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Television and sexuality : regulation and the politics of taste / Jane Arthurs.
Van Pelt Library PN1992.6 .A78 2004
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Arthurs, Jane.
- Series:
- Issues in cultural and media studies
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Sex on television.
- Sex in popular culture.
- Physical Description:
- xiii, 188 pages : illustrations, 1 portrait ; 23 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- Maidenhead : Open University Press, 2004.
- Summary:
- In recent years there has been a marked increase in both the volume and diversity of sexual imagery and talk on television, condemned by some as a 'rising tide of filth', celebrated by others as a 'liberation' from the regulations of the past.
- Television and Sexuality questions both these responses through an examination of television's multiple channels and genres, and the wide range of sexual information and pleasures they provide. The book explores the way that sexual citizenship and sexual consumerism have been defined in the digital era to reveal the underlying assumptions held by the television industry about the tastes and sexual identities of its diverse audiences. It draws on the work of key thinkers in cultural and media studies, as well as feminist and queer theory, to interrogate the political and cultural significance of these developments.
- With topics including the regulation of taste and decency, sex scandals in the news, the biology of sex in science programmes, and gay, lesbian and postfeminist identities in 'quality' drama, this book is key reading for students in cultural and media studies and gender studies.
- Contents:
- Cultural transformations 1
- The digital revolution 3
- Pleasure and risk: researching television and sexuality 5
- Genre, taste and discursive regulation 8
- Effects studies 9
- Public sphere debates 11
- Feminist cultural theory 13
- From 'progressive texts' to 'postmodern ambivalence' 14
- Differentiated identities and hierarchies of taste 16
- Biological essentialism and performative genders 17
- 2 Sexual Citizenship in the Digital Age 20
- Television regulation in the UK and USA 21
- The sexual citizen 26
- The sexual consumer 30
- Market regulation 33
- 3 Pornography and the Regulation of Taste 38
- Postmodern pornography 41
- 'Middle-brow' pornography 44
- Women and the gendering of pornography 48
- 4 Sex Scandals 55
- Sex scandals as media events 56
- The gendering of publicity 59
- Affairs of the state on confessional television 63
- Sensationalism, shame and the cult of celebrity 67
- Melodrama and the carnivalesque 69
- 5 The Science of Sex 74
- The technoscientific gaze: a critique 75
- Discovery Channel 78
- Beauty and the beast 81
- The intelligible body: machines and cartographies 84
- Constructions of sexual difference 88
- 6 Documenting the Sex Industry 93
- From prostitution to sex work: a history of feminist intervention 96
- Current affairs documentary and political debate 101
- 'Auteur' documentary and the ethics of production 106
- 7 Gay, Lesbian and Queer Sexualities in UK Drama 111
- Coming out of the closet 112
- Distinctions in taste and the politics of aesthetic form 114
- Popular drama: sexuality as a social issue 117
- Quality drama: the politics of difference 118
- Politically incorrect: queer lifestyle drama 123
- 8 Postfeminist Drama in the USA 128
- 'Having it all' in postfeminist drama 130
- Remediating women's magazines 134
- Bourgeois bohemians 136
- The aestheticized self and sexual relations 139
- Generic inertia and innovation 145
- Looking towards the future 147.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 0335209769
- 0335209750
- OCLC:
- 56965883
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