Hopeful Vision
Entertainment on the Small Screen
1st Edition
Published on 31. May 2025
248 pages
978-1-3995-1383-8 (ISBN)
Description
This monograph recuperates the concept of entertainment as a legitimate basis for 'small screen' criticism. It suggests that critical approaches to television might treat the text as an object of potential which actively engages and provides for aesthetic experience through entertainment. Aesthetic experience is characterised by emotion, and this study shows how the textual production of specifically forward feelings such as anticipation, aspiration, fear or dread may be mobilised and made sense of, shaping our sense of the future and its objects of hope. The argument is demonstrated by case studies arranged from 'light' to 'dark' in tone - as varied as Eurovision and Succession, The Repair Shop and The Leftovers - showing how these provide potentially significant, affecting encounters that are 'hopeful' in varying degrees and guises. Hope is adopted both as a theme of analysis and as a critical strategy of interpretation which privileges entertainment efficacy, and thus moves towards a more viewer-centric appreciation of cultural value.
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Content
- Intro
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue: Forward Feelings and Small Screens
- 1. The Concept of Entertainment (And Its Other)
- 2. The Entertainment Artwork
- 3. Hope, Aspiration and Entertainment I: A Better Life
- 4. Hope, Aspiration and Entertainment II: A Better World
- 5. LIGHT
- 6. SHADE
- 7. DARK
- Epilogue: Dreams and Usable Stories
- Bibliography
- Index
