Producing Public Television, Producing Public Culture - Hardcover

Dornfeld, Barry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691044686 ISBN 13: 9780691044682

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1998

Synopsis

From 1989 to 1991, Barry Dornfeld had an unusual double role on the crew of the major PBS documentary series Childhood. As a researcher for the series, he investigated the relationship between children and media. As an anthropologist, however, his subject was the television production process itself--examining, for example, how producers developed the series, negotiated with their academic advisors, and shaped footage shot around the world into seven programs. He presents the results of his fieldwork in this groundbreaking study--one of the first to take an ethnographic approach to the production of a television show, as opposed to its reception.

Dornfeld begins with a broad discussion of public television's role in American culture and goes on to examine documentaries as a form of popular anthropology. Drawing on his observations of Childhood, he considers the documentary form as a kind of "imagining," in which both producers and viewers construct understandings of themselves and others, revealing their conceptions of culture and history and their ideologies of cultural difference and universality. He argues that producers of culture should also be understood as consumers who conduct their work through an active envisioning of the audience. Dornfeld explores as well how intellectual media professionals struggle with the institutional and cultural forces surrounding television that promote entertainment at the expense of education. The book provides a rare glimpse behind the scenes of a major documentary and demonstrates the value of an ethnographic approach to the study of media production.

About this title

About the Author:

Barry Dornfeld is an Associate at the Center for Applied Research in Philadelphia and is a producer of documentary ethnographic films. His films include Powerhouse for God (1988) and Gandy Dancers (1992).

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0691044686
• ISBN 13: 9780691044682
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248