Article:
Policing the people: Television studies and the problem of ‘quality’

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dc.creatorDasgupta, Sudeep
dc.date.accessioned2018-09-26T11:38:21Z
dc.date.available2018-09-26T11:38:21Z
dc.date.issued2012
dc.description.abstractIn TELEVISION STUDIES: A SHORT INTRODUCTION, Jonathan Gray and Amanda D. Lotz argue for ‘television studies as an approach to studying media’ rather than as ‘a field for the study of a singular medium’. The critique of ‘Quality TV’, I argue, furthers the disciplinary lure of medium singularity by recourse to essentialising notions of ‘the people’ and by extension ‘popular culture’. A simplistic equation between aesthetics, audiences, and programs produces an imaginary construction of both television and the people. Interrogating television studies and the policing of the people is crucial for developing a critical and historically-nuanced mode of approaching a shifting cross-medial landscape as well as the politics of culture in general. Given the Leavisite-inspired hostility to ‘mass culture’ and the accompanying discourse of elitism, sexism, and class disapproval, television studies and its recourse to the people was both necessary and critically important. However, the actual construction of the popular in television studies as a concept forecloses on the critical study of television, first of all through the risk of essentialising a static, simplified, and often patronisingly benevolent notion of popular culture; and second, by responding defensively rather than proactively to the historical shifts in programming, genre-hybridisation, and television production.en
dc.identifier.doi10.5117/NECSUS2012.1.DASG
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/15039
dc.identifier.urihttp://necsus-ejms.org/test-site/policing-the-people-television-studies-and-the-problem-of-quality-by-sudeep-dasgupta/
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/3191
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherAmsterdam University Press
dc.publisher.placeAmsterdam
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:2213-0217
dc.relation.ispartofseriesNECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 Generic
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
dc.subjectpeopleen
dc.subjectpopularen
dc.subjectqualityen
dc.subjecttelevisionen
dc.subjectFernsehende
dc.subjectQuality TVde
dc.subjectPopkulturde
dc.subject.ddcddc:791
dc.titlePolicing the people: Television studies and the problem of ‘quality’en
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dcterms.bibliographicCitationDasgupta, Sudeep (2012): Policing the people: Television studies and the problem of ‘quality’. In: NECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies 1 (1), 35–53. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5117/NECSUS2012.1.DASG.
dspace.entity.typeArticleen
local.coverpage2021-05-29T05:16:02
local.identifier.firstpublishedhttps://doi.org/10.5117/NECSUS2012.1.DASG
local.source.epage53
local.source.issue1
local.source.spage35
local.source.volume1

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