Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture

Eva Illouz

Published by Columbia University Press 2003

Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery

An Essay on Popular Culture

Eva Illouz

https://doi.org/10.7312/illo11812

Overview
Contents

About this book

Oprah Winfrey is the protagonist of the story to be told here, but this book has broader intentions, begins Eva Illouz in this original examination of how and why this talk show host has become a pervasive symbol in American culture. Unlike studies of talk shows that decry debased cultural standards and impoverished political consciousness, Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery asks us to rethink our perceptions of culture in general and popular culture in particular.

At a time when crises of morality, beliefs, value systems, and personal worth dominate both public and private spheres, Oprah's emergence as a cultural form—the Oprah persona—becomes clearer, as she successfully reiterates some of our most pressing moral questions. Drawing on nearly one hundred show transcripts; a year and a half of watching the show regularly; and analysis of magazine articles, several biographies, O Magazine, Oprah Book Club novels, self-help manuals promoted on the show, and hundreds of discussions on the Oprah Winfrey Web site, Illouz takes the Oprah industry seriously, revealing it to be a multilayered "textual structure" that initiates, stages, and performs narratives of suffering and self-improvement that resonate with a wide audience and challenge traditional models of cultural analysis. This book looks closely at Oprah's method and her message, and in the process reconsiders popular culture and the tools we use to understand it.

Author / Editor information

Eva Illouz is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (University of California Press) and The Culture of Capitalism (in Hebrew).

Reviews

David W. Park:
Outstanding... its author digs deeper into her subject matter than any other researcher yet to address Oprah.

Seth Jacobs:
We should commend Illouz in her willingness to blaze a new, and certainly untested path in anthropological writing.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
1 Introduction: Oprah Winfrey and the Study of Culture Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2 The Success of a Self-Failed Woman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
3 Everyday Life as the Uncanny: The Oprah Winfrey Show as a New Cultural Genre Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
4 Pain and Circuses Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
5 The Hypertext of Identity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	120
6 Suffering and Self-Help as Global Forms of Identity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	156
7 The Sources and Resources of The Oprah Winfrey Show Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
8 Toward an Impure Critique of Popular Culture Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
9 Conclusion: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Television Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	236
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Biblography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263
Subject Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293
Name Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: November 5, 2003
ISBN: 9780231508971