My Account Wish List
Advanced Search
Print - Close Window
www.praeger.com/catalog/C9247.aspx
All Greenwood Products
Truth and Rumors The Reality Behind TV's Most Famous Myths
Bill Brioux
Book Code: C9247
ISBN: 0-275-99247-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-99247-7
212 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 12/30/2007
List Price: $39.95 (UK Sterling Price: £22.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: When you first heard it, you couldn't believe it: Jerry Mathers, from TV's Leave It To Beaver, had been killed in Vietnam. Then word came that Abe Vigoda, the actor who played the curmudgeonly cop Fish on Barney Miller, was dead; and that Mikey, who would eat anything as the Life Cereal tyke, had eaten too many Pop Rocks and exploded. By the '90s, people were certain that Steve, from the animated kiddie show Blue's Clues, had died of a heroin addiction; that watching Sailor Moon caused convulsions; and that Josh Savino, Kevin's geeky pal on The Wonder Years, had grown up to become Marilyn Manson. Besides exposing us to things we couldn't otherwise believe, television can convince us of things that never actually happened. But how did these outrageous TV legends get started? How did they spread from classrooms to boardrooms across North America and beyond? And, most important, what do these rumors, so quickly transformed into facts and common knowledge, reveal about our relationship to reality through the medium of television? Put in other words, what exactly is it that were doing when were dealing in these fabulous rumors--are we chasing after surprising truths or simply more incredible entertainment? To take one telling example: Jerry Mathers was not actually killed in Vietnam--but the basic sense of this lie wasn't far removed from the emotions factually expressed in the two-page spread of the faces of the dead in Time magazine. In the course of this compelling work--which is supplemented with interviews with many of the people implicated in these rumors--author Bill Brioux exposes the reality behind the many stories that currently circulate in our culture. Through these stories (both true and false), he sheds a revealing light on just what role these rumors play in contemporary society--and what role our society plays in regard to these rumors as well.
LC Card Number: 2007037547
LCC Class: PN1992
Dewey Class: 791
PDF Catalogs:
Praeger Public Library Spring 2008.pdf
Pop Culture Spring 2008.pdf
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1999-2009 Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
88 Post Road West, Westport CT 06881, (203) 226-3571