Stacey Abbott

David Lavery

In many respects a natural heir to predecessors like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel, Supernatural tells the story of brothers Dean and Sam Winchester as they travel the highways and byways of America in search of demons, monsters and other supernatural foes. In the course of their travels, Sam and Dean battle tricksters, vampires, shapeshifters, ghouls and ghosts. The essays in TV Goes to Hell include explorations of folklore and religion, representations of gender and sexuality and many more themes and issues raised by the show.

An Unofficial Road Map of Supernatural

TV Goes to Hell

David Scott Diffrient

Bringing together seventeen original essays by scholars from around the world, this title offers a variety of international perspectives on Gilmore Girls (WB/CW, 2000-2007).

Critical Perspectives on Gilmore Girls

Screwball Television

Full of Secrets contains virtually everything you need to know about Twin Peaks. This fascinating collection of essays considers David Lynch's politics, the enigmatic musical score, and the show's cult status, treatment of family violence, obsession with doubling, and silencing of women. Also included are a director and writer list, a cast list, a Twin Peaks calendar, a complete scene breakdown for the entire series, and a comprehensive bibliography.

Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks

Full of Secrets

Rhonda Wilcox

Fighting the Forces explores the struggle to create meaning in an impressive example of popular culture, the television series phenomenon Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the essays collected here, contributors examine the series using a variety of techniques and viewpoints. They analyze the social and cultural issues implicit in the series and place it in its literary context, not only by examining its literary influences (from German liebestod to Huckleberry Finn) but also by exploring the series' purposeful literary allusions. Visit our website for sample chapters!

What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Fighting the Forces

Lynnette Porter

Hillary Robson

A Guide to Heroes

Saving the World

Paul Levinson

Douglas L. Howard

The Sopranos is recognized as the most successful cable series in the history of television. The Washington Post has called the popular series, winner of twenty-one Emmys and five Golden Globes, "the television landmark that leaves other landmarks in the dust." In every aspect -- narrative structure, visual artistry, writing, intertextuality, ensemble acting, controversial themes, dark humor, and unflinching examinations of American life -- The Sopranos has had few equals. Offering a definitive final assessment of the series, The Essential Sopranos Reader aims to comprehensively examine the show's themes and enduring cultural significance. Gender and ethnicity, the role of dreams, the rebirth of HBO, the series' controversial finale, and other topics come under scrutiny in this highly accessible, engaging collection. The book concludes with an interview with Dominic Chianese, who played Uncle Junior in all six seasons of the show.

The Essential Sopranos Reader

Lynnette R. Porter

Examines the mysteries, plotlines, and characters of the popular ABC network series, "Lost," and explores the spiritual and philosophical concerns of the show.

An Unauthorized Guide

Unlocking the Meaning of Lost

Angela Hague

Marla Cartwright

The X-Files was one of the most subversive and longest-running science fiction series in US television history. Yet very little serious work has been done to examine the hit series. Deny All Knowledge examines topics such as: - Why is the series such a hit worldwide? - Why is The X-Files so popular online, generating dozens of websites and chat groups daily? - How does The X-Files' Conspiracy Theory compares to shows from the 1950s? - Can The X-Files be considered a modern-day myth? - What does The X-Files tell us about gender roles today?

Reading the X-Files

Deny All Knowledge

This is the definitive, most comprehensive, serious, entertaining book on 'The Sopranos', edited by the top man on contemporary US television.

