The Extratextuals

My book on paratexts is finally out: Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Paratexts. ($22, but I see Amazon’s selling it for $14.85. That’s cheaper than a season of Two and a Half Men on DVD! What are you waiting for?). I thought I’d give some tasters of it with a selection of paratexts. The cover, obviously enough is above.

The Contents

Introduction – Film, Television, and Off-Screen Studies

Chapter 1 – From Spoilers to Spinoffs: A Theory of Paratexts

Chapter 2 – Coming Soon! Hype, Intros, and Textual Beginnings

Chapter 3 – Bonus Materials: Digital Auras and Authors

Chapter 4 – Under a Long Shadow: Sequels, Prequels, Pre-Texts, and Intertexts

Chapter 5 – Spoiled and Mashed Up: Viewer-Created Paratexts

Chapter 6 – In the World, Just Off Screen: Toys and Games

Conclusion – “In the DNA”: Creating Across Paratexts

The Back Copy

It is virtually impossible to watch a movie or TV show without preconceived notions because of the hype that precedes them, while a host of media extensions guarantees them a life long past their air dates. An onslaught of information from print media, trailers, internet discussion, merchandising, podcasts, and guerilla marketing, we generally know something about upcoming movies and TV shows well before they are even released or aired. The extras, or “paratexts,” that surround viewing experiences are far from peripheral, shaping our understanding of them and informing our decisions about what to watch or not watch and even how to watch before we even sit down for a show.

Show Sold Separately gives critical attention to this ubiquitous but often overlooked phenomenon, examining paratexts like DVD bonus materials for The Lord of the Rings, spoilers for Lost, the opening credits of The Simpsons, Star Wars actions figures, press reviews for Friday Night Lights, the framing of Batman Begins, the videogame of The Thing, and the trailers for The Sweet Hereafter. Plucking these extra materials from the wings and giving them the spotlight they deserve, Jonathan Gray examines the world of film and television that exists before and after the show.

Word Clouds, courtesy of wordle.com, of Chapters 2 & 3

The Endorsements

“Show Sold Separately will rewrite the rules of what we look at when we want to understand how audiences make meaning of media franchises. Gray, who has long established himself in the top ranks of contemporary scholars of popular culture, writes with particularity about these varied media properties and their paratexts, yet also writes with a theoretical sophistication which feels effortless.”

- Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

“Exploring the myriad connections and connotations of a wide array of paratextual materials ranging from movie trailers to action figures, Gray deftly challenges established conceptions of textuality, and opens up intriguing and important new dimensions in media and cultural studies. This is an invaluable contribution, and will change how we think about, and make, media.”

- Derek Kompare, author of Rerun Nation: How Repeats Invented American Television

And a bit of the Work – the first par.

A common first line for books on contemporary media, and for many a student essay on the subject, notes the saturation of everyday life with media. Certainly, my list of available cable channels seems to grow every month, while the list of movies in cinemas, on television, for rent, or available for purchase similarly grows at a precipitous rate. However, media growth and saturation can only be measured in small part by the number of films or television shows – or books, games, blogs, magazines, or songs for that matter – as each and every media text is accompanied by textual proliferation at the level of hype, synergy, promos, and peripherals. As film and television viewers, we are all part-time residents of the highly populated cities of Time Warner, DirecTV, AMC, Sky, Comcast, ABC, Odeon, and so forth, and yet not all of these cities’ architecture is televisual or cinematic by nature. Rather, these cities are also made up of all manner of ads, previews, trailers, interviews with creative personnel, Internet discussion, entertainment news, reviews, merchandising, guerrilla marketing campaigns, fan creations, posters, games, DVDs, CDs, and spinoffs. Hype and synergy abound, forming the streets, bridges, and trading routes of the media world, but also frequently forming many of its parks, beaches, and leisure sites. They tell us about the media world around us, they prepare us for that world, and they guide us between its structures, but they also fill it with meaning, take up much of our viewing and thinking time, and give us the resources with which we will both interpret and discuss that world.

book reviews, front covers, reviews paratexts, Show Sold Separately

Hot on the heels of my latest edited collection, I’m happy to announce that I got a contract today for the next book. It’s a bold project (if I might say so myself), given that I plan to write four volumes, each of 300-400 words. The topic? ABC’s According to Jim.

