Why the Curse Is So Brilliantly Uncomfortable
Television is our culture’s principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore—and this is the critical point—how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged.
Neil Postman • Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Who Killed The Laugh Track?
youtube.comBut that’s the point: the audience sees Hannah’s breasts as the world sees Hannah’s breasts: imperfect, inappropriate, unsexy. But Hannah, especially Hannah-on-coke, doesn’t see her body the way the world does: to her, the mesh shirt and her loose breasts are deliciously sexy; her look could not be more perfect; she conceives of herself as an immac
... See moreAnne Helen Petersen • Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
When we’re attentive to these series, to their form, their narrative structure, their genre, their history, their cultural context, the dynamics of their production, they reveal themselves to us. (This is, of course, what television studies, as an academic discipline, has always done.) It means we can see concretely what’s unique about a given show... See more
Anne Helen Petersen • "Taste Hierarchies Like These Stink"
The show understands that people, especially teenagers, have their worldviews built, in large part, through stories other people tell them about themselves. Whether those are stories they encounter on TV or in movies or in rap lyrics, or whether those are stories they hear from their teachers or their family elders or the federal government — the s... See more
Anne Helen Petersen • "Taste Hierarchies Like These Stink"
The modes of presentation that work best for TV—stuff like “action,” with shoot-outs and car wrecks, or the rapid-fire “collage” of commercials, news, and music videos, or the “hysteria” of prime-time soap and sitcom with broad gestures, high voices, too much laughter—are unsubtle in their whispers that, somewhere, life is quicker, denser, more int
... See more