Television and Working Class Identity
Intersecting Differences
Will be published approx. on 18. December 2025
Book
Hardback
256 pages
978-0-230-10295-8 (ISBN)
Description
This book argues that as TV has evolved as a corporate-managed medium it has played an influential role in shaping our understandings of social class. The book is designed to navigate the steady stream of narrow working-class representations from television's beginnings to today's sitcoms, reality shows, soap operas, police dramas, daytime talk shows, etc. This study breaks new ground not only in its focus on the working class, but also by exploring the ways in which race, gender, sexuality, ability, and age intersect with class, and how these diverse experiences are interpreted by network media that have largely ignored the influence of social and economic conditions on the lives of everyday people while constructing their own tales about how the world works.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Basingstoke
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 141 mm
Weight
1 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-230-10295-8 (9780230102958)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
PEPI LEISTYNA Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics Graduate Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA, where he coordinates the research program and teaches courses in cultural studies, media literacy, and language acquisition.
Content
Foreword: Stanley Aronowitz Laughing Matters: Entertainment Television's Mockery of the Working Class Economy or First Class: Capitalism and the Class Divide Classified: Media/Network Ownership and Their Attitudes towards Labor- Why Representation Matters Classic Images: The Great American Dream Machine & the Perpetuation of the Myth of Meritocracy Class Clowns: The "Dysfunctional" White, Working-Class Guy. In a Class by Themselves: Cartoon Buffoons & Animated Idiots-Comic Depictions of the Working Class Women Have Class: Watching Working-Class Women on Entertainment TV Cutting Class-From the Margins to the Middle: Images of Upward Mobility of Historically Marginalized Groups Signifying without Classifying: The Elderly and the Disabled No Class: Depictions of Cowboys, Country Pumpkins, Hillbillies, Hicks, Rednecks, and White Trailer Trash Time for Class: Racializing Crime and Criminalizing the Working Class Class Dismissed: Representations of Public Schooling as the Great Equalizer Class Consciousness and Reality TV: Let the Games Begin Class Act: What We Can Really Do!