You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A hilarious parody memoir for the beloved Veep character portrayed for seven seasons by Emmy-winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Born and raised deep in the American heartland of God-fearing suburban Maryland, young Selina Eaton learned to love her country and her fellow man from her parents, Catherine, a sportswoman, dog lover, and philanthropist, and Gordon, or “Daddy” as she always called him, a businessman and entrepreneur. From an early age, Selina, an active, curious, happy-go-lucky child, showed an uncanny ability to relate to others and to solve their real-world problems with real-world solutions. In this she was inspired by her idol: feminist, humanitarian, stateswoman, and first lady, ...
The Hollywood Connection: The Influence of Fictional Media and Celebrity Politics on American Public Opinion is one of the first edited volumes offered in the political science discipline on the effects of fictional media and celebrity on public opinion, and synthesizes many niche areas of research into single text. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of acknowledging a shift in academic focus away from the lateral interactions between celebrities and politicians (and in some cases celebrities becoming politicians) toward research that engages the American audience, as consumers of media, as a critical political component. The volume offers a collection of diverse research on question...
"A radical new interpretation of liberalism, viewing it not merely as a political philosophy or set of political precepts, but as a personal orientation and way of living"--
David Steinberg's name has been synonymous with comedy for decades. The Canadian-born comedian, producer, writer, director, and author has been called "a comic institution himself" by the New York Times. He appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 140 times (second only to Bob Hope), and directed episodes of popular television sitcoms, including Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld, Friends, Mad About You, The Golden Girls, and Designing Women. From 2012–2015, Steinberg hosted the comedy documentary series Inside Comedy, which featured such comedy greats as Billy Crystal, Chris Rock, and Gary Shandling. In this entertaining history of comedy, Steinberg shares insightful memories of hi...
For some, our media-saturated culture points to the decline of Western civilization; for others, it points to the dawn of a bright future. For Nathan Roberts, the mediated landscape is a place to thoughtfully engage with these tensions. This unique memoir, meditative and philosophical, chronicles Nathan’s absorption in the vital, inspiring, and often maddening power of media and entertainment. With wry self-effacement and raw honesty, he calls us to conceive of media not only as an abstract, postmodern phenomenon, but as a digital architecture that creates real meeting space. Exploring social media, music, film, art, theater, standup comedy, and more, Nathan shows us a world of entertainment that reflects the universal hunger for connection.
The first and only of its kind, this book is a straightforward listing of more than 25,000 trivia facts from 2,498 TV series aired between 1947 and 2019. Organized by topic, trivia facts include everything from home addresses of characters, to names of pets and jobs that characters worked. Featured programs include popular shows like The Big Bang Theory and Friends and more obscure programs like A Date with Judy or My Friend Irma. Included is an alphabetical program index that lists trivia facts grouped by series.
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is perhaps the world's most famous address, and it is no ordinary home as it is the address of the White House, the official residence of the President of the United States. It is both global command center and family sanctuary, steeped in rich history and the world's most public private home. From the West Wing and the Oval Office, where most of the business of governing the country happens, to the East Wing, which has become the center of power for the First Lady, the White House is a world unto itself, situated on 18 acres, with over 100 rooms, thousands of staffers, its systems and infrastructure, and some of the most complicated and intense security in the entir...
This book is the first to take comedy seriously as an important aspect of the popular mockumentary form of film and television fiction. It examines the ways in which mockumentary films and television programmes make visible—through comedy—the performances that underpin straight documentaries and many of our public figures. Mockumentary Comedy focuses on the rock star and the politician, two figures that regularly feature as mockumentary subjects. These public figures are explored through detailed textual analyses of a range of film and television comedies, including A Hard Day’s Night, This is Spinal Tap, The Thick of It, Veep and the works of Christopher Guest and Alison Jackson. This book broadens the scope of existing mockumentary scholarship by taking comedy seriously in a sustained way for the first time. It ultimately argues that the comedic performances—by performers and of documentary conventions—are central to the form’s critical significance and popular appeal.
Questioning society and one’s place in it is a common theme in both comedy and sociology. Understanding and subverting hierarchies and norms, exploring deviance and taboos, and relating lived experience to broader questions all hold a crucial place for them both. Introduction to Sociology Through Comedy teaches foundational sociological concepts using comedy, first considering the history of sociology before employing examples from comedians – including standalone comedy bits, sketches, characters, and scenes – to illustrate a specific theory, concept, or social phenomenon. The profession of comedy is then used as a case study for the application of sociological concepts, such as impression management, social stratification, racial segregation, deviance, and stigma, allowing readers to gain familiarity with the concepts while simultaneously practicing their application. This book explains why we laugh by applying theories of humor, which will bolster students’ understanding of sociological principles by forcing them to question their own assumptions – helping them to put why they laugh into sociological terms.