Description
Book SynopsisSarah Banet-Weiser explores how the cable network Nickelodeon combines an appeal to kids formidable purchasing power with assertions of their political and cultural power.
Trade Review“
Kids Rule! challenges us to think about Nickelodeon’s impact on our ideas about childhood, consumerism, and citizenship. With wit and insight, Sarah Banet-Weiser explains how this phenomenal cable and branding success story changed children’s TV while deftly promoting its brand worldwide. A must-read for parents and teachers.”—Ellen Seiter, author of
The Internet Playground: Children’s Access, Entertainment, and Mis-Education“
Kids Rule! is an immensely important and exciting book. Based on meticulous research, with a strong cultural production approach, it is a book that will be widely read by scholars and students alike. It fills a large gap in this terrain of work and it is lively, thorough, and brimming with insight and argument.”—Angela McRobbie, author of
The Uses of Cultural Studies“In this remarkable book, Sarah Banet-Weiser delves into the political, cultural, and economic forces that drive Nickelodeon. As it has moved from upstart cable network to international conglomerate, Nick has tried to have its cake and eat it too—it is a place where ‘kids rule!’ but also a network that understands the value of pleasing parents. The book compellingly reveals how Nick addresses its young viewers as consumer-citizens and how it commodifies both ‘girl power’ and ethnic diversity to forge a unique place for itself within the children’s television marketplace.”—Heather Hendershot, editor of
Nickelodeon Nation: The History, Politics, and Economics of America’s Only TV Channel for KidsTable of ContentsList of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
1. “We, the People of Nickelodeon”: Theorizing Empowerment and Consumer Citizenship 1
2. The Success Story: Nickelodeon and the Cable Industry 38
3. The Nickelodeon Brand: Buying and Selling the Audience 69
4. Girls Rule! Gender, Feminism, and Nickelodeon 104
5. Consuming Race on Nickelodeon 142
6. Is Nick for Kids? Irony, Camp, and Animation in the Nickelodeon Brand 178
Conclusion: Kids Rule: The Nickelodeon Universe 211
Notes 219
Bibliography 245
Index 259