At the 2008 Flow Conference, several commentators bemoaned the lack of work on such classics as AtJ. I’ve heard these complaints before, but everyone nods their head and looks to someone else to write it. Well, enough. Jim Belushi and the creative masterminds that are Tracy Newman and Jonathan Stark will finally get their day in the media studies sun.

At the moment, I plan for the volumes to break down this way:

• Welcome to the JimVerse: World Building in 22 Minutes aims to bring my growing interest in transmedia storytelling and world-building to a head, by examining the most complex transmedia entity known to modern television
• A Genealogy of Genius, Or, Dude, Where’s My TV Show? will chart how AtJ came to be, examining the thought that went into the series. This will be the shortest volume in the collection
• A Thousand Plateaus: Of Said, Lacan, and Belushi will offer a host of theoretical approaches to understanding the show. I am particularly intrigued by the text as a mouthpiece for a new postcolonial sentiment that is sweeping across television
• Finally, The Man With No Surname: Jim and the Dickensian Aspect will study the depths of Jim, the character. Amidst excited discussion of an age of complex male leads, and with the general hoopla surrounding the multi-dimensionality of Tony Soprano, Dexter Morgan, and Horatio Caine, Jim eclipses them all. Belushi’s performance is revolutionary in style, and well worth its own volume

I’m also in the process of applying for NSF funding for an According to Jim conference, and have received early commitments from such luminaries as bell hooks, Rob McChesney, Rob Schneider, Raymond Williams, Judith Butler, and Homi Bhabha (all of whom are big fans) to offer keynotes.

It’s a wonderful day, one I will circle in my calendar and long remember.

book reviews According to Jim

I’m really excited to announce the imminent publication of my latest book, Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era, a collection co-edited with the brilliant duo of Jeffrey P. Jones and Ethan Thompson. Just as Jon Stewart smacks down Cramer and CNBC, it seems a fine time for the book to come out.

I hope you’ll agree that the cover is really top-notch. We found the picture, but NYU Press did a great job of framing it, and it looks very snappy. After Routledge’s botching of my Simpsons book cover (if only you could see what it was meant to be, you’d share my pain), I guess I was owed some paratextual good fortune, and here it is.

The book began at the Flow conference in 2006, as (by my memory) a result of two walks between the University of Texas and the Dog and Duck Pub. One of them was with Ethan, the other with Jeff, neither of whom I’d met before. If you know Austin, you know that it’s not all that long a walk, but each trip was long enough for us to immediately get along with each other and for us to agree that there wasn’t enough good stuff on satire out there. So we floated the idea of doing a collection, and a month later we were working on it. Jeff and Ethan were an absolute joy to work with, always on the ball, fiercely intelligent, and darn funny guys, thus making the whole process a lot more enjoyable.

We also worked with a great group of contributors. Let me share with you the table of contents:

Foreword by David Marc

Part I: Post 9/11, Post Modern, or Just Post Network?

• “The State of Satire, the Satire of State” (Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey P. Jones, Ethan Thompson)
• “With All Due Respect Satirizing Presidents From Saturday Night Live to Lil’ Bush” (Jeffrey P. Jones)
• “Tracing the ‘Fake’ Candidate in American Television Comedy” (Heather Osborne-Thompson)

Part II: Fake News, Real Funny

• “And Now… the News? Mimesis and the Real in The Daily Show” (Amber Day)
• “Jon Stewart and The Daily Show: I Thought You Were Going to Be Funny!” (Joanne Morreale)
• “Stephen Colbert’s Parody of the Postmodern” (Geoffrey Baym)

Part III: Building in the Critical Rubble: Between Deconstruction and Reconstruction

• “Throwing Out the Welcome Mat: Public Figures as Guests and Victims in TV Satire” (Jonathan Gray)
• “Speaking ‘Truth’ to Power? Television Satire, Rick Mercer Report, and the Politics of Place and Space” (Serra Tinic)
• “Why Mitt Romney Won’t Debate a Snowman” (Henry Jenkins)

Part IV: Shock and Guffaw: The Limits of Satire

• “Good Demo, Bad Taste: South Park as Carnivalesque Satire” (Ethan Thompson)
• “In the Wake of ‘The Nigger Pixie’: Dave Chappelle and the High Cost of De Facto Crossover” (Bambi Haggins)
• “Of Niggas and Citizens: The Boondocks Fans and Differentiated Black American Politics” (Avi Santo)

It was a great group to work with, and they made our job so much easier. Ultimately, we made this book since it was one that we wanted to read, and the contributors didn’t disappoint.

