Description

Book Synopsis
After a 35 year-long career on worldwide TV screens, Lieutenant Columbo has become one of the most famous fictional detectives. Lilian Mathieu shows that the Columbo series owes its success to its implicit but formidable political dimension, as each episode is structured as a class struggle between a rich, famous, cultured or powerful criminal and an apparently humble and blunderer police officer dressed in a crumpled raincoat and driving an antique car. Highlighting the contentious context that gave birth to the series in 1968, he shows that the sociology of culture offers intellectual tools to understand how a TV detective story can be appreciated as a joyful class revenge.

Table of Contents
Abstract Keywords  Introduction  1 Class against Class  2 A World of Distinction  3 Superiority in Crime  4 A Sense of Limits  5 A Misplaced Police Officer  6 Police Work  7 Just One More Thing … References  List of Episodes

Columbo: Class Struggle on TV Tonight

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    A Paperback by Lilian Mathieu, Pascal Bataillard

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      Publisher: Brill
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 06/01/2022
      ISBN13: 9789004512429, 978-9004512429
      ISBN10:
      Also in:
      Film history, theory or criticism Age groups: adolescents Popular culture

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      After a 35 year-long career on worldwide TV screens, Lieutenant Columbo has become one of the most famous fictional detectives. Lilian Mathieu shows that the Columbo series owes its success to its implicit but formidable political dimension, as each episode is structured as a class struggle between a rich, famous, cultured or powerful criminal and an apparently humble and blunderer police officer dressed in a crumpled raincoat and driving an antique car. Highlighting the contentious context that gave birth to the series in 1968, he shows that the sociology of culture offers intellectual tools to understand how a TV detective story can be appreciated as a joyful class revenge.

      Table of Contents
      Abstract Keywords  Introduction  1 Class against Class  2 A World of Distinction  3 Superiority in Crime  4 A Sense of Limits  5 A Misplaced Police Officer  6 Police Work  7 Just One More Thing … References  List of Episodes

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