Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space

Anna McCarthy

Published by Duke University Press 2001

Ambient Television

Visual Culture and Public Space

Anna McCarthy

In the series Console-ing passions: television and cultural power

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822383130

Overview
Contents

About this book

Examines the role of television in public space at different points in the history of the medium and how that differs from the normal assumptions of domestic viewing space.

Author / Editor information

Anna McCarthy is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

Reviews

“Ambient Television offers a long overdue consideration of television spectatorship through a study of television's strategic positioning in a variety of public environments outside the home. Anna McCarthy's superb historical research has unearthed much fascinating material which will be of interest to artists and media critics. Anyone wishing to understand more fully our ever expanding media culture will benefit from McCarthy's astute analysis and historical insights into television's complex place in the public sphere.”—John Hanhardt, Guggenheim Museum

“An entirely original book, Ambient Television is brilliantly conceived, researched, and argued. Scholars in material culture, media history, and television studies are likely to recognize this virtuoso treatment of TV outside the home as an instant classic.”—Andrew Ross

“An unusually rich, ambitious, and engaging work. McCarthy has produced a significant piece of scholarship that will have wide impact upon the way television is taken up in the academy and elsewhere.”—William Boddy, Baruch College

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: The Public Lives of TV Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I : HISTORIES AND INSTITUTIONS Rhetorics of TV Spectatorship Outside the Home
1. TV, Class, and Social Control in the 1940s Neighborhood Tavern Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
2. Gendered Fantasies of TV Shopping in the Postwar Department Store Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
3. Out-of-Home Networks in the 1990s Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
PART II : PLACES AND PRACTICES Reading TV Installations in Daily Life
4. Shaping Public and Private Space with TV Screens Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
5. Television at the Point of Purchase Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
6. TelevisionWhile YouWait Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
7. Terminal Thoughts on Art, Activism, and Video for Public Places Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 328
Illustrations
- Other: 32 b&w photographs, 15 figures

eBook

Published: March 16, 2001
ISBN: 9780822383130