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Boxed In

Boxed In

The Culture of TV

by Mark Crispin Miller

Imprint: Northwestern University Press

349 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in

Paperback
9780810107922
Published: December 1988

$29.95

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Informed, controversial, ranging from a melancholy study of rock and roll's descent into show business to a hilarious look at the spectacle that is the Jerry Lewis Telethon, these twenty essays offer an unusual and (ironically) entertaining study of American media by one of its foremost critics.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION: The Hipness Unto Death

WHAT'S ON TV
Massa, Come Home
Getting Dirty
"Family Feud"
Off the Prigs
Cosby Knows Best
Virtù, Inc.
A Viewer's Campaign Diary, 1984
Sickness on TV
Patriotism Without Tears
"The air of expectancy was bursting at the seams"
Black and White
How TV Covers War

ROCK MUSIC: A SUCCESS STORY
Where All the Flowers Went
The King

THE PROMISE OF CINEMA
The Lives of the Stars
Tom Mix Was a Softie
In Memoriam—A.J.H.
Hitchock's Suspicions and Suspicion

OVERVIEWS
The Robot in the Western Mind
Big Brother Is You, Watching

Index

MARK CRISPIN MILLER is the author of the best-selling books Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order, The Bush Dyslexicon, and Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too. An expert in propaganda and media, he teaches at New York University.

"These essays are the most valuable, original, powerful (and funny) any critic has produced in the history of American television. Boxed In is the benchmark work." —Todd Gitlin

"Mark Miller is at his best (and this best is very good indeed) when he shows . . . how television obliterates distinctions, trivializes issues, and reduces everything to insignificance. His analysis of the flattening, reductive effect of television is original and highly instructive." —Christopher Lasch, author of The Culture of Narcissism