Studies in Entertainment Critical Approaches to Mass Culture [Paperback]

This is an important book for all students of literature and history. American Studies International

... thoughtful and provocative.... the essays... grant complexity and contradiction to mass culture, while interrogating its objects from positions thatexplicitly or implicitlyderive from the left and from feminism. The Independent

These innovative and politically engaged essays reflect the paradox inherent in taking a critical approach to mass culture.

The contributors, in many cases pioneers in their particular area of inquiry, include: Tania Modleski, Raymond Williams (interviewed here by Stephen Heath and Gillian Skirrow), Bernard Gendron, Rick Altman, Margaret Morse, Patricia Mellencamp, Judith Williamson, Jean Franco, Kaja Silverman, Dana Polan, and Andreas Huyssen.

Foreword
Introduction

I. Traditions of Mass Culture Criticism

1. An Interview with Raymond Williams
Stephen Heath and Gillian Skirrow
2. Theodor Adorno Meets the Cadillacs
Bernard Gendron

II. Studies in Television

3. Television/Sound
Rick Altman
4. The Television News Personality and Credibility: Reflections on the News in Transition
Margaret Morse
5. Situation Comedy, Feminism, and Freud: Discourses of Gracie and Lucy
Patricia Mellencamp

III. Feminist Studies in Entertainment

6. Woman Is an Island: Femininity and Colonization
Judith Williamson
7. The Incorporation of Women: A Comparison of North American and Mexican Popular Narrative
Jean Franco
8. Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse
Kaja Silverman

IV. Redrawing the Boundaries Between Art and Entertainment

9. The Terror of Pleasure: The Contemporary Horror Film and Postmodern Theory
Tania Modleski
10. Brief Encounters: Mass Culture and the Evacuation of Sense
Dana Polan
11. Mass Culture as Woman: Modernisms Other
Andreas Huyssen

Contributors