Department of Communication (CIS), General

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Browsing Department of Communication (CIS), General by Subject "American studies"

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    Can you say it more southern?: renewing hollywood's media colony in southern reality television
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2016) Champion, Robert Theodore McWhorter; Butler, Jeremy G.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    Recent reality television programming has reawakened the popular use of the American South and, specifically, working-class white southerners, for mass entertainment purposes. Nonfiction media have historically represented the South as a distinct and often inferior region of the United States, and an occasional critic has attempted to raise concerns about the disenfranchisement of a subculture of people, but scholars have yet to conduct major research on southern-themed reality shows. Using multidisciplinary approaches, this dissertation examines how nonfiction media have exploited and are currently exploiting the image of the working-class white southerner. As both southern media historian and an active practitioner in the television industry, I have a unique perspective that allows me to address this current trend and its potential problems. I begin the research by surveying prior nonfiction media dating back to the 18th century. This understanding of past publishing, journalism, films, and broadcasting helps identify specific conventions that media producers have historically applied to the mediated South. Countless stereotypes include excessive drinking, obesity, indecency, and anti-intellectualism. I then closely examine three recent reality television series, analyzing how these past conventions are transformed for modern audiences. Finally, by directly observing and participating in the production of a new, southern-themed reality program, I offer insight on how production culture can foster the perpetuation of stereotypes and serve the needs of both producers and on-screen subjects. By using cultural studies theories such as postcolonialism, I approach such exploitation as potentially harmful because it can revive regional conflict, reinforce stereotypes that affect actual people who live in working-class conditions in the South, and simultaneously allow the dominant white majority to excise or deny its own negative qualities and maintain status quo power structures. My research leads to my conclusion that “southerners” and southern culture are fundamentally discursive formations, part of what I call the “mediated” or “media South,” and that the “real” South cannot be successfully defined within the confines of a television show, despite explicit claims otherwise. The voyeurism involving these discursive constructs is not new, but the form has evolved with the reality television trend.
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    Cowboys, fathers, and everyone else: examining race in the walking dead through the myths of white masculinity
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2017) Pressnell, Levi Addison; Bennett, Beth Susan; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    This study offers an analysis of three different series within The Walking Dead franchise: the comics, the AMC television series, and Telltale’s video games. The critical and commercial popularity of all three make them particularly worthy of study, and the franchise’s focus on characters invites a rhetorical study based on mythic figures across these three different media forms. While critical comparisons have been made either between the comics and the television series or between the comics and Telltale’s video game series, a comprehensive look at the series across all three media has so far escaped critical attention. The study explores characters in The Walking Dead media primarily through two dominant myths of White masculinity: the cowboy with his rugged individualism and the good patriarch with his care for his family. These mythic figures shift across different media, finding incarnations in many different characters and often revealing opposing perspectives that cannot find representation within the myths themselves. Critical analysis reveals the emergence of a general trend among the three series, one of increasing critique and eventual rejection of these myths of White masculinity. Alongside this trend, in character development, analysis across the three media forms suggests that increased interactivity, as seen in the video game franchise, encourages consumers to respond more directly to the myths on display. This factor was especially evident in confronting the racism that was directed at the protagonist of the first game, Lee Everett. Suggestions for future studies include how to adapt other pop culture franchises across different media, the expansion of interactivity with television viewing and second-screen services, and the continued evolution of zombie media.