Television And Terror

The advent of the twenty-first century was marked by a succession of conflicts and catastrophes that demanded unrestrained journalism. Hoskins and O'Loughlin demonstrate that television, tarnished by its economy of liveness and its impositions of immediacy, and brevity, fails to deliver critical and consistent expositions of our conflicting times.

The advent of the twenty-first century was marked by a succession of conflicts and catastrophes that demanded unrestrained journalism. Yet, the principle mass news medium of television has become torn between strategies of containment and the amplification of security threats. Hoskins and O'Loughlin demonstrate that television, tarnished by its economy of liveness and its default impositions of immediacy, brevity and simultaneity, fails to deliver a critical and consistent exposition adequate to our conflicting times.

Although horror shows on television are popular in the 1990s thanks to the success of Chris Carter's The X-Files, such has not always been the case. Creators Rod Serling, Dan Curtis, William Castle, Quinn Martin, John Newland, George Romero, Stephen King, David Lynch, Wes Craven, Sam Raimi, Aaron Spelling and others have toiled to bring the horror genre to American living rooms for years. This large-scale reference book documents an entire genre, from the dawn of modern horror television with the watershed Serling anthology, Night Gallery (1970), a show lensed in color and featuring more graphic makeup and violence than ever before seen on the tube, through more than 30 programs, including those of the 1998-1999 season. Complete histories, critical reception, episode guides, cast, crew and guest star information, as well as series reviews are included, along with footnotes, a lengthy bibliography and an in-depth index. From Kolchak: The Night Stalker to Millennium, from The Evil Touch to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twin Peaks, Terror Television is a detailed reference guide to three decades of frightening television programs, both memorable and obscure.

This interdisciplinary study examines how state surveillance has preoccupied British and American television series in the twenty years since 9/11. Surveillance and Terror in Post-9/11 British and American Television illuminates how the U.S. and U.K., bound by an historical, cultural, and television partnership, have broadcast numerous programs centred on three state surveillance apparatuses tasked with protecting us from terrorism and criminal activity: the prison, the police, and the national intelligence agency. Drawing from a range of case studies, such as Sherlock, Orange is the New Black and The Night Manager, this book discusses how television allows viewers, writers, and producers to articulate fears about an increased erosion of privacy and civil liberties following 9/11, while simultaneously expressing a desire for a preventative mechanism that can stop such events occurring in the future. However, these concerns and desires are not new; encompassing surveillance narratives both past and present, this book demonstrates how television today builds on earlier narratives about panoptic power to construct our present understanding of government surveillance.

This volume explores the vast and endlessly growing subject of popular culture, mass culture, the public arts, and mass-mediated culture. They cover such varied forms of mass communication as television, the comics, advertising, humor, and fads, foods, and artifacts. Some of the essays have been published in such periodicals as Society magazine. Berger, widely recognized as a leading scholar in the field, continues to shape the thinking of today's scholars.

The "masterfully chilling" novel that inspired the hit AMC series (Entertainment Weekly). The men on board the HMS Terror — part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage — are entering a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, they struggle to survive with poisonous rations, a dwindling coal supply, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is even more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror clawing to get in. “The best and most unusual historical novel I have read in years.” —Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe

The first comprehensive survey and analysis of War on Terror themes in post-9/11 American television. Critiques those shows that--either blindly or intentionally--supported the Bush administration's security policies, showing how popular culture mediated a profound national trauma.