Black, White, and in Color

Black, White, and in Color PDF

Author: Sasha Torres

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0691186375

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This book examines the representation of blackness on television at the height of the southern civil rights movement and again in the aftermath of the Reagan-Bush years. In the process, it looks carefully at how television's ideological projects with respect to race have supported or conflicted with the industry's incentive to maximize profits or consolidate power. Sasha Torres examines the complex relations between the television industry and the civil rights movement as a knot of overlapping interests. She argues that television coverage of the civil rights movement during 1955-1965 encouraged viewers to identify with black protestors and against white police, including such infamous villains as Birmingham's Bull Connor and Selma's Jim Clark. Torres then argues that television of the 1990s encouraged viewers to identify with police against putatively criminal blacks, even in its dramatizations of police brutality. Torres's pioneering analysis makes distinctive contributions to its fields. It challenges television scholars to consider the historical centrality of race to the constitution of the medium's genres, visual conventions, and industrial structures. And it displaces the analytical focus on stereotypes that has hamstrung assessments of television's depiction of African Americans, concentrating instead on the ways in which African Americans and their political collectives have actively shaped that depiction to advance civil rights causes. This book also challenges African American studies to pay closer and better attention to television's ongoing role in the organization and disorganization of U.S. racial politics.

Blacks and White TV

Blacks and White TV PDF

Author: J. Fred MacDonald

Publisher: Burnham, Incorporated

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13:

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The second edition of this powerful analysis of African-Americans in the television insudtry since 1948 is completely updated. The increased visibility of blacks in television, the success of the Cosby Show and other sitcoms featuring black actors, and the impact of cable TV on programming are described in detail. Professor MacDonald traces the stereotyping, tokenism, and unfair treatment of blacks from the early days of the indsutry, but expresses his hope and belief that a new video order is materializing that will finally fulfill the bright promise of television.

Television in Black-and-white America

Television in Black-and-white America PDF

Author: Alan Nadel

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Alan Nadel's provocative new book reminds us that most of the images on early TV were decidedly Caucasian and directed at predominantly white audiences. Television did not invent whiteness for America, but it did reinforce it as the norm-particularly during the Cold War years. Nadel now shows just how instrumental it was in constructing a narrow, conservative, and very white vision of America. Nadel depicts a time when television effectively hijacked and monopolized the nation's vision of itself to create a virtual but severely distorted civic space. On Cold War TV's three channels there were no double beds, no liberated housewives, no social criticism, and no homosexuality. And the few available black faces overwhelmingly belonged to athletes, musical entertainers, and actors playing menial roles. Even America's beloved Walt Disney promoted his highly popular TV and theme-park versions of society as utterly homogeneous representations of reality. During this era, prime-time TV was dominated by "adult westerns," with heroes like The Rebel's Johnny Yuma reincarnating southern values and Bonanza's Cartwright family reinforcing the notion of white patriarchy-programs that, Nadel shows, bristled with Cold War messages even as they spoke to the nation's mythology. America had become visually reconfigured as a vast Ponderosa, crisscrossed by concrete highways designed to carry suburban white drivers beyond the moral challenge of racism and racial poverty and increasingly vocal civil rights demands. Television in Black-and-White America revisits a time and space that some might miss for its simplicity and relative innocence. Nadel, however, entreats us to look beyond such nostalgia to see how, even in its earliest days, television had already become a powerful mediator of social norms that both controlled and warped our sense of reality.

Living Color

Living Color PDF

Author: Sasha Torres

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9780822321958

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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.

Television in Black-and-white America

Television in Black-and-white America PDF

Author: Alan Nadel

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13:

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La couverture indique : "Alan Nadel's new book reminds us that most of the images on early TV were decidedly Caucasian and directed at predominantly white audiences. Television did not invent whiteness for America, but it did reinforce it as the norm - particularly during the Cold War years. Nadel now shows just how instrumental it was in constructing a narrow, conservative, and very white vision of America." "During this era, prime-time TV was dominated by "adult Westerns," with heroes like The Rebel's Johnny Yuma reincarnating Southern values and Bonanza's Cartwright family reinforcing the notion of white patriarchy - programs that, Nadel shows, bristled with Cold War messages even as they spoke to the nation's mythology. America had become visually reconfigured as a vast Ponderosa, crisscrossed by concrete highways designed to carry suburban white drivers beyond the moral challenge of racism, racial poverty, and increasingly vocal civil rights demands."

