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Electronic Hearth: Creating an American Television Culture

Autor Cecelia Tichi
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 22 apr 1993
We all talk about the "tube" or "box," as if television were simply another appliance like the refrigerator or toaster oven. But Cecilia Tichi argues that TV is actually an environment--a pervasive screen-world that saturates almost every aspect of modern life. In Electronic Hearth, she looks at how that environment evolved, and how it, in turn, has shaped the American experience. Tichi explores almost fifty years of writing about television--in novels, cartoons, journalism, advertising, and critical books and articles--to define the role of television in the American consciousness. She examines early TV advertising to show how the industry tried to position the new device as not just a gadget but a prestigious new piece of furniture, a highly prized addition to the home. The television set, she writes, has emerged as a new electronic hearth--the center of family activity. John Updike described this "primitive appeal of the hearth" in Roger's Version: "Television is--its irresistable charm--a fire. Entering an empty room, we turn it on, and a talking face flares into being." Sitting in front of the TV, Americans exist in a safety zone, free from the hostility and violence of the outside world. She also discusses long-standing suspicions of TV viewing: its often solitary, almost autoerotic character, its supposed numbing of the minds and imagination of children, and assertions that watching television drugs the minds of Americans. Television has been seen as treacherous territory for public figures, from generals to presidents, where satire and broadcast journalism often deflate their authority. And the print culture of journalism and book publishing has waged a decades-long war of survival against it--only to see new TV generations embrace both the box and the book as a part of their cultural world. In today's culture, she writes, we have become "teleconscious"--seeing, for example, real life being certified through television ("as seen on TV"), and television constantly ratified through its universal presence in art, movies, music, comic strips, fabric prints, and even references to TV on TV. Ranging far beyond the bounds of the broadcast industry, Tichi provides a history of contemporary American culture, a culture defined by the television environment. Intensively researched and insightfully written, The Electronic Hearth offers a new understanding of a critical, but much-maligned, aspect of modern life.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780195079142
ISBN-10: 0195079140
Pagini: 272
Ilustrații: 20 halftones, 30 line drawings
Dimensiuni: 233 x 156 x 16 mm
Greutate: 0.39 kg
Editura: Oxford University Press
Colecția OUP USA
Locul publicării:New York, United States

Recenzii

"A good, readable text. Should be attractive to students....Excellent reference list."--William H. Young, Lynchburg College
"Perceptive, subtly nuanced study of how Americans' perceptions of TV have developed over the past five decades....Tichi takes a close look at the often maligned, frequently misinterpreted medium....Her thinking is original, her arguments convincing. Fresh and fascinating."--Kirkus Reviews
"This sophisticated, McLuhanesque study bristles with fresh insight."--Publisher's Weekly
"Truly an ambitious study. Tichi refreshingly pokes fun at the intellectual snobbery that blanket-condems the medium."--Library Journal
"Very good for courses on the history of broadcasting and cutlural studies."--J.D. Peters, University of Iowa

Notă biografică

About the Author: Cecelia Tichi is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, and Culture in Modernist America and New World, New Earth: Environmental Reform in American Literature from Puritans to Whitman.