9 research outputs found
Comic Cultures: Commerce, Aesthetics and the Politics of Stand-Up Performance in the UK 1979 to 1992
This thesis represents the first Cultural Studies analysis of the 1980s entertainment form commonly known as ‘alternative comedy’, which emerged against the backdrop of social, industrial and political unrest. However, the use of the term ‘alternative comedy’ has obscured a diverse movement that contained many different strands and tendencies, which included punk poets, street performers, chansonniers and improvising double acts. This thesis goes some way to addressing the complex nature of this entertainment space by recognising the subtle but important differences between New Variety and alternative cabaret. Alternative cabaret was both a movement and an entertainment genre, while New Variety grew out of CAST’s theatre work and was constructed in opposition to Tony Allen’s and Alexei Sayle’s Alternative Cabaret performance collective. Taken together, alternative cabaret and New Variety comprise one part of the alternative space that also includes post-punk music, and were the cultural expressions of the 1980s countercultural milieu.
Alternative cabaret and New Variety were the products of cultural change. Each genre has its roots in the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s and it was the knowledge that agents had acquired through participation in these movements that helped to shape their political-aesthetic dispositions or their weltanschauunng. As well as political activism, rock music influenced performers and promoters and contributed much to their art. In this sense, this was as much a post-punk avant-garde movement as it was a cultural intervention.
This study charts the development of alternative entertainment in 1980s Britain and its transformation into the multi-million pound comedy industry that it is today (S Friedman, 2009). This study also analyses how the alternative space was constructed and how it was eventually destroyed by the internal and external pressures that acted upon it. I have used the written and oral testimonies of those who were involved in the space and used my own recollections from 14 years of performing comedy and promoting cabaret clubs
Schulz\u27s Religion: Exploring Faith in the Mainstream Media Through the Peanuts Franchise
This dissertation is an exploration of various theoretical and cultural issues surrounding depictions of religion and spirituality in mainstream entertainment media properties. Such portrayals cultivate particular cultural norms that dictate the conditions of public and private discourse on religion, and in this study, these issues are approached through a mixed-method study guided by the Peanuts franchise. The Peanuts franchise is a provocatively rich launching point for analysis of dominant media cultures, given its colossal success in the secular mainstream entertainment industry and its explicit references to and even affirmations of Christian theology. Throughout the study, the references to religion manifested across the various Peanuts media are tracked, catalogued, and analyzed – i.e., across the 75 television titles, global product merchandise, Charles Schulz\u27s biographic history, and of course the nearly 18,000 Peanuts comic strips Schulz drew over a 50 year career. Based on theoretical foundations of cultivation theory, narrativity, and public sphere theory, a hybrid approach of social-scientific content analysis, rhetorical analysis, and historical archive research is employed (including original interview data from Schulz’s family and friends). The study demonstrates that while many entertainment media properties tend to reflect and reinforce a cultural public/private split in secularity/religion, rich opportunities for nuanced portrayals of religious belief and action are possible within a mainstream title
Not from Concentrate? Media Regulation at the Turn of the Millennium M arch 18-19, 2005
Transcript from a March 2005 Symposium held in the University of Michigan Law School, Hutchins Hall
The bardic utterance in situation comedy theme songs, 1960-2000
The purpose of this study is to examine the function of the bard in situation comedy theme songs. This study calls upon Fiske and Hartley\u27s concept of television as a cultural bard, a singer and teller of stories that create and conserve community. The bard reaffirms the culture\u27s identity while delivering social and political messages relevant to the culture at specific times throughout history. This study also draws upon social-historical and cultural perspectives, and a selective semiotic analysis to investigate the visual, vocal, and musical themes from four decades of television sitcoms. The shows and themes from the 1960s include The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-71), The Andy Griffith Show (1960-68), Gomer Pyle, USMC (1964-70), Bewitched (1964-72), and That Girl (1966-71). Those from the 1970s include All in the Family (1971-79), The Jeffersons (1975-85), Maude (1972-78), The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77), M*A*S*H (1972-83), and Three\u27s Company (1977-84). Those from the 1980s include The Cosby Show (1984-92), Cheers (1982-93), The Wonder Years (1988-93), The Golden Girls (1985-92), and It\u27s Garry Shandling\u27s Show (1988-90). Lastly, the shows and themes from the 1990s include Roseanne (1988-97), Married. . .With Children (1987-97), The Simpsons (1989-), Home Improvement (1991-99), Dharma and Greg (1997-2000), Everybody Loves Raymond (1996-), Frasier (1993-), and The Drew Carey Show (1995-). The results of the analysis reveal that the themes address relevant cultural issues such as race relations, the role of the domestic woman, the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, class conflict, and the construction of reality. To date, very little scholarly attention has been paid to the area of television theme songs. Given that television is a central part of popular culture, and that sitcoms and theme songs comprise a significant amount of television air time, it is important to understand their relationship to culture and culture making. This study concludes that theme songs are concise bardic utterances that offer brief yet powerful rhetorical statements. Through the performance of these texts, the bard speaks to the prevailing values of the culture, using familiar means to uphold a sense of community and offer the audience a reinforcing idea of themselves
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"Time for Teletubbies": Childhood, Child Participation, and the Struggle for Meaning
The children's television program Teletubbies and its concomitant controversies are analyzed along with the media attention surrounding the program. A textual analysis is presented, including the methodologies of narrative theory, semiotics/structuralism, and poststructuralism. The context is also analyzed, using a cultural studies and historical reception approach, in order to chronicle and analyze the show's controversies and elucidate how these arguments have affected reception and interpretation of the show. Following textual and contextual analysis, a social science approach is utilized, reviewing literature and research that supports or refutes the arguments at hand. Finally, the results of a qualitative, ethnographical study are presented in order to include the child's perspectives on the show and inform the larger, cultural issues of childhood
The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom
The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom explores how the fantasies of genre, marketing, and children can never fully cloak the queerness lurking within the plucky families designed for American viewers’ comic delight. Queer readings of family sitcoms demolish myths of yesteryear, demonstrating the illusion of American sexual innocence in television’s early programs and its lasting consequences in the nation’s self-construction, as they also allow fresh insights into the ways in which more recent programs negotiate new visions of sexuality while indebted to previous narrative traditions. Tison Pugh thoroughly explores six specific family sitcoms to illustrate how issues of sexuality intersect with other critical concerns of their respective periods and cultures