TV by Susan Bordo, reviewed

We look at the new book TV by Susan Bordo, TV is available from Bloomsbury here.

TV by Susan Bordo, reviewed

This is an entertaining, if subjective book. Bordo very early on declares that sport will not be included in her remit of topics for discussion, because, her dad used to smoke a cigar and watch it. Each to their own, but I do know some people who actually liked sport on the TV, not because they particularly liked it themselves, but because it reminded them of their dads. Bordo’s range of subjects for discussion is wide ranging, if perhaps at times a little dated, is Allie McBeal still a relevant series to pick apart?

Bordo is right to critically evaluate Trump and all that his time on television, playing the role, of a successful business person – well enough, to convince a nation to give him the presidency, for 4 years, or longer, depending on how your like your facts… At times we did wonder if ‘TV’ is really a thing anymore, considering how fractured and diverse our viewing habits are. We haven’t personally had a television for at least ten years, though we are all still viewing ‘content’ through various platforms and mediums. Bordo continues to refer to TV & television as, perhaps, a more coherent entity than it actually is these days.

We wouldn’t agree with all of her observations, but it did make for a thought provoking and interesting read, which is the goal of the Object Lessons series. In some ways you get the sense that Bordo feels TVs best days are long behind us, but we, the world, still want some form of entertainment and diversion as the world rolls on. Bordo’s analysis of this medium shows there is still life in it!

More about the book ->

About TV

Once upon a time, the news was only 15 minutes long and middle-class families huddled around a tiny black-and-white screen, TV dinners on their laps, awaiting weekly sitcoms that depicted an all-white world in which mom wore pearls and heels as she baked endless pies. If this seems a distant past, that’s a measure of just how much TV has changed-and changed us.

Weaving together personal memoir, social and political history, and reflecting on key moments in the history of news broadcasting and prime time entertainment, Susan Bordo opens up the 75-year-old time-capsule that is TV and illustrates what a constant companion and dominant cultural force television has been, for good and for bad, in carrying us from the McCarthy hearings and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet to Mad Men, Killing Eve, and the emergence of our first reality TV president.

Susan Bordo is Professor Emerita at the University of Kentucky. She has published many influential books, on subjects that range from femininity, masculinity, and the body, most recently The Destruction of Hillary Clinton, a play-by-play account of the gendered double-standards and stereotypes, political forces and media culture that contributed to Clinton’s loss in the 2016 election and Imagine Bernie Sanders as a Woman and Other Writing on Politics and the Media 2016-2019 (2020.)

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