{"title":"Psychic TV: The Paranormal as Popular Culture in Japanese Television of the 1990s","authors":"Daniel Johnson","doi":"10.1177/15274764241246988","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764241246988","url":null,"abstract":"NIGHT HEAD was a science fiction drama that aired on Japan’s Fuji TV between 1992 and 1993. The series arrived during a wave of interest in the paranormal, a trend that was embraced by commercial television in both dramatic programs and variety/infotainment talk shows. This boom of interest in the paranormal happened within the thriving economic and cultural environment of Japan’s Bubble Era, a period that saw a rapid expansion of television in addition to the prosperity of markets in real estate and industry. NIGHT HEAD portrays a darker vision of 90s Japan, using visual effects and moody, intense images and sounds to conjure a desperate sensibility. This article will offer an analysis of the “attractive” paranormal turn in Japan during the 1990s, using NIGHT HEAD as a case for considering the intersection of youth, visual effects, and the desire for an alternative way of understanding the world beyond rationality.","PeriodicalId":51551,"journal":{"name":"Television & New Media","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140581457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Speak For Yourself”: Fox Sports 1, Reframing Sporting Conservatism, and “Sticking to Sports” in the Age of Trump","authors":"Taylor M. Henry","doi":"10.1177/15274764241242038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764241242038","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the Fox Sports 1 sports debate program Speak for Yourself. The article analyzes the thematic frames the show utilizes to espouse and reinforce sport as a site of conservative value-making and male bonding. In using an interracial male pairing of Colin Cowherd and Jason Whitlock, the show mimics similarly popular debate programs on rival network ESPN, such as Pardon the Interruption and First Take. However, Whitlock in particular advances a unique brand of Black conservatism, and his clashes with progressive activists and other black guests represent intraracial tensions among Black sport media members. This paper argues Speak for Yourself brings Newscorp’s conservative messaging to a nominally apolitical space in sport media.","PeriodicalId":51551,"journal":{"name":"Television & New Media","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140581420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Era of the Individual Viewer? Taste, Value, and Creative Media Work in India’s Streaming Industries","authors":"Tupur Chatterjee","doi":"10.1177/15274764241235603","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764241235603","url":null,"abstract":"How do key players in Bombay’s screen industries—producers, directors, writers, and business developers—understand, imagine, and navigate the dizzying new world of streaming platforms in India? Tracking the emergence of symbiotic relationships between new streaming platforms and established media professionals, I discuss how a restructuring of industry dynamics is elemental to the processes of cultural legitimation of new streaming tastes and the reconfigurations of the relationships between texts, industries, and audiences. Through case studies of a few prominent creative professionals associated in various capacities with global and local streaming platforms, I sketch the multiple linkages between contemporary streaming cultures and the structural histories of both film and television in the subcontinent. Ultimately, this article argues that media workers’ self-reflexivity and theorizations about the industry-in-digital transit help us not only grasp the heterogeneity of this moment, but also trace notions of value and taste in Bombay’s emerging digital media ecologies.","PeriodicalId":51551,"journal":{"name":"Television & New Media","volume":"69 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140151521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Your Home Made Perfect","authors":"Jan Smitheram, Akari Nakai Kidd","doi":"10.1177/15274764241235610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764241235610","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates a new, popular, award-winning reality television show, Your Home Made Perfect. Drawing on insights from Sara Ahmed’s work on the promise of happiness, our thematic analysis of nineteen episodes of Your Home shows how architectural entertainment is uniquely positioned through its use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology to circulate happiness and uplifting emotions and to critique the power imbalances of architect-client relationships. The paper argues how Your Home foregrounds happy emotions to the re-design of homes, where emotions are mobilized through design visualizations that turn both home and architects into “happy objects.” Moreover, through “happy objects,” this property television show seeks to deflect anxieties of housing precarity and growing wealth disparity. Finally, the paper reveals how architectural TV entertainment reinforces regressive ideas of identity and home ownership.","PeriodicalId":51551,"journal":{"name":"Television & New Media","volume":"75 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140107835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unplayable: Why Video Games Can’t and Won’t Be Played","authors":"Ryan Banfi","doi":"10.1177/15274764241233222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764241233222","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that unplayability must be a considered component of game analysis and further discussed in new media studies. The concept that games cannot be or should not be played does not limit game analysis. On the contrary, the “unplayable aspect” of a particular game or genre of games is what must be investigated. This essay hopes to expand upon why new media such as video games are becoming inaccessible by using Nicholas Baer et al.’s Unwatchable to discuss a range of unplayable games for common reasons such as: (1) excessive violence, (2) sexual violence, and (3) preservation issues.","PeriodicalId":51551,"journal":{"name":"Television & New Media","volume":"151 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139950840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rip It Up and Start Again: Creative Labor and the Industrialization of Remix","authors":"Alessandro Delfanti, Michelle Phan","doi":"10.1177/15274764241227613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764241227613","url":null,"abstract":"Creative industries rely on workers who use sampling and remix to produce new content