Screwball Television: Critical Perspectives on Gilmore Girls
David Scott Diffrient and David Lavery, eds.
Syracuse University Press, 2010
Cloth $39.95
"Bringing together seventeen original essays by scholars from around the world, Screwball Television offers a variety of international perspectives on Gilmore Girls (WB/CW, 2000–2007). Adored by fans and celebrated by critics for its sophisticated wordplay and compelling portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship, this contemporary American TV program finally gets its due as a cultural production unlike any other— one that is beholden to Hollywood’s screwball comedies of the 1930s, steeped in intertextual references, and framed as a “kinder, gentler kind of cult television series” in this tightly focused yet wide-ranging collection.
This volume makes a significant contribution to television studies, genre studies, and women’s studies, taking Gilmore Girls as its focus while adopting a panoramic critical approach sensitive to such topics as serialized fiction; elite education; addiction as a social construct; food consumption and the disciplining of bodies; post-feminism and female desire; depictions of journalism in popular culture; the changing face of masculinity in contemporary U.S. society; liturgical and ritualistic structures in televisual narrative; Orientalism and Asian representations on American TV; Internet fan discourses; and new genre theories attuned to the landscape of twenty-first-century media convergence. Screwball Television seeks to bring Gilmore Girls more fully into academic discourse not only as a topic worthy of critical scrutiny but also as an infinitely rewarding text capable of stimulating the imagination of students beyond the classroom."
--Syracuse University Press Spring 2010 catalog, page 22.
What could be better than Gilmore Girls through the lens of media studies and English lit crit? Seriously folks, I so, so, so want this book that comes out in March. But it's reeeeealy expensive for a paperback. Would it be completely evil to request a review copy for the journal, even though our focus is modern period rather than contemporary?
All right, it would be unethical. Sigh. Better start saving my pennies.
Categories: book reviews, literary criticism
Good morning, Laurel! I have a little something for you over at my blog today. ;)
ReplyDeleteLaurel, it would not be evil. DO IT! After all it's for the common good. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Shannon. As I said on your blog, I'll post about this next week.
ReplyDeleteRobyn: There is an off chance that the press will simply ship an unsolicited review copy. Then I'm golden. (Some presses send us loads of things we never review: Cambridge seems to have a bottomless budget, often sending duplicates--from England.) Stuff we request, however, comes with the expectation our journal wil publish a review within the next 18-24 months. It's bad form to do otherwise.