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Abstract
‘Wayne’s study offers an impressive range of readings and critical methodologies within a collection of exceptional coherence... Dissident Voices is consistently compulsive reading and a must for all students and specialists in the field of recent and contemporary television culture.’ Professor Madeleine MacMurraugh-Kavanagh, University of Reading
Two decades of institutional and structural changes in television broadcasting have both informed and reflected profound shifts in British culture. How have programme makers themselves approached the tensions and anxieties of the last twenty years?
Dissident Voices examines the ways in which certain forms and genres have registered a period of cultural upheaval and to what extent they have developed a more reflexive and a more critical television culture. This collection covers a broad range of issues including class, gender and sexuality, the monarchy, identity and nationhood. It examines their representation in a variety of dramas and genres, including police procedurals, documentaries, game shows, sitcoms and satire. The contributors challenge the notion of television as a bland purveyor of the status quo, presenting it as a complex and potentially subversive medium. Television culture is portrayed here as still resistant to the total control of either markets or ideologies. In an age of political consensus, it is an important and popular site where anxiety about and dissent from current social trends frequently surface.
Table of Contents
Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
---|---|---|---|
Contents | iii | ||
Notes on Contributors | vii | ||
Introduction | 1 | ||
Notes | 11 | ||
1. 'Reality or Nothing'? Dennis Potter's Cold Lazarus (1996) | 12 | ||
Notes | 20 | ||
2. Counter-Hegemonic Strategies in Between the Lines | 23 | ||
Hegemony, Ubermensch, and Gramsci | 25 | ||
The Context and Process of Production | 27 | ||
Narrative and the Concept of 'the Hero' | 30 | ||
Conclusion | 37 | ||
Notes | 38 | ||
3. Crisis and Opportunity: Class, Gender and Allegory in The Grand | 40 | ||
Realism: Some Earlier Debates | 41 | ||
Allegory | 43 | ||
Structure and Typology in The Grand | 46 | ||
The Individual and Society | 50 | ||
Conclusion | 54 | ||
Notes | 56 | ||
4. Bare Necessities and Naked Luxuries: The 1990s Male as Erotic Object | 58 | ||
Notes | 70 | ||
5. 'The Fierce Light': The Royal Romance with Television | 72 | ||
Notes | 88 | ||
6. 'Progressive' Television Documentary and Northern Ireland - The Films of Michael Grigsby in a 'Postcolonial' Context | 91 | ||
The Trouble With 'Progressiveness' | 91 | ||
Putting Method in Perspective | 92 | ||
Victims and Villains | 95 | ||
Speaking up for Others | 101 | ||
Notes | 104 | ||
7. The Exquisite Corpse of Rab(Elais) C(opernicus) Nesbitt | 107 | ||
In the Beginning was the Word . . . | 107 | ||
Is There Such a Thing as Scottish Screen Acting? | 111 | ||
Where Extremes Meet | 113 | ||
Glasgow's Miles Better | 116 | ||
Class and Nation in Rab C Nesbitt | 119 | ||
A Structuring Absence? | 122 | ||
Conclusion | 124 | ||
Notes | 125 | ||
8. The Politics of Ridicule: Satire and Television | 127 | ||
What is it and How Does it Work? satire | 128 | ||
A Question of Balance | 133 | ||
. . . it's Not Going to Bring Down the Government, is it? | 137 | ||
Jeremy Hardy | 139 | ||
Mark Steel | 140 | ||
Mark Thomas | 140 | ||
New Labour, New Satire? | 140 | ||
Notes | 144 | ||
9. Not a Lot of Laughs: Documentary and Public Service | 145 | ||
Notes | 157 | ||
10. Dissidence and Authenticity in Dyke Porn and Actuality TV | 159 | ||
Notes | 173 | ||
11. Downloading the Documentary | 176 | ||
Notes | 183 | ||
Index | 184 | ||
Adorno, Theodor, 26 | 26 | ||
Althusser, Louis, 122 | 122 | ||
american TV 147-8 | 147 | ||
Anderson, Benedict 87 | 87 | ||
Bare Necessities, The 5 | 5 | ||
Barker, Martin 23 | 23 | ||
Barthes, Roland | 45 |