Media Spectacles.The essays in this tightly edited volume cover a myriad of subjects all designed to illustrate media spectacles and suggest "how our watching ourselves in the media and how our watching the media itself, might be related to watching politics, watching borders, watching sex, and watching Aids." (x) In essence, the essays explore the borders or "boundary collapse" between various fields and traditional categories. For example, "Body and Soul Murder: JFK" examines the collapsing boundary between film and history while "Character Assassination character assassination n. A vicious personal verbal attack, especially one intended to destroy or damage a public figure's reputation. character assassin n. : Shakespeare, Anita Hill For other persons with this name, see . Anita Faye Hill (born July 30 1956) is a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management , and JFK" explores the Shakespeare/Hill-Thomas boundary and the Shakespeare/JFK boundary. Other topics discussed include: Murphy Brown/Dan Quale qua·le n. pl. qua·li·a A property, such as whiteness, considered independently from things having the property. [From Latin qu , reading "race" in our culture, Gregorio Cortez, the recent "coup" attempt in the Soviet Union, William Kennedy Smith William Kennedy Smith (born September 4, 1960) is an American physician whose work focuses on landmines and the rehabilitation of people disabled by them. He is a member of the prominent Kennedy political family and is famous for a well-publicized 1991 rape trial in which he was , the work of filmmaker David Cronenberg, Aids metaphors, and Magic Johnson. The final paragraph of the book's introduction notes: "In an era of global technology, instant news, informercials, electronic town meetings, and made-for-TV 'documentaries,' the borderlines between news and analysis, news and entertainment, news and fiction are constantly shifting. The essays collected here offer a provocative commentary on these shifts and on the ongoing performance and production of media spectacles." (xiii) The authors represent a variety of disciplines including English literature, African American studies African American studies (also known as Black studies and/or Africana studies) is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of African Americans. , visual/cultural studies, comparative literature, history, women's and gender studies, political science, Latin American studies Latin American Studies (sometimes abbreviated LAS) is an academic discipline which studies the history and experience of peoples and cultures in the Americas. Definition , and film. This is an insightful and accessible collection of essays which successfully addresses the collapse of traditional cultural and intellectual boundaries in contemporary American life. |
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