Description
Book SynopsisExplores the globalization of African American television and the way in which foreign markets, programming strategies, and viewer preferences have influenced portrayals of African Americans on the small screen.
Trade ReviewA detailed, well-researched examination of the ways black television culturally circulates and the ways industry lore continues to police how blackness is defined televisually in international spaces * International Journal of Communications *
Global Black Television is a major achievement that makes important contributions to theanalysis of race, identity, global media, nation, and television production cultures. Discussions of race and television are too often constricted within national boundaries, yet this fantastic bookoffers a strong, compelling, and utterly refreshing corrective. Read it, assign it, use it. -- Jonathan Gray,author of Television Entertainment
A useful resource for people in broadcast media, intercultural communication, intergroup relations, media studies, and critical cultural studies. -- W. Alvarez * Choice *
Timothy Havens meticulously well-researched and thoughtful study Black Television Travelsprovides an expansive perspective on the movement of African American programming and the media industrys conventional wisdom that affects the feasibility of its journey. []Black Television Travelsoffers a detailed and insightful view of the routes and roots of televisual representations of Blackness on the transnational media landscape and a model for the rigorous examination of the ways in which industrial conventional wisdom continues to define and confine how culturally specific televisual stories can be told and sold. * Cinema Journal *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPrefaceIntroduction: African American Television Trade 1. Roots and the Perils of African American Television Drama in a Global World 2. Integrated Eighties Situation Comedies and the Struggle against Apartheid 3. The Cosby Show, Family Themes, and the Ascent of White Situation Comedies Abroad in the Late 1980s 4. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Channel Fragmentation, and the Recognition of Difference 5. The Worldwide Circulation of Contemporary African American Television 6. Black Television from Elsewhere: The Globalization of Non-U.S. Black Television Conclusion: Transnational Televisual Aesthetics and Global Discourses of Race Notes References Index About the Author
