Quality Telefantasy

Quality Telefantasy
Author: Andrew Lynch
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2022-03-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000554635

This book explores the relatively new genre of ‘Quality Telefantasy’ and how it has broadened TV taste cultures by legitimating and mainstreaming fantastical content. It also shows how the rising popularity of this genre marks a distinct and significant development in what kinds of TV are culturally dominant and critically regarded. By expanding and building on the definition of US Quality TV, this book brings together a number of popular science fiction, fantasy and horror TV series, including Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and Westworld, as case studies which demonstrate the emergence of the Quality Telefantasy genre. It looks at the role of technology, including internet recap culture and subscription video on demand distribution, in Quality Telefantasy’s swift emergence, and analyses its success internationally by considering series created outside the US like Kingdom (South Korea, Netflix) and Dark (Germany, Netflix). The book argues that Quality Telefantasy series should be considered a part of the larger Quality TV super-genre, and that the impact they are having on the global TV landscape warrants further investigation as it continues to evolve. This is a valuable text for students and scholars studying or undertaking research in the areas of television studies, new media and pop-cultural studies.

Cult Telefantasy Series

Cult Telefantasy Series
Author: Sue Short
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2011-07-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0786485388

From The Prisoner in the 1960s to the more recent Heroes and Lost, a group of television series with strong elements of fantasy have achieved cult status. Focusing on eight such series, this work analyzes their respective innovations and influences. Assessing the strategies used to promote "cult" appeal, it also appraises increased opportunities for interaction between series creators and fans and evaluates how television fantasy has utilized transmedia storytelling. Notable changes within broadcasting are discussed to explain how challenging long-form dramas have emerged, and why telefantasy has transcended niche status to enjoy significant prominence and popularity.

Netflix, Dark Fantastic Genres and Intergenerational Viewing

Netflix, Dark Fantastic Genres and Intergenerational Viewing
Author: Djoymi Baker
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2023-07-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000900061

Focusing on Netflix’s child and family-orientated platform exclusive content, this book offers the first exploration of a controversial genre cycle of dark science fiction, horror, and fantasy television under Netflix’s "Family Watch Together TV" tag. Using a ground-breaking mix of methods including audience research, interface, and textual analysis, the book demonstrates how Netflix is producing dark family telefantasy content that is both reshaping child and family-friendly TV genres and challenging earlier broadcast TV models around child-appropriate family viewing. It illuminates how Netflix encourages family audiences to "watch together" through intergenerational dynamics that work on and offscreen. The chapters in this book explore how this "Netflixication" of family television developed across landmark examples including Stranger Things, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and even Squid Game. The book outlines how Netflix is consolidating a new dark family terrain in the streaming sector, which is unsettling older concepts of family viewing, leading to considerable audience and critical confusion around target audiences and viewer expectations. This book will be of particular interest to upper-level undergraduates, graduates, and scholars in the fields of television studies, screen genre studies, childhood studies, and cultural studies.

Telefantasy

Telefantasy
Author: Catherine Johnson
Publisher: British Film Institute
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2005-08-26
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

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Television Sitcom and Cultural Crisis

Television Sitcom and Cultural Crisis
Author: Holly Willson Holladay
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2024-06-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1040086330

This volume demonstrates that television comedies are conduits through which we might resist normative ways of thinking about cultural crises. By drawing on Gramscian notion of crisis and the understanding that crises are overlapping, interconnected, and mutually constitutive, the essays in this collection demonstrate that situation comedies do more than make us laugh; they also help us understand the complexities of our social world’s moments of crisis. Each chapter takes up the televisual representation of a modern cultural crisis in a contemporary sitcom and is grounded in the extensive body of literature that suggests that levity is a powerful mechanism to make sense of and cope with these difficult cultural experiences. Divided into thematic sections that highlight crises of institutions and systems, identity and representation, and speculation and futurism, this book will interest scholars of media and cultural studies, political economy, communication studies, and humor studies.

