Prime Time Feminism

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Dow discusses a wide variety of television programming and provides specific case studies of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, One Day at a Time, Designing Women, Murphy Brown, and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. She juxtaposes analyses of genre, plot, character development, and narrative structure with the larger debates over feminism that took place at the time the programs originally aired. Dow emphasizes the power of the relationships among television entertainment, news media, women's magazines, publicity, and celebrity biographies and interviews in creating a framework through which television viewers "make sense" of both the medium's portrayal of feminism and the nature of feminism itself.

Depictions of rape on television have evolved dramatically, from hard-boiled stories about male detectives to more insightful shows focusing on rape victims. Rape on Prime Time is the first book to examine those changing depictions of rape. Lisa M. Cuklanz reveals that prime-time television programs during the 1970s—usually detective shows—reflected traditional ideas that "real" rape is perpetrated by brutal strangers upon passive victims. Beginning in 1980, depictions of rape began to include attacks by known assailants, and victims began to address their feelings. By 1990, scripts portrayed date and marital rape and paid greater attention to the trial process, reflecting legal reformers' concerns. While previous studies have examined one series or genre, Cuklanz examines programs as dissimilar as Barney Miller, Dallas, The Cosby Show, and Quincy. She outlines the "basic plot" for rape episodes, then traces the historical development of rape themes. In each chapter she includes close analyses of episodes that add depth to findings derived from scripts and taped episodes. Rape on Prime Time provides important insight into the social construction of rape in mainstream mass media since the inception of rape law reform in 1974.

Contrasting strong women and multiculturalism with portrayals of a heroic white male leading the nation into battle, The Prime-Time Presidency explores the NBC drama The West Wing, paying particular attention to its role in promoting cultural meaning about the presidency and U.S. nationalism. Based in a careful, detailed analysis of the "first term" of The West Wing's President Josiah Bartlet, this criticism highlights the ways the text negotiates powerful tensions and complex ambiguities at the base of U.S. national identity--particularly the role of gender, race, and militarism in the construction of U.S. nationalism. Unlike scattered and disparate collections of essays, Trevor Parry-Giles and Shawn J. Parry-Giles offer a sustained, ideologically driven criticism of The West Wing. The Prime-time Presidency presents a detailed critique of the program rooted in presidential history, an appreciation of television's power as a source of political meaning, and television's contribution to the articulation of U.S. national identity.

In 1970, ABC, CBS, and NBC--the “Big Three” of the pre-cable television era--discovered the feminist movement. From the famed sit-in at Ladies’ Home Journal to multi-part feature stories on the movement's ideas and leaders, nightly news broadcasts covered feminism more than in any year before or since, bringing women's liberation into American homes. In Watching Women's Liberation, 1970: Feminism's Pivotal Year on the Network News, Bonnie J. Dow uses case studies of key media events to delve into the ways national TV news mediated the emergence of feminism's second wave. First legitimized as a big story by print media, the feminist movement gained broadcast attention as the networks’ eagerness to get in on the action was accompanied by feminists’ efforts to use national media for their own purposes. Dow chronicles the conditions that precipitated feminism's new visibility and analyzes the verbal and visual strategies of broadcast news discourses that tried to make sense of the movement. Groundbreaking and packed with detail, Watching Women's Liberation, 1970 shows how feminism went mainstream--and what it gained and lost on the way.

This work examines the Gilmore Girls from a post-feminist perspective, evaluating how the show's main female characters and supporting cast fit into the classic portrayal of feminine identity on popular television. The book begins by placing Gilmore Girls in the context of the history of feminism and feminist television shows such as Mary Tyler Moore and One Day at a Time. The remainder of the essays look at series' portrayal of traditional and non-traditional gender identities and familial relationships. Topics include the hyper-real utopia represented by Gilmore Girls' fictional Stars Hollow; the faux-feminist perspective offered by Rory Gilmore's unfulfilling (and often masochistic) romantic relationships; the ways in which "mean girl" Paris Geller both adheres to and departs from the traditional archetype of female power and aggression; and the role of Lorelai Gilmore's oft-criticized marriage in destroying the show's central theme of single motherhood during its seventh season. The work also studies the role of food and its consumption as a narrative device throughout the show's development, evaluating the ways in which food negotiates, defines, and upholds the characters' gendered and class performances. The work also includes a complete episode guide listing the air date, title, writer, and director of every episode in the series.

Prime time: those precious few hours every night when the three major television networks garner millions of dollars while tens of millions of Americans tune in. Inside Prime Time is a classic study of the workings of the Hollywood television industry, newly available with an updated introduction. Inside Prime Time takes us behind the scenes to reveal how prime-time shows get on the air, stay on the air, and are shaped by the political and cultural climate of their times. It provides an ethnography of the world of American commercial television, an analysis of that world's unwritten rules, and the most extensive study of the industry ever made.

DIVHistorical and theoretical essays on television and media culture by a leading feminist studies scholar./div

This book examines the phenomenon of prime time soap operas on Indian television. An anthropological insight into social issues and practices of contemporary India through the television, this volume analyzes the production of soaps within India’s cultural fabric. It deconstructs themes and issues surrounding the "everyday" and the "middle class" through the fiction of the "popular". In its second edition, this still remains the only book to examine prime time soap operas on Indian television. Without in any way changing the central arguments of the first edition, it adds an essential introductory chapter tracking the tectonic shifts in the Indian "mediascape" over the past decade – including how the explosion of regional language channels and an era of multiple screens have changed soap viewing forever. Meticulously researched and persuasively argued, the book traces how prime time soaps in India still grab the maximum eyeballs and remain the biggest earners for TV channels. The book will be of interest to students of anthropology and sociology, media and cultural studies, visual culture studies, gender and family studies, and also Asian studies in general. It is also an important resource for media producers, both in content production and television channels, as well as for the general reader.