The Lonely Nineties

✍ Scribed by Paul Arras

Publisher: Springer International Publishing;Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2018
Tongue: English
Leaves: 241
Edition: 1st ed.
Category: Library

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis

This book examines the most popular American television shows of the nineties—a decade at the last gasp of network television’s cultural dominance. At a time when American culture seemed increasingly fragmented, television still offered something close to a site of national consensus. The Lonely Nineties focuses on a different set of popular nineties television shows in each chapter and provides an in-depth reading of scenes, characters or episodes that articulate the overarching “ideology” of each series. It ultimately argues that television shows such as Seinfeld, Friends, Law & Order and The Simpsons helped to shape the ways Americans thought about themselves in relation to their friends, families, localities, and nation. It demonstrates how these shows engaged with a variety of problems in American civic life, responded to the social isolation of the age, and occasionally imagined improvements for community in America.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter ....Pages i-x
Watching TV After the Wall Came Down (Paul Arras)....Pages 1-11
Lonely Bowling and Other Critical Contexts (Paul Arras)....Pages 13-23
They Let You Just Sit There: The Failure of the Coffee Shop in Seinfeld, Friends, and Frasier (Paul Arras)....Pages 25-66
I’m Doing This My Own Way: Redeeming NYPD Blue’s Racist Hero (Paul Arras)....Pages 67-99
It Was a Different Time: Law & Order, White Rabbits, and the Decline of Sixties Radicalism (Paul Arras)....Pages 101-133
The Truth Is Out There…and He Loves You: Depictions of Faith in The X-Files and Touched by an Angel (Paul Arras)....Pages 135-173
This Town Ain’t so Bad: Eternity in Heavenly Springfield with The Simpsons (Paul Arras)....Pages 175-216
TV After the Nineties (Paul Arras)....Pages 217-229
Back Matter ....Pages 231-238