Hit TV from HBO

Reading the Sopranos

Michele Byers

The idea for this book began with David Lavery’s 2007 column for flowtv.org. “The Crying Game: Why Television Brings Us to Tears” asked us to consider that “age-old mystery”: tears. The respondents to David’s initial survey—Michele Byers among them—didn’t agree on anything ... Some cried more over film, some television, some books; some felt their tears to be a release, others to be a manipulation. They did agree, however, as did the readers who responded to the column, that crying over stories, and even “things,” is something that is a shared and familiar cultural practice. This book was born from that moment of recognition. On the Verge of Tears is not the first book to think about crying. Tom Lutz’s Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears, Judith Kay Nelson’s Seeing Through Tears: Crying and Attachment, Peter Schwenger’s The Tears of Things: Melancholy and Physical Objects, and Henry Jenkins’ The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture also offer forays into this familiar, if not always entirely comfortable, emotional space. This book differs markedly from each of these others, however. As a collection of essay by diverse hands, its point of view is multi-vocal. It is not a history of tears (as is Lutz’s superb book); nor is its approach psychological/sociological (as is Nelson’s). It does not limit itself to very contemporary popular culture (as does Jenkins’ book) or material culture (as does Schwenger’s study). What On the Verge of Tears offers are personal, cultural, and political ruminations on the tears we shed in our daily engagements with the world and its artifacts. The essays found within are often deeply personal, but also have broad implications for everyday life. The authors included here contemplate how and why art, music, film, literature, theatre, theory, and material artifacts make us weep. They consider the risks of tears in public and private spaces; the way tears implicate us in tragedy, comedy, and horror. On the Verge of Tears does not offer a unified theory of crying, but, instead, invites us to imagine tears as a multi-vocal language we can all, in some manner, understand.

Why the Movies, Television, Music, Art, Popular Culture, Literature, and the Real World Make Us Cry

On the Verge of Tears

The Ultimate Unauthorized Resource to the Stories Behind Lost Lost is a complex and mysterious tale, one that draws on many sources for its themes and ideas—sources you must understand to become an advanced Lost expert. Lost's Buried Treasures is the ultimate unauthorized guide to the ideas that have influenced the show and its writers—and is completely updated through Season Five. Explore: Books and movies important to the show and how they are connected Geographical clues New and old theories Musical references and the meaning behind the incredible soundtrack The best online resources The video and role-playing games and what they've revealed Cast, writer, and director biographies And much more NO TRUE LOST FAN SHOULD EVER WATCH AN EPISODE WITHOUT THIS CRUCIAL GUIDE IN HAND. Explore all the interconnected stories and mysterious references that make the show so fascinating. DISCLAIMER: This book is an independent work of commentary, criticism, and scholarship. Neither this book, nor its author and publisher, are authorized, endorsed or sponsored by, or affiliated in any way with the copyright and trademark owner of Lost and/or the creators of Lost.

The Unofficial Guide to Everything Lost Fans Need to Know

Lost's Buried Treasures

The Essential Cult TV Reader is a collection of insightful essays that examine television shows that amass engaged, active fan bases by employing an imaginative approach to programming. Once defined by limited viewership, cult TV has developed its own identity, with some shows gaining large, mainstream audiences. By exploring the defining characteristics of cult TV, The Essential Cult TV Reader traces the development of this once obscure form and explains how cult TV achieved its current status as legitimate television. The essays explore a wide range of cult programs, from early shows such as Star Trek, The Avengers, Dark Shadows, and The Twilight Zone to popular contemporary shows such as Lost, Dexter, and 24, addressing the cultural context that allowed the development of the phenomenon. The contributors investigate the obligations of cult series to their fans, the relationship of camp and cult, the effects of DVD releases and the Internet, and the globalization of cult TV. The Essential Cult TV Reader answers many of the questions surrounding the form while revealing emerging debates on its future.

The Essential Cult TV Reader

Cynthia Burkhead

No recent television creator has generated more critical, scholarly, and popular discussion or acquired as devoted a cult following as Joss Whedon (b. 1964). No fewer than thirty books concerned with his work have now been published, and ten international conferences on his work have convened in the U.K., the United States, Australia, and Turkey. Fitting then that this first volume in University Press of Mississippi's Television Conversations Series is devoted to the writer, director, and showrunner who has delivered Buffy the Vampire Slayer (The WB, 1997–2001; UPN, 2001–3), Angel (The WB, 1999–2004), Firefly (2002), Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Webcast, 2008), and Dollhouse (FOX, 2009-10). If Whedon has shown himself to be a virtuoso screenwriter/script-doctor, director, comic book author, and librettist, he is as well a masterful conversationalist. As a DVD commentator, for example, the consistently hilarious, reliably insightful, frequently moving Whedon has few rivals. In his many interviews he likewise shines. Whether answering a hundred rapid-fire, mostly silly questions from fans on the Internet, fielding serious inquiries about his craft and career from television colleagues, or assessing his disappointments, Whedon seldom fails to provoke laughter and reflection.

