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Second lives : black-market melodramas and the reinvention of television / Michael Szalay.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Chicago, IL ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2023Copyright date: ©2023Description: 322 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780226820484
  • 0226820483
  • 9780226824802
  • 0226824802
Other title:
  • Black-market melodramas and the reinvention of television
  • 2nd lives
Subject(s):
Contents:
Introduction : television's second life -- The gangster mourning play -- The informal abject : housework and reproduction in Weeds and Orange is the new black -- AMC's white-collar supremacy : Breaking bad, Mad men, and Halt and catch fire -- Managed hearts : The Americans and news corporation -- Waiting for the end in Twin peaks, The wire, Queen Sugar, and Atlanta -- Conclusion : streaming and you.
Summary: "We hear everywhere that we are in a golden era of television. Prestige dramas are the stars of streaming services and cable networks alike, luring viewers into binge watching hours of programming with writing, production values, and acting talent typically associated with feature-length films. In Second Lives, Michael Szalay focuses our attention on a highly influential subset of prestige television that he calls the black-market drama, and he tethers the new renaissance of television to this genre. The black-market drama is a genre that was inaugurated by the HBO series The Sopranos. At its most basic level, it consists of shows in which part or all of a (usually) white, middle-class family leads two lives, one routine and the other typically illegal and dangerous. Those lives might involve black markets or money laundering, a secret past or closeted identity, addiction, prostitution, espionage, or an alternate reality. And those secret lives might be kept from a variety of people, from other family members to neighbors to the state. What matters is that second lives allow characters to awaken from the slumber of their first lives. We, the audience, awaken too. For Szalay, these black-market dramas are the key to understanding how TV, once the lowest of the low, came to be esteemed as never before"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 791.4509 S996 Available 33111011268683
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A history of prestige television through the rise of the "black-market melodrama."



In Second Lives , Michael Szalay defines a new television genre that has driven the breathtaking ascent of TV as a cultural force over the last two decades: the black-market melodrama. Exemplified by the likes of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad , the genre moves between a family's everyday life and its secret second life, which may involve illegal business, espionage, or even an alternate reality. Second lives allow characters (and audiences) to escape what feels like endless work into a revanchist vision of the white middle class family. But there is for this grimly resigned genre no meaningful way back to the Fordist family wage for which it longs. In fact, Szalay argues, black-market melodramas lament the very economic transformations that untethered TV viewing from the daily rhythms of the nine-to-five job and led, ultimately, to prestige TV.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : television's second life -- The gangster mourning play -- The informal abject : housework and reproduction in Weeds and Orange is the new black -- AMC's white-collar supremacy : Breaking bad, Mad men, and Halt and catch fire -- Managed hearts : The Americans and news corporation -- Waiting for the end in Twin peaks, The wire, Queen Sugar, and Atlanta -- Conclusion : streaming and you.

"We hear everywhere that we are in a golden era of television. Prestige dramas are the stars of streaming services and cable networks alike, luring viewers into binge watching hours of programming with writing, production values, and acting talent typically associated with feature-length films. In Second Lives, Michael Szalay focuses our attention on a highly influential subset of prestige television that he calls the black-market drama, and he tethers the new renaissance of television to this genre. The black-market drama is a genre that was inaugurated by the HBO series The Sopranos. At its most basic level, it consists of shows in which part or all of a (usually) white, middle-class family leads two lives, one routine and the other typically illegal and dangerous. Those lives might involve black markets or money laundering, a secret past or closeted identity, addiction, prostitution, espionage, or an alternate reality. And those secret lives might be kept from a variety of people, from other family members to neighbors to the state. What matters is that second lives allow characters to awaken from the slumber of their first lives. We, the audience, awaken too. For Szalay, these black-market dramas are the key to understanding how TV, once the lowest of the low, came to be esteemed as never before"-- Provided by publisher.

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