Television’s Streaming Wars

Television’s Streaming Wars
Author: Arienne Ferchaud
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2023-11-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000991318

This volume addresses contemporary debates and trends regarding the production and distribution, content, and audience engagement with the television streaming industry. The book interrogates the economics and structure of the industry, questions the types and diversity of content perpetuated on streaming services, and addresses how audiences engage with content from US and global perspectives and within various research paradigms. Chapters address television streaming wars, including the debates and trends in terms of its production and competition, diversity and growth of programming, and audience consumption, focusing on multiple platforms, content, and users. This timely and creative volume will interest students and scholars working in television studies, media industry studies, popular culture studies, audience studies, media psychology, critical cultural studies and media economics.

Television Directors, Race, and Gender

Television Directors, Race, and Gender
Author: Jonathan J. Cavallero
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2024-07-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1040108636

This book challenges the predominant framing of US television as a writer’s or producer’s medium by suggesting that television directors are a vital component of TV artistry. Looking beyond a perspective that favors the narrative and economic aspects of television but undervalues the medium’s formal elements, the book explores how directors use the visual and aural to contribute layers of meaning that add to the thematic development of television texts. Starting from the belief that television aesthetics partially reveal the ways in which directors (and their collaborators) contribute to the overall thematic development of a program, the author offers five case studies that map out the ways that directors have contributed to television drama throughout the medium’s approximately 80-year history. By devoting special attention to the presence and voices of directors from marginalized backgrounds, the book creates opportunities to discuss television from perspectives that emphasize issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This original and insightful work will appeal to students and scholars of television studies, television production and media production, critical media studies, media authorship, gender studies, and race and media.

Children, Youth, and International Television

Children, Youth, and International Television
Author: Debbie Olson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2022-03-29
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1000541835

This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the public consumption of changing ideas about children, childhood, and national identity, via a critical examination of programs that prominently feature children and youth in international television. The chapters connect relevant cultural attitudes within their respective countries to an analysis of children and/or childhood in international children’s programming. The collection addresses how international children’s programming in global and local context informs changing ideas about children and childhood, including notions of individual and citizen identity formation. Offering new insights into childhood and television studies, this book will be of great interest to graduate students, scholars, and professionals in television studies, childhood studies, media studies, cultural studies, popular culture studies, and American studies.

Speculative Television and the Doing and Undoing of Religion

Speculative Television and the Doing and Undoing of Religion
Author: Gregory Erickson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2022-09-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1000648281

This book explores the concept that, as participation in traditional religion declines, the complex and fantastical worlds of speculative television have become the place where theological questions and issues are negotiated, understood, and formed. From bodies, robots, and souls to purgatories and post-apocalyptic scenarios and new forms of digital scripture, the shows examined – from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Westworld – invite their viewers and fans to engage with and imagine concepts traditionally reserved for religious spaces. Informed by recent trends in both fan studies and religious studies, and with an emphasis on practice as well as belief, the thematically focused narrative posits that it is through the intersections of these shows that we find the reframing and rethinking of religious ideas. This truly interdisciplinary work will resonate with scholars and upper-level students in the areas of religion, television studies, popular culture, fan studies, media studies, and philosophy.

Cult TV Heroines

Cult TV Heroines
Author: Catriona Miller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2020-10-29
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1350163929

From Mrs Peel to the first female Doctor Who, this book offers a timely focus on the popular phenomenon of the cult TV heroine. The enduring phenomenon of cult TV itself is carefully explored through questions of genre, the role of the audience and the external environment of technological advances and business drivers. Catriona Miller then suggests a fresh account of the psychological dimension of the phenomenon utilising Carl Jung's concepts of the transcendent function and active imagination. Her analysis of the heroines themselves considers the workings of the audio-visual text alongside narrative and character arcs, exploring the complex and contradictory ways in which the heroines are represented. Established cult TV favourites such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X Files, and Xena: Warrior Princess are examined alongside more recent shows such as Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Jessica Jones and American Horror Story: Coven.