Conversations

Joss Whedon

Dear Angela includes fourteen critical essays that examine the brief-lived but landmark television series, My So-Called Life (1994-1995). Though certainly not the first young woman to be the center of a television series, Angela Chase and the show about her life were doing something new on television and influenced many of the shows about young people that followed. Michele Byers and David Lavery bring together enthusiastic and engaging voices that bear on a series that continues to be hailed as a breakthrough moment in television, even though more than a decade has passed since its cancellation. Tackling a broad range of topics-from identity politics, to music, to infidelity, and death-each essay builds upon a belief that My So-Called Life is a particularly rich text worth studying for the clues it offers about a particular moment in cultural and television history. Dear Angela offers a sophisticated analysis of the show's legacy and cultural relevance that will appeal to media studies scholars and fans alike.

Remembering My So-called Life

Dear Angela

Rhonda V. Wilcox

For every television series, the original vision grows within a press of forces-both social and artistic expectations, conventions of the business, as well as conventions of the art. Bad television—predictable, commercial, exploitative—simply yields to the forces. Good television, like the character of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, fights them. Fighting the Forces explores the struggle to create meaning in an impressive example of popular culture, the television series phenomenon Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the essays collected here, contributors examine the series using a variety of techniques and viewpoints. They analyze the social and cultural issues implicit in the series and place it in its literary context, not only by examining its literary influences (from German liebestod to Huckleberry Finn) but also by exploring the series' purposeful literary allusions. Furthermore, the book explores the extratextual, such as fanfiction and online discussion groups. The book is additionally supplemented by an online journal Slayage (www.slayage.tv), created by the book editors in acknowledgement of the ongoing nature of television art. Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery have written and edited several books and articles exploring the social, literary, and artistic merit of quality television. In addition to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, their work has covered a variety of programs including Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, The X-Files, and The Sopranos.

A young girl?s fatal, decade-long struggle with anorexia and bulimia is chronicled from her mother?s perspective in this heartbreaking memoir. Barbara Hale-Seubert tried to cope with grief, fear, and powerlessness as her daughter suffered through these diseases, and she kept a journal of their experiences as a form of therapy. These entries are the basis for a raw and revealing narrative, meant to offer other parents the comfort that comes with knowing they are not alone, the strength to help their children through the agony of eating disorders, and the grace to learn to surrender what is out of their control.

Cynthea Masson

Tanya R. Cochran

In an age when geek chic has come to define mainstream pop culture, few writers and producers inspire more admiration and response than Joss Whedon. From Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Much Ado About Nothing, from Dr. Horrible’s Sing–Along Blog to The Avengers, the works of Whedon have been the focus of increasing academic attention. This collection of articles represents some of the best work covering a wide array of topics that clarify Whedon’s importance, including considerations of narrative and visual techniques, myth construction, symbolism, gender, heroism, and the business side of television. The editors argue that Whedon’s work is of both social and aesthetic significance; that he creates “canonical television.” He is a master of his artistic medium and has managed this success on broadcast networks rather than on cable. From the focus on a single episode to the exploration of an entire season, from the discussion of a particular narrative technique to a recounting of the history of Whedon studies, this collection will both entertain and educate those exploring Whedon scholarship for the first time and those planning to teach a course on his works.

Reading Joss Whedon

Spring 2012 saw the return to creative and critical success of Joss Whedon, with the release of both his horror flick The Cabin in the Woods and the box-office sensation, Marvel's The Avengers. After establishing himself as a premier cult creator, the man who gave us great television with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse and web series Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog, as well as comic books including Fray and Astonishing X-Men, finally became the filmmaker he'd long dreamed of being. Drawing on a wide variety of sources and making use of psychologist Howard Gruber's insights into the nature of the creative process, Joss, A Creative Portrait offers the first intellectual biography of Whedon, tracking his career arc from activated fan boy to film studies major, third generation television writer, successful script doctor, innovative television auteur, beloved cult icon, sought-after collaborator, and major filmmaker with Marvel's The Avengers. Film and television scholar and Whedon expert David Lavery traces Whedon's multi-faceted magic from its source - the early influences of parents and teachers, comics, books, movies, collaborators - to its artistic incarnation.

David Lavery

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