<p>Is there really a global village out there? It may be true that the whole world is watching Dallas and Dynasty, but is everyone seeing the same story? It is a fashionable worry among academics, critics and politicians that American hit programs are agents of cultural imperialism. Until now, however, nobody has known what message, if any, the viewer is actually getting and what critical capabilities he or she commands. In this book, Katz and Liebes analyze conversations about Dallas among groups of families and friends in six different sub-cultures in Israel (where the program was an all-time best-seller), in Japan (where it was rejected), and in the U.S. (the original target audience). The authors propose that there is a process of negotiation between these quintessentially American stories and what the viewers bring to them: their life experiences, the "texts" of their culture, and their expectations from the genre of family drama. A study of these negotiations leads to a typology of "readings" ranging from those that connect the characters with reality to those that find pleasure in the way the puzzle is put together. Concluding that television viewers possess considerably more critical ability than they are often given credit for, this fascinating study will interest a wide range of students and academics in communications, anthropology, literature, semiotics, sociology, and education.</p>

The Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Readings of Dallas (Communication and Society)

Humor & Entertainment

Liebes, Tamar

Katz, Elihu

Movies

Oxford University Press

In the new paperback edition of this classic text, Liebes and Katz examine how television viewers around the world respond differently to popular television programmes, particularly  Dallas.  Analszing conversations among viewers in Israel, Japan and the U. S., they show that viewers possess a good deal more critical ability than they are commonly given credit for.

The Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Readings of Dallas

Polity

Reporting the Israeli-Arab Conflict: How Hegemony Works (Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Routledge

Can the American media be blamed for the transformation of an ideologically cohesive society into a segmented society of pleasure seekers, startups, and subcultures? This book shows show how Israel's new television system, which has adopted American technologies, genres, as well as the economics of advertising and privatization, anticipates, leads, and celebrates the changes that have occurred in the country's political culture during the 1990s. The central aspects of Americanization are illustrated and analyzed via a series of case studies. The book looks at the increasing vulnerability of public broadcasting, the danger of action news, the construction of scandal, the Americanization of election campaigns, the victory of style over substance in Prime Ministerial debates, the political discourse of authenticity, and the genre of political talkshows, ending with the question of whether and how Americanized media are capable of coping with recurrent crises of national security.

American Dreams, Hebrew Subtitles: Globalization from the Receiving End (Hampton Press Communication Series. Political Communication.)

Hampton Pr

American Dreams, Hebrew Subtitles: Globalization from the Receiving End (Hampton Press Communication Series. Political Communication)

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