So, if you’re teaching a class (or just a section: NYU Press price their books to sell, so this one’s list price is $22, yet I note that Amazon’s selling it for $14.85 right now) on popular politics, satire, or comedy, please consider the book. Or you don’t need to be teaching the book to enjoy it, so grab a copy yourself. It’s set to be released on April 1, no joke.

Here are the endorsements on the back:

“This smart and savvy crew has noticed something creeping up on us, something with bite. Now we have to take satire TV seriously; it turns out to be the bearer of the democratic spirit for the post-broadcast age. In this field-shaping book, some of the brightest talents in TV studies show us how the marginal has become the model for a much-needed media make-over. See what happens when entertainment bares its teeth.”
— John Hartley, author of Television Truths

“It has been said that if you have to explain a joke, it’s not funny.  This wonderful collection proves that nothing could be farther from the truth.  Satire TV takes the study of comedy in new directions, expanding beyond earlier work done on classical Hollywood cinema and the sitcom.  In politically trying times, the contributors to this volume reveal through analysis of programs such as South Park, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, laughter is not the best medicine—it is the surgeon’s scalpel.”
— Heather Hendershot, editor of Nickelodeon Nation

book reviews, front covers, satire books, Ethan Thompson, Jeffrey Jones, Jon Stewart, satire, Satire TV

Just a stub, and self-promotion at that, but I recently received notice that my book, Television Entertainment (discussed here, if you want to know more), made Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Titles list for 2008. Thanks to the good folks at the American Library Association. I still find it really exciting when I hear that anyone other than an official reviewer, my mum, or my wife has read anything of mine, so a tip of the hat like this is just icing on the cake (to mix hat and cake metaphors).

awards, book reviews television entertainment

Inspired by Mike Newman’s fantastic and highly recommend Faves, 2008 list, and as a pale imitation, here are some media highlights from 2008, in installments.

First, though, a word on categorization – if I saw it in 2008, it’s on this list, even if it came out earlier; and if I saw it on the Internet, it’s web video not television.

Television

10. Chuck. The show is infinitely silly, but that’s the point. Like Pushing Daisies, it kept me sane in hard times. Adam Baldwin, Awesome, Lester – fun stuff.

9. Food Network in HD. I knew when I got my HDTV that I’d love travel shows all the more, and nature shows. But I didn’t count on how much food porn I could stomach on a daily basis, and how that threshold would increase with HD.

Read more…

awards, book reviews, lists, satire 538.com, Andrew Sullivan, best of 2008, Better Living Through Reality TV, Chuck, Chutry Experiment, Colbert, Facebook, Food Network, Heartland TV, Jon Stewart, lists, Lost, Man vs. Wild, metacritic, Mike Newman, Obama, Pushing Daisies, The Daily Show, The Wire

I wanted to let readers know of my new book, Television Entertainment. It’s out from Routledge and costs $33.76 at Amazon, $33.95 direct from Routledge.

Though it may be changed by the time you read this, Amazon (or Routledge) seem to have made an error, since their review of it currently reads:

Deepen your understanding of your patients, your partner, and your own process by giving yourself the wisdom of Robert Lee’s The Secret Language of Intimacy. I’ve been learning from Robert for years; welcome to the group. – Gordon Wheeler, Ph.D.

Hey, whether it’s about The Simpsons, paratexts, or how to snuggle, I aim to illuminate and inform

If you want to know more (not advice on intimacy, but about the real book, that is), I waffle on a bit below the fold.
Read more…

book reviews television, television entertainment

Self-promotion time. Recently, Greenwood Press published my third book, a two volume encyclopedia called Battleground: The Media. The Battleground series aim to bring a little life to the often oh-so-boring genre that is the encyclopedia, and thus are each arranged by hot-button, “battleground” issues. And because of the nature of the series, no entry needs to be “objective” (whatever that is) – authors were asked to remember that it’s encyclopedia-ish, and not to rant, but opinions were welcome.