The Black Image in the White Mind

The Black Image in the White Mind PDF

Author: Robert M. Entman

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-02-15

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0226210774

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Living in a segregated society, white Americans learn about African Americans not through personal relationships but through the images the media show them. The Black Image in the White Mind offers the most comprehensive look at the intricate racial patterns in the mass media and how they shape the ambivalent attitudes of Whites toward Blacks. Using the media, and especially television, as barometers of race relations, Robert Entman and Andrew Rojecki explore but then go beyond the treatment of African Americans on network and local news to incisively uncover the messages sent about race by the entertainment industry-from prime-time dramas and sitcoms to commercials and Hollywood movies. While the authors find very little in the media that intentionally promotes racism, they find even less that advances racial harmony. They reveal instead a subtle pattern of images that, while making room for Blacks, implies a racial hierarchy with Whites on top and promotes a sense of difference and conflict. Commercials, for example, feature plenty of Black characters. But unlike Whites, they rarely speak to or touch one another. In prime time, the few Blacks who escape sitcom buffoonery rarely enjoy informal, friendly contact with White colleagues—perhaps reinforcing social distance in real life. Entman and Rojecki interweave such astute observations with candid interviews of White Americans that make clear how these images of racial difference insinuate themselves into Whites' thinking. Despite its disturbing readings of television and film, the book's cogent analyses and proposed policy guidelines offer hope that America's powerful mediated racial separation can be successfully bridged. "Entman and Rojecki look at how television news focuses on black poverty and crime out of proportion to the material reality of black lives, how black 'experts' are only interviewed for 'black-themed' issues and how 'black politics' are distorted in the news, and conclude that, while there are more images of African-Americans on television now than there were years ago, these images often don't reflect a commitment to 'racial comity' or community-building between the races. Thoroughly researched and convincingly argued."—Publishers Weekly "Drawing on their own research and that of a wide array of other scholars, Entman and Rojecki present a great deal of provocative data showing a general tendency to devalue blacks or force them into stock categories."—Ben Yagoda, New Leader Winner of the Frank Luther Mott Award for best book in Mass Communication and the Robert E. Lane Award for best book in political psychology.

Black and White Media

Black and White Media PDF

Author: Karen Ross

Publisher: Polity

Published: 1996-01-23

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9780745611273

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This is a wide-ranging account of the complex relations between Black communities and popular media, analysing the ways in which Black communities have been portrayed in film and television and considering the contribution made by Black media professionals.

Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me PDF

Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Publisher: One World

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 0679645985

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Watching Race

Watching Race PDF

Author: Herman Gray

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 9780816622504

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Examines the cultural politics of television and race. In the late 1980s and early 1990s television representations of African Americans exploded on the small screen. Why has this occurred, and what relation do these shows have to society's idea of "blackness"? How do these shows relate to earlier television series featuring African Americans? Herman Gray's Watching Race -- now available in paperback for the first time -- offers a new look at the changing representations of African Americans on television. Starting with the portrayal of blacks on series such as The Jack Benny Show and Amos 'n' Andy, Gray details the ongoing dialogue between television representations and cultural discourse to show how the meaning of blackness has changed through the years of the TV era. Drawing on analyses of The Cosby Show, Frank's Place, In Living Color, and Roc, as well as music videos, news coverage, and advertising, Watching Race examines how the political stakes, cultural perspectives, and social locations of key cultural and social formations influence the representation of "blackness" in television. "Absorbing.... Offers incisive analysis of the important, often fierce battles being waged in the black-and-white representational landscape of commercial television". Patricia Williams