The Age of Television
Experiences and Theories
Distributed for Intellect Ltd
“One of the most stimulating endorsements of Coronation Street and The Sopranos that anyone has ever written. And good for Buonanno . . . for eschewing some of the grimmer accounts of the effects of ‘junk’ TV which many other commentators offer. Gleefully and consistently she rebuffs those who see the export of US TV shows as ‘cultural imperialism,’ by which Hollywood pumps out soul-destroying pap to numb the minds of idiot consumers.”
“Some say that the age of television is over. If that is so, then the medium has found its ideal historian and critic in Milly Buonanno. I have read her work with pleasure over many years. It culminates with
this book—a stunning tour de force. And if TV indeed has a future—as I firmly believe—then this tough-minded but subtly-expressed volume will be our best guide to what lies ahead, in addition to what
went before.”
“In this elegantly written and highly original re-examination of television, its narrative forms and its key analytic texts, Milly Buonanno provides an exciting and philosophically sophisticated study of television in all its rich complexity. An astonishing and ground-breaking work.”
“In this wide-ranging and always insightful book, Milly Buonanno takes us on a journey from the beginnings of television in 1936 to the present day, and indeed beyond to the digital future which awaits us all. En route she interrogates a number of theories which have traditionally dominated television analysis and offers an exhilarating counter-analysis to theories of cultural imperialism. A refreshingly open and searching approach to a medium in constant evolution.”
“Few books have excited my curiosity for thinking differently about television than The Age of Television. . . . It takes us on a daring philosophical journey, from television’s humble beginnings in 1936 to the present day and beyond into the digital age.”
Preface
Horace Newcomb
Chapter 1 The Age of Television
Seeing far, going far
1. Transitions
2. A domesticated medium
3. A dual sense of place
4. Broadcasting and narrowcasting
Chapter 2 Theories of the Medium
Flow, glance, gaze
1. Multiple conceptions of television
2. History and critique of the flow
3. The glance and the gaze
Chapter 3 Televised Ceremonies
The double coronation of Mother Teresa of Calcutta
1. The theory of media events
2. The global celebrity of a ‘living saint’
3. Two coronations
4. The Catholic imagination
5. The televisual biography
6. A new television event
Chapter 4 The Digital Revolution
Other ways of watching television
1. A medium in the making
2. Instances of historical amnesia and technological utopia
3. A televisual landscape without homogeneity
4. From forum to library
Chapter 5 Storytelling
The multiple realities of television fiction
1. The television ‘super-narrator’
2. The possible worlds of narrative imagination
3. Different life-worlds
4. Widened horizons of mediated experiences
Chapter 6 The Paradigm of Indigenization
Beyond media imperialism
1. Paradigms revealed
2. Going native
3. Supply: the media are American
4. Consumption: the tree hides the forest
5. Influences: the audience adopts and adapts
Chapter 7 Travelling Narratives
International flows of television: from threat to resource
1. Imagination and otherness
2. Travelling narratives
3. The neutralized threat
4. The case of Europe
Chapter 8 Stopping Time
Life strategies in the formulae of television series and serials
1. The elemental structures of seriality
2. Going back to the origins of the formulae
3. The theatre of immortality
4. The ‘frame story’ of the Arabian Nights
5. The story is there, just like life
Bibliography
Names Index
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