Looks at the ways in which the relationship between women and work was characterized during the late 1940s in "Woman Speaks," a combination newsreel/television show in Chicago. Expands upon the work of other historians and critics who have examined the representations of gender in early television marketing ploys and variety/situation…

This special issue brings together an editorial, six articles, and three book reviews that focus on the relationship between television and the female audience. The articles are: (1) "Installing the Television Set: Popular Discourses on Television and Domestic Space, 1948-1955" (Lynn Spigel); (2) "The Spectacularization of Everyday Life: Recycling…

Input from 25 media groups, including the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), considered the image of women on television and radio as part of public hearings held by the California Commission on the Status of Women. Presentations included here touch on the citizen's role in assuring fair treatment…

This paper examines the dominant genre of the last American television season--the action/adventure/law enforcement show--and discusses differences between this genre and television shows in the 1950s to 1970s. Today's programs are described in terms of the similarities they exhibit with the strategies of the New Right and the apparent…

Examines the economic and cultural contexts of the popular television show "Twin Peaks," reading it as reactionary postmodernism. Argues that the show's clever innovations in production, avant-garde techniques, and postmodern sensibilities obscure in-depth or ongoing discussions about its reactionary politics, regressive and misogynistic…

The situation comedy (sitcom) as a televisual text specifically encourages one type of decoding through its own encoding. Through the reciprocity of encoding to decoding, feminist sitcoms accord a privileged position to the dominant code, while acknowledging deviance or opposition to it through a highly demarcated female subject position. Relying…