assembled from existing materials. In the process, remix cultures are commodified and reshaped by industrial logics. Rip-o-matic videos provide an example. These scissor reels are used as visual storyboards for television commercials. They are produced by video editors who cut and paste clips found on video sharing platforms. Interviews with rip-o-matic producers show the impact of the industrialization of remix on creative workers who face challenges to their ability to assert their creativity, content ownership, and reputation. Other examples, such as social media and fast fashion, nuance the picture. Industrialization also paves the way for automation by generative “AI.” These software tools are based on processes of appropriation and remix that mirror those used by rip-o-matic producers. Remix is in sum at the center of today’s corporate cultural production.","PeriodicalId":51551,"journal":{"name":"Television & New Media","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139950754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Contemporary Afterlives of Serial Drama: Considering New Audience Readings of “Old” Television","authors":"Alexander Hudson Beare","doi":"10.1177/15274764241227612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764241227612","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years several older, serialized TV dramas have experienced surges in popularity among young viewers. The 2020-21 online resurgence of The Sopranos (1999–2007) is perhaps the most compelling example of this. Using the data from a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with fans who watched the show for the first time in 2020-21, this study considers what draws audiences to “old shows” and how they adapt them to contemporary contexts of interpretation. I argue that there are specific considerations that we need to make when investigating contemporary audience receptions of old television. Ultimately, The Sopranos resurgence highlights a new type of “afterlife” for serial drama. Using Miller’s work on retextuality I conclude that it is important that we understand the resurgent versions of these TV shows as the new texts they are. They perform impactful types of cultural work, distinct from their original run.","PeriodicalId":51551,"journal":{"name":"Television & New Media","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139950755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Television & New MediaPub Date : 2023-11-01Epub Date: 2023-02-11DOI: 10.1177/15274764221150162
Tamar Faber, Natalie Coulter
{"title":"\"Let's Go Make Some Videos!\": Post-Feminist Digital Media on Tween-Coms.","authors":"Tamar Faber, Natalie Coulter","doi":"10.1177/15274764221150162","DOIUrl":"10.1177/15274764221150162","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Our paper looks at three popular tween shows premised on tween girls creating digital content-<i>iCarly, Bizaardvark</i> and <i>Coop & Cami Ask the World</i>. Using the theoretical frameworks of critical digital labor studies, girls' media studies, and feminist theory, we argue that the tween-coms imagine the tween content creator as a post-feminist neoliberal subject in three ways: first, by hiding the labor behind the affective sentiments of play; second, by obscuring the misogynistic structure; and third, by framing childhood digital spaces as separate from adult spheres, legitimizing corporate encroachments into children's digital lives. The shows are a distillation of the neoliberal, post-feminist ideologies that define late-stage capitalism. The discursive formation of digital girls on children's television has been overlooked in the field of digital studies and girl studies. Our paper explores how digital content creation is discursively constructed within the cultural imaginaries of children's media.</p>","PeriodicalId":51551,"journal":{"name":"Television & New Media","volume":"24 7","pages":"825-841"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/60/7b/10.1177_15274764221150162.PMC10560605.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41219774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Post-Procedural Form and Rape Ambiance: Policing Sexual Violence in <i>Mare of Easttown</i>","authors":"Michael Dango","doi":"10.1177/15274764231201967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764231201967","url":null,"abstract":"Mare of Easttown figures a social environment that is both city and family at once, making it impossible to disentangle stranger rape and forms of acquaintance, date, or intimate partner rape—and therefore to locate the “problem” of rape as one of crimes to be solved by the police; or of ordinary heterosexuality, requiring more radical cultural transformation. Completing filming after the summer 2020 resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the role of the police is further compromised in Mare of Easttown. I read the show’s episodic anxieties—its increasingly unrealistic plot developments that push at the borders of each episode in order to keep them open—as managing these ambivalences: between stranger and intimate rape; between “crime” and “the family”; between the public and the private; between trust in law enforcement and critique.","PeriodicalId":51551,"journal":{"name":"Television & New Media","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135351182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gender and Genre in Hannah Gadsby’s <i>Nanette</i>","authors":"Amber Day","doi":"10.1177/15274764231201966","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764231201966","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that Hannah Gadsby’s 2018 Netflix stand-up special Nanette bundles a critique of the comedy industry and of gendered violence through genre transformations that expand the public sphere for survivor testimony. Though Gadsby was not the first to broach these topics in a public forum, she did so at a moment when audiences were primed to be newly receptive. While there was predictably some backlash from audience members who maintained that the special should not be considered comedy, there was also a fierce outpouring of enthusiasm. Nanette became a text with which one could publicly identify (or dis-identify), particularly around the framing of sexual violence and trauma, reminding us that we need popular cultural touchstones through which to shift the conversation. It may also be symptomatic of a widening of the range of perspectives and subject positions with which mainstream audiences are willing to sympathize.","PeriodicalId":51551,"journal":{"name":"Television & New Media","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136279995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}