The Book and the Box takes a new approach to understanding the relationship between the rise of television, the history of twentieth century fiction, and the shifting definitions of authorship in the United States during a period in which large media conglomerations began acquiring and merging with literary publishing houses. I demonstrate that the mechanisms of media convergence threatened previous, romantic notions of authorship and resulted in crises of agency and authority for many writers struggling to survive in a new world of transitioning media forms and audiences. My study uncovers a shadow history of postmodernism that has thus far been left buried by lagging scholarship on individual authors’ careers.
The first chapter sets up the context for my dissertation by offering a new approach to looking at the history of media studies as it relates to the televisual and literary author. I argue that the major strands of media studies as an academic discipline have largely sacrificed the writer/author in order to emphasize television’s status a cultural mirror and institutional product. I believe that emphasizing the problem of authorship helps us better appreciate the aesthetic and cultural history of television and literature. Chapter 2 examines Rod Serling’s struggles to gain control over his television scripts despite the collaborative nature of the medium. Serling, I argue, made myriad sacrifices with his series The Twilight Zone, embracing a genre that wasn’t taken seriously and becoming a salesman for his series and the products sold by the sponsors of his series. Chapter 3 argues that Harlan Ellison’s idealized notion of writing as a solitary act was irreconcilable with the collaborative nature of the televisual medium, pitting him against producers and fans. Finally, chapter 4 looks at Ishmael Reed and Bill Gunn’s little-discussed meta soap opera Personal Problems. I argue that, contra Ellison and Serling, Reed and Gunn embrace the collaborative nature of television as a means of creating what they saw as authentic representation of Black life in America thus far missing from mainstream television.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/43917 |
| Date | 23 February 2022 |
| Creators | Bartlett, Christopher |
| Contributors | Foltz, Jonathan, Chodat, Robert |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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