My colleague and friend Robin Andersen asked me to edit it with her, and while much of the task was a giant cat-herding act (trying to get about 70 academics to do anything on a deadline is impossible. Sometimes I think Noah had an easier assignment), and involved more lists and spreadsheets than even a Class A OCD graphophile such as myself enjoys. But it was also great fun. We got to work out which issues we wanted included, and then find the people to write them. Robin and I run in very different circles, which helped the process, and ensured that the final product represents a variety of different takes on things. And Robin’s a treat to work with, an excellent editor, scholar, and person.

Entries cover issues across the mass media, though inevitably any given reader will think of others that should’ve or could’ve been added. Some writers dropped out at the last minute, leaving us stranded and the topic dead in the water. Some topics were non-starters, or at least with our contacts (and their contacts, and theirs, and theirs, and so on). And some things were important but Robin and I couldn’t find a way to frame them as controversial, battleground topics.

As is Greenwood’s style, the book will primarily be marketed to libraries, university, high school, and public. The $175 price tag will surely cause you to think twice before ordering one yourself, I’m sure! But given how accessible the articles are, we hope to reach a wider audience than just researchers and undergrads, and to introduce them to what academics are saying about these topics. Meanwhile, if your library does get a copy, some entries make for an effective, quick introduction to a topic, and hence might work well in Intro classes.

Oh, and yes, the cover stinks. But as several people have told me charitably, the spine looks great!

A few highlights after the fold:

Read more…

book reviews Battleground, books

In a few days, New York University Press will be releasing Amanda D. Lotz’s The Television Will Be Revolutionized, and I wanted to give it a healthy plug here, since it really is a fantastic book. I was lucky enough to be asked to review it for NYU when it was a manuscript. At the time, I was struggling to piece together, from endless trade journal articles, recent academic journal articles, and conference papers, a picture of exactly how American television worked today, not five, ten, or twenty years ago. I felt sort of like the doctor at the beginning of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, who must study his patient through a small tear in a sheet, each day seeing just a tiny part of the whole. Then along came Lotz’s manuscript and did away with the sheet. Anyone who has read Lotz’s work (in seemingly every journal in the field by now) knows her remarkable capacity to explain how the system works, and this book offers an embarrassment of riches. It is the best book on the state of contemporary television that I know of, and a wonderful resource for teachers, students, or non-academics alike.

She carefully charts a variety of changes to television as we knew it, and, in an encompassing manner, discusses the ramifications of these changes, on advertising models, patterns of audience reception, production cultures, distribution practices, etc. The book covers a large and complex territory, but does so with deft skill, written in an accessible style: even when the material would appear dry and procedural by necessity, Lotz manages to present it in a way that reads well.

Furthermore (and important to those of us who love extratextuals), it has a very attractive cover, its colors screaming out at you, ironically mimicking the television test screens that are a product of a bygone, pre-revolutionized era when television actually stopped at the end of the day. But I must warn that the interior of the book will likely become quite ugly quite quickly following purchase, as you’ll find yourself underlining, highlighting, and jotting notes everywhere, till you make her book look something more akin to the crazed journals of Kevin Spacey’s serial killer in Se7en.

For those of you who still use Inside Prime Time, even though you know it’s woefully out of date by now, The Television Will Be Revolutionized will finally give you a chance to put Gitlin on the shelf. While there is less direct quotation from television production personnel than Gitlin offered, Lotz nevertheless offers just as much of an inside look, providing access to those of us who have little or none.

Quite refreshingly, though, Lotz clearly watches television, and hasn’t just consigned it to the trashcan. Thus her considerable knowledge of the industry is balanced by her familiarity with specific programs, and her examples and case studies often defy television studies’ “received wisdom” precisely because she’s able to get into the trenches and see how things work on an everyday level. I appreciate how it never reads as though the writer is sitting on a culture critic’s distant throne, eating grapes while pontificating without close analysis. It’s written by someone involved with television, for others involved with television, whether that mean researchers, producers, or viewers.

I just checked my initial review of the book for NYU Press, and see that I ended by writing:

The book serves as both a bible of television in the here-and-now, and as provocation for and contribution to a whole new wave of debates on television in the future. I will recommend it to colleagues, and assign it to students with swift resolve upon its release. Bravo

‘Nuff said. At $22 it’s a great deal.

book reviews books, Lotz, television