Director Arthur Penn, who passed away last week, is best remembered for his Broadway plays and Hollywood films, but his impressive work in television's live anthology dramas has been neglected.
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TV
Arthur Penn and Live Television Drama
Tweets of Anarchy: Showrunners on Twitter
For today's television showrunner, Twitter is simultaneously rife with potential and littered with pitfalls.
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Egregious Product Placement: The Closer & Hershey’s
Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on TNT's The Closer loves candy. And Hershey's loves The Closer. Is it a product placement match made in heaven?
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A New Stage in the Evolution of Original Cable Programming?
This summer’s crop of original cable series leaves me wondering if we’ve entered a new era, as I increasingly find less innovation and distinction among many of cable’s originals.
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What’s Happening to Don Draper?: Mad Men and the Waning Value of Masculine Detachment
Unlike any other episode to date, “Waldorf Stories” stresses the importance of masculine disengagement by creating a context in which this mode is no longer available to Don.
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What Do You Think? The Emmys
The 62nd Primetime Emmys aired last night on NBC with a first-time host, and several first-time winners. There's much to discuss, and at Antenna, we're curious: what do you think?
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Vampire Shows and Gendered Quality Television
If I were to pick a worthy successor of Buffy's Sunnydale, it would be Mystic Falls rather than Bon Temps.
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“You’re Not Going to Kill This Account”: Mad Men, Racial Prejudice, and History
Mad Men begs the question of how the 1960s embodied by our characters informs the present world that we now inhabit. What would it mean if we are the inheritors not of only the brave triumphs of the Freedom Riders, but also of the indifference or disinterest of people who felt unaffected by them?
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Chinese Deadwood in Malawi
American TV in Malawi, by way of China and South Africa. What are we to make of the cultural intermediaries, and what does this say about global media flow?
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Selling Style: Mad Men and the Fashioning of Femininity
"The Rejected" is an episode in which how the characters look was central to the meanings on offer.
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Geek Hierarchies, Boundary Policing, and the Good Fan/Bad Fan Dichotomy
We may be several decades removed from the emotional upheavals of the culture debates, but popular studies remains a readily mocked area in mainstream media, especially as universities are often asked to produce efficient and effectual employees rather than well rounded individuals.
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Of Pigs and BullSh*t: Fox Television Stations, Inc. v. FCC
The narrowly decided 1978 Pacifica decision was, from one perspective, a battle over pig metaphors. Sadly, there are no new pig metaphors in Fox Television Stations, Inc. v. FCC, though the Pacifica case looms large in the decision.
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Mad Men, Episode 4.2: Everything New is Old Again
After the exciting new sets, haircuts, fashions, and even a new, chastened, Don of the season opening, episode two shows us that it’s not so easy to escape the familiar grooves of custom and habit.
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On Stan Lee, Leonard Nimoy, and Coitus . . . Or, The Fleeting Pleasures of Televisual Nerdom
Maybe it was time to leave the safe haven of sci-fi niche nerdom and dip my toe into a mass program. BBT had just won a People’s Choice award. Could all the people be wrong all the time?
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Mad about Mad Men: Antenna takes a Look at AMC’s High Profile Drama
Mad Men gears up for its fourth season with a big public relations push. What makes the show so special and can it continue to live up to its buzz?
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