Written Contemporary American Culture: Television Dramas and Popular Culture Annotated Bibliography

Beck, R. (2010). Treasure Island: How TV serials achieved the status of art. N+1 Online Magazine, 20 May. Retrieved from http://nplusonemag.com/treasure-island.

Being directly devoted to television dramas content analysis, Beck’s (2010) research for N+1 Online Magazine is mainly emphasizing the ideas that the varied range of drama genres represented on television 1) is the developed post-industrial era version of the nineteenth century serial novels; and 2) made fictional worlds increasingly professionalized. However, the strongest Beck’s (2010) arguments regard the fact the televised serial dramas have not only become the mass obsession, but also contributed to the erasement of boundaries between work and leisure time. Being though sometimes too deepened into the detailed discussion of drama plots, Beck (2010) still vocalizes an important thought that serial television dramas have dramatized the domestic sphere professionalization, suggesting that at the same time similar domestication of the professional sphere may occur in turn. Similarly to M.S. (2011), the article by Beck (2010) touches upon the effects of distortion in perceive real life events formed by popular dramas.

 

Geraghty, C. (2003). Aesthetics and Quality in Popular Television Drama. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6 (1), pp. 25-45.

This peer-reviewed journal article aims at developing the dispute on the assessment of television as a popular culture component by concentrating particularly on TV drama. Being a research of our interest in terms of methodological approaches to the discussed topic, Geraghty’s study (2003) considers a number of reasons which have previously complicated the television assessment in cultural studies, and assumes that a more effective approach to this should involve the analysis of specific television types as separate popular culture elements with their own specificities of social influence. The article is strong in comparing film and television dramas, claiming that one of the television’s weaknesses is the lack of a critical tradition for open evaluation debates. However, the frameworks offered by Geraghty (2003) for evaluating particular programs are rather generalized and need more specification. In particular, as Geraghty (2003) marks herself, the majority of evaluation principles are presently focused on ideological interpretation questions, which is, for instance, confirmed by studies on gender and race roles on television dramas in studies by Seltzer (2012) na d Reed (2003).

 

Glover, R., Garmon, L., & Hull, D. (2011). Media’s moral messages: assessing perceptions of moral content in television programming. Journal of Moral Education, 40 (1), pp. 89-104.

This peer-reviewed journal research contributes to the analysis of the media in terms of its moral content by studying moral ideas in TV programs and audience peculiarities to determine its ability to comprehend such ideas, in particular, referring to television dramas. Glover’s et al. (2011) research is basing on generalisability analysis on Media’s Moral Messages rating and standard regression analysis measured by the Defining Issues Test. Thus, the article is reliable in presenting prevailing moral themes and their content, as well as indicating viewers’ moral expertise of these themes. However, while such indicator as audience’s educational level seems reasonable for predicting viewers’ ability to identify moral implications in popular US television dramas, the major significance of “familiarity with the programme” indicator should be further revisited. Still, being complemented by Richardson’s (2010) stylistic and semiotic approach to determination of the moral content arrangement offered by the TV programming, the methods of television drama messages analysis by Glover’s et al. (2011) contribute to better perception of messages related to human relations and capability to comprehend content of television dramas as factors forming cultural sphere of the contemporary society.



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