Intense Anxieties

Based on your viewing of The Outer Limits episode “The Bellaro
Shield” and understanding of Jeffrey Sconce’s essay on the show,
explain how The Outer Limits expresses and potentially
intensifies particular anxieties prevalent during the early 1960s.

Extra Credit--Counts as TWO Blog Posts

Extra Credit--Counts as TWO Blog Posts:

View one of the following films: Quiz Show (1994) OR Good Night, and Good Luck (2005).  Both are available at Askwith Media Center or on reserve at the Donald Hall Collection.

Keeping in mind that both of these films offer fictionalized renderings of historical circumstances, write a minimum of 400 words explaining how either the quiz show scandals (as depicted by Quiz Show) or Edward R. Murrow’s exposé of McCarthyism (as portrayed in Good Night, and Good Luck) had political results during the 1950s and shifted ideas about the medium of television and its specific genres (quiz shows or news programs). 

The Kovacs Way

Using this advertisement or the screening from class as an example, discuss how Ernie Kovacs’ artistic experiments with television sound (or silence), aesthetics, and timing dialogue with growing concerns about television’s noisiness and commercialism? 

NY vs HW, Live vs Telefilm

1950s television critics characterized New York-based live broadcasts as superior to Hollywood-based program forms for a variety of reasons.  Considering these reasons (discussed in lecture and in "Live Television"), compare a live program to one of the telefilms we've viewed in class, to make an argument with or against the critics. 

Amos 'n' Andy

Based on Thomas Cripps’ article and your viewing of Amos ’n’ Andy this Thursday, how did the television show portray middle class African Americans?  Discuss why the sitcom became the center of a hot public debate as well as the arguments offered by each side.  

On Liveness

What are some of the advantages of live television and why do you think it was the prevailing format during TV's first decade?  What are its disadvantages?  How is "liveness" (or the illusion thereof) used by TV today?

Consumerist Morals

What does George Lipsitz mean when he suggests that working class ethnic sitcoms of the 1950s put the borrowed moral capital of the past at the service of the values of the present?  Based on his essay and your viewings this Thursday, how did these sitcoms demonstrate how "wise choices enabled consumers to have both moral and material rewards"?  

Window on the World

How was television figured as a “window on the world” during the period of 1948-1955, according to Lynn Spigel?  Do you think television fulfills (or is portrayed as fulfilling) a similar role today? 

Clues from the Past

In the last paragraph of Lynn Spigel’s “Installing the Television Set,” Spigel quotes historian Carlo Ginzburg, who writes: “Reality is opaque; but there are certain points—clues, signs—which allow us to decipher it.”  Why do you think Spigel closes her analysis of post-war television’s role in American domestic spaces with this quote?  How does she describe her historical approach/methodology? What types of “traces” of the past does she examine in this essay and how does she use them?  Do you agree with her approach to history?

SAC 355: American Television History

SAC 355 offers a historical survey of American television from the late 1940s to today.  Taking a cultural approach to the subject, this course examines shifts in television portrayals, genres, narrative structures, and aesthetics in relation to social and cultural trends as well as changing industrial practices.  Reading television programs from the past eight decades critically, we interrogate various representations of consumerism, class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, lifestyle, and nation in the smaller screen while also tracing issues surrounding broadcasting policy, censorship, sponsorship, business, and programming.