Second Lives: Black-Market Melodramas and the Reinvention of Television
By:
Sign Up Now!
Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into UK education collection to access this title.
Learn about membership options,
or view our freely available titles.
- Synopsis
- 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.
- Copyright:
- 2023
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- ISBN-13:
- 9780226824796
- Related ISBNs:
- 9780226824802, 9780226820484
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- Date of Addition:
- 03/21/23
- Copyrighted By:
- N/A
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- History, Entertainment, Nonfiction, Art and Architecture
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.
Reviews
Other Books
- by Michael Szalay
- in History
- in Entertainment
- in Nonfiction
- in Art and Architecture