistant professor at Saint Louis University, where she teaches courses in human communication and media studies.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction Kathleen M. Ryan & Deborah A. Macey Part 1: The Electronic Hearth, or the (un)Real World Chapter 2: The Way We Were: Ritual, Memory and Televsion Leah A. Rosenberg Chapter 3: Becoming-Spectator: Tracing Global Becoming Through Polish Television in a Canadian Family Room Marcelina Piotrowski Part 2: Father (and Mother) Knows Best Chapter 4: As Seen On TV: Media Influences of Pregnancy and Birth Narratives Jennifer G. Hall Chapter 5: All About My HBO Mothers: Talking Back to Carmela Soprano and Ruth Fisher Andrée E. C. Betancourt Chapter 6: Mad Hatters: The Bad Dads of AMC David Staton Part 3: Family Ties Chapter 7: Family Communication and Television: Viewing, Identification, and Evaluation of Televised Family Communication Models Ellen E. Stiffler, Lynne M. Webb, and Amy C. Duvall Chapter 8: Reality Check: Real Housewives and Fan Discourses on Parenting and Family Jingsi Christina Wu and Brian McKernan Chapter 9: Keeping Up with Contradictory Family Values: The Voice of the Kardashians Amanda S. McClain Part 4: The Facts of Life Chapter 10: The Selling of Gender-Role Stereotyping: A Content Analysis of Toy Commercials Airing on Nickelodeon Susan G. Kahlenberg Chapter 11: “Stand by, Space Rangers”: Interstellar Lessons in Early Cold-War Masculinity Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper Chapter 12: The Avengers and Feminist Identity Development: Learning the Example of Critical Resistance from Cathy Gale Robin Redmond Wright Chapter 13: Juno for Real: Negotiating Teenage Sexuality, Pregnancy, and Love in MTV’s 16 and Pregnant/Teen Mom Tanja N. Aho. Part 5: As Not Seen on TV Chapter 14: Race, Aging and Gay In/visibility on U.S. Televsion Michael Johnson, Jr. Chapter 15: Eighty is Still Eighty, but Everyone Else Needs to Look Twenty-Five: The Fascination with Betty White Despite our Obsession with Youth Deborah A. Macey

Editorial Reviews

Television and the Self: Knowledge, Identity, and Media Representation is a fresh, lively approach to thinking about television in our everyday lives. The chapters in this edited volume highlight the importance of interrogating television programs as text. The reflexive collection makes an important contribution to our understanding of role of television in our lives, how TV contributes to identity formation, and above all how and why we enjoy it as much as we do.

Debra Merskin

The strength of Television and the Self is its effort to create conversation across and within areas of television studies, theoretically, thematically, and methodologically. Perhaps most noteworthy are the diverse methodological perspectives employed here—ranging from discourse and textual analysis to autoethnography, content analysis, and reflections on media history — which point to the breadth and plurality of the field. The autoethnographies (Marcelina Piotrowski’s essay on 'becoming Polish' through television viewership and Andree Betancourt’s reflection on motherhood as portrayed through characters on HBO’s Six Feet Under and The Sopranos) are especially powerful, merging academic critique with personal stories, narrated by authors who reflect—thoughtfully and, at times, emotionally—on the ways in which their relationship to TV has impacted their identities and lives.. . .Television and the Self speaks to multiple perspectives, inviting readers to consider the ways in which our own identities, values, and everyday lives have been shaped and molded, influenced and informed, by our engagement with televisual narratives.

Journal of American Culture

[This is a] well-written and researched chapters of this edited volume. . . .The book is an excellent text and each chapter is well researched and the editors contribute much to the discipline.

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly