Genre and Television

From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture

Jason Mittell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781135923877
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Television History & Criticism

Genre and Television proposes a new understanding of television genres as cultural categories, offering a set of in-depth historical and critical examinations to explore five key aspects of television genre: history, industry, audience, text, and genre mixing. Drawing on well-known television programs from Dragnet to TheSimpsons, this book provides a new model of genre historiography and illustrates how genres are at work within nearly every facet of television-from policy decisions to production techniques to audience practices. Ultimately, the book argues that through analyzing how television genre operates as a cultural practice, we can better comprehend how television actively shapes our social world.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Genres That Matter
• 1 Television Genres as Cultural Categories
• 2 Before the Scandals—Genre Historiography and the Cultural History of the Quiz Show
• 3 From Saturday Morning to Around the Clock— The Industrial Practices of Television Cartoons
• 4 Audiences Talk Genres—Talk Shows and the Intersections of Taste and Identity
• 5 Policing Genres—Dragnet’s Texts and Generic Contexts
• 6 Making Fun of Genres— The Politics of Parody and Genre Mixing in Soap and The Simpsons
• Conclusion Some Reflections on Reality Television
• Notes
• Appendix A Cartoon Network’s Greatest 50 Cartoons, aired 3/20/99
• Appendix B Jerry Beck, The Fifty Greatest Cartoons as Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals (Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1994).