Boxed In: The Culture of Television - Softcover

Mark Crispin Miller

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810107910 ISBN 13: 9780810107915

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 1988

Synopsis

Informed, controversial, ranging from a melancholy study of rock and roll's descent into show business to a hilarious look at the spectacle that is the Jerry Lewis Telethon, these twenty essays offer an unusual and (ironically) entertaining study of American media by one of its foremost critics.

About this title

About the Author:

Mark Crispin Miller is the author of the best-selling books Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order, The Bush Dyslexicon, and Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too. An expert in propaganda and media, he teaches at New York University.

From Publishers Weekly:

In these provocative essays, Miller, associate professor in the writing seminars at Johns Hopkins University, brilliantly employs the techniques of New Criticism to "read" TV commercials, game shows and the news, in order to expose television's pernicious effect on American life and culture. Miller persuasively argues that TV advertising sponsors seek to reduce viewers to a state of semi-hypnotized consumerism, and that qualities that might threaten this condition, such as individuality and critical awareness, are discouraged by everything on the tube. For example, Miller not only describes with devastating wit the game show Family Feud 's, stupidities and its host Richard Dawson's "oleaginous noblesse oblige," he also proves that by rewarding contestants for giving the most common answer of 100 people surveyed, the show celebrates not family identity but the sameness of consumer households that advertising has helped to create. Even the news is governed by a desire to sell the viewer. The author's analysis of the 1984 Democratic primary news coverage demonstrates that TV journalists strive not to "inform the public," but "to tell the public what the newsmen think the public is already thinking." A handful of essays on rock music and film, while interesting, seem out of place in this collection devoted primarily to TV, and occasionally Miller's acerbic blows are below the belt. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0810107910
• ISBN 13: 9780810107915
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 349