Soap Operas

Women's soap opera viewing has long been thought of by feminists and nonfeminists as an unproductive waste of time. Blumenthal takes the opposing view, arguing that women's "indulgence" in these programs is actually liberating. In overcoming the social opposition to the stigma attached to the feminine content and style, and engaging in soap opera viewing, women celebrate their femininity, particularly their gendered identification with romance, relationality, intuitiveness, talkativeness, and other aspects of emotionality. This book will be of interest to academics in the areas of sociology, women's studies, and media studies.

Williams here examines soap opera sources, structure, and response, particularly from the critical viewpoints of psychology, both archetypal and empirical, and popular culture, specifically narratology and feminism, that uncover the true nature of the genre. First, Williams traces the development of soap opera from its immediate source in radio and television as well as from its fundamental source in age-old myth and storytelling. Then she analyzes the content and form that together make up the structure of soap opera. Finally, she looks at what soaps mean to watchers and in the process debunks many myths about soap opera.

In a groundbreaking and richly sourced study, Jostein Gripsrud investigates the life and times of the ultimate soap, how it was made, how it came to international television screens and how it was received by its audiences. Through his discussion of Dynasty , Gripsrud offers a critique of many central positions in media studies, including notions of 'audience resistance' and the 'sovereign' audience and its freedom in menaing-making, arguing against uncritical celebrations of the soap-opera genre in much contemporary media criticism.

PART I: Housewives, Heroines, Feminists 1. Everyday Life, Michelle Mattelart 2. The Search for Tomorrow in Today's Soap Operas, Tania Modleski 3. Affirmation and Denial: Construction of Feminity on Indian Television (excerpts), Prabha Krishnan and Anita Digh 4. Roseanne: Unruly Woman as Domestic Goddess, Kathleen Rowe 5. L.A. Law and Prime-Time Feminism, Judith Mayne 6. Empowering Women? The Oprah Winfrey Show, Corrine Squire 7. Identity in Feminist Television Criticism, Charlotte Brunsdon 8. New Traditionalism and Post-Feminism: TV Does the Home, Elspeth Probyn PART TWO: Audiences and Reception Contexts 9. Women's Genres, Annette Kuhn 10. Melodramatic Identifications: Television Fiction and Women's Fantasy, Ien Ang 11. Black Feminism and Media Criticism: The Women of Brewster Place, Jacqeline Bobo and Ellen Seiter 12. In Love with Inspecter Morse, Lyn Thomas 13. Fruitful Investigations: The Case of the Successful Lesbian Text, Hilary Hinds 14. the Suburban Home Companion: Television and the Neighborhood Ideal in Postwar America, Lynn Spigel 15. Behind Closed Doors: Video Recorders in the Home, Ann Gray PART THREE: Private Bodies, Public Figures 16. Television Tales and a Woman's Rage: A Nationalist Recasting of Draupidi's Disrobing, Purnima Mankekar 17. Abortion Discourse and 1970s Television Documentary, Julie D'Acci 18. The Ideology of Freshness in Feminine Hygiene Commericials, Kate Kane 19. Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile, Tricia Rose 20. The Gorgeous Lesbian in L.A. Law: The Present Absence?, Rosanne Kennedy 21. Reproducing Reality: Murphy Brown and Illegitimate Politics, Rebecca Walkowitz 22. Representation Wars: Malaysia, Embassy, and Australia's Corps Diplomatique, Suvendrini Perera

This volume examines the analysis that was designed to map the development of the television family and assess its current state and, at the same time, to provide insight into the tangled relationships between fictional and real family life. In order to do this, the investigation examines the evolution of the American family, paying special attention to the postwar family, which is not only used recurrently as a benchmark for assessing the performance of modern families but also constituted television's first generation of families. The investigation also traces the evolution of the popular family in vaudeville, comics, and radio. However, the primary focus of the examination is the development of the television family, from families, such as the Nelsons, Andersons, and Cleavers, to more contemporary families, such as the Huxtables, Conners, and Taylors. The unit of analysis for the investigation is the relationship rather than the individual. Hence, the book deals with the portrayal of spousal, parent-child, and sibling relationships and how those portrayals differ across time and across groups defined by ethnicity, gender, and age. Moreover, the relational analysis is expansive so that television family relationships are examined in regard to power and affect, performance, and satisfaction and stability. Television Families provides a thorough summary and critical review of extant research, designed to promote informed classroom discussion. At the same time, it advances a number of hypotheses and recommendations and, as such, is intended to influence subsequent theory and research in the area. The book is intended for senior undergraduate students, graduate students, and television and family researchers.

"This book fills a need. It will be used by scholars and revered by undergraduates doing papers. It is a highly desirable acquisition for libraries of all types." Choice "[an] essential purchase for universityand most college libraries as well as large public libraries." Reference Books Bulletin

As United States television programs, movies, music, and other cultural products make their way around the globe, a vigorous debate over "cultural imperialism" is growing in many countries. This book brings together experts in economics, sociology, anthropology, the humanities, and communications to explore what effects the North American Free Trade Agreement will have on the flow of cultural products among Mexico, the United States, and Canada. After an overview of free trade and the cultural industries, the book covers the following topics: dominance and resistance, cultural trade and identity in relation to Mexico and to French Canada, and intellectual property rights. Based on present trends, the contributors predict that there will be a steadily increasing flow of cultural products from the United States to its neighbors. This book grew out of a 1994 conference that brought together leaders of the cultural industries, policy makers, and scholars. It represents state-of-the-art thinking about the global influence of U.S. cultural industries.