Living Color – Race and Television in the United States: Console-ing Passions

"This collection of essays provides an essential addition to work within the fields of media, cultural, and critical race studies; its provocative readings of television texts and audiences will no doubt yield important new insights on the relationship between television, race, ethnicity, and history."--Lynne Joyrich, author of "Re-viewing Reception: Television, Gender, and Postmodern Culture"

Recent media events like the beating of Rodney King and the murder trial of O.J. Simpson have trained our collective eye on the televised spectacle of race. LIVING COLOR combines media studies, cultural studies, and critical race theory to investigate the representation of race on American television. LIVING COLOR makes explicit the centrality of race and ethnicity to American life. 54 photos.

Introduction / Sasha Torres 1
Entertaining "Difference": Strains of Orientalism in Early Los Angeles Television / Mark Williams 12
Confronting "The Indian Problem": Media Discourses of Race, Ethnicity, Nation, and Empire in 1950s America / Pamela Wilson 35
Extra-Special Effects: Televisual Representation and the Claims of "the Black Experience" / Phillip Brian harper 62
Narrowcasting in Diaspora: Middle Eastern Television in Los Angeles / Hamid Neficy 82
Re-Covering Racism: Crack Mothers, Reaganism, and the Network News / Jimmie L. Reeves 97
"Reliving the Past Over and Over Again": Race, Gender, and Popular Memory in Homefront and I'll Fly Away / Mimi White 118
King TV / Sasha Torres 140
Televisual Politics: Negotiating Race in the L.A. Rebellion / John Caldwell 161
Pedro Zamora's Real World of Counter-publicity: Performing an Ethics of the Self / Jose Esteban Munoz 195
Game Theory: Racial Embodiment and Media Crisis / Stephen Michael Best 219
Here Comes the Judge: The Dancing Itos and the Televisual Construction of the Enemy Asian Male / Brian Locke 239
Selected Bibliography 255
Index 263
Contributors 273