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In TV Snapshots, Lynn Spigel explores snapshots of people posing in front of their television sets in the 1950s through the early 1970s. Like today's selfies, TV snapshots were a popular photographic practice through which people visualized their lives in an increasingly mediated culture. Drawing on her collection of over 5,000 TV snapshots, Spigel shows that people did not just watch TV: women used the TV set as a backdrop for fashion and glamour poses; people dressed in drag in front of the screen; and in pinup poses, people even turned the TV setting into a space for erotic display. While the television industry promoted on-screen images of white nuclear families in suburban homes, the snapshots depict a broad range of people across racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds that do not always conform to the reigning middle-class nuclear family ideal. Showing how the television set became a central presence in the home that exceeded its mass entertainment function, Spigel highlights how TV snapshots complicate understandings of the significance of television in everyday life

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: TV Households -- The Suburban Home Companion: Television and the Neighborhood Ideal in Postwar America -- Portable TV: Studies in Domestic Space Travel -- Part II: White Flight -- From Domestic Space to Outer Space: The 1960s Fantastic Family Sitcom -- Outer Space and Inner Cities: African American Responses to NASA -- Part III: Baby Boom Kids -- Seducing the Innocent: Childhood and Television in Postwar America -- Innocence Abroad: The Geopolitics of Childhood in Postwar Kid Strips -- Part IV: Living Room to Gallery -- High Culture in Low Places: Television and Modern Art, 1950-1970 -- Barbies without Ken: Femininity, Feminism, and the Art-Culture System -- Part V: Rewind and Fast Forward -- From the DarkAges to the Golden Age: Women's Memories and Television Reruns -- Yesterday's Future, Tomorrow's Home -- Index

This article analyzes recent architectural and product designs for computerized smart homes. The smart home is a sentient space where human subjects and domestic objects speak to one another via intelligent agents and internet connections. This article explores the industrial logic behind this new vision of home (i.e. the links between the hi-tech industry and the building/ home appliance industries) and examines the mode of subjectivity the smart home demands. It calls this mode of subjectivity 'posthuman domesticity' (a term to explore the way that everyday human experience is orchestrated by telerobotics and intelligent agents). Analyzing architectural designs, advertisements and magazines, the article focuses on how the smart home industry promotes an ideal of 'conspicuous production' in which the luxury home is no longer just a site of leisure and consumption, but also the ultimate workplace. It argues that smart homes reconfigure but also reinforce gendered patterns of domestic labor and leisure.

This essay examines the role that television played in defining the American image after World War II. lt focuses on how television served to popularize modern painting (especially abstract expressionism and Pop art), and it looks how television contributed to the nationalist goal of creating a uniquely »American « image - distinct from European painting, especially that of Paris. lt argues that television valorized advertising art as the quintessential American and democratic form, and in the process led the way to the popular embrace of Popism. The essay also considers television's role in the gendered economies of the postwar art world. In particular, it considers how television programs about the arts addressed a family/housewife audience, and it also shows how television portrayed artists in relation to gender and sexual politics. ; This essay examines the role that television played in defining the American image after World War II. lt focuses on how television served to popularize modern painting (especially abstract expressionism and Pop art), and it looks how television contributed to the nationalist goal of creating a uniquely »American « image - distinct from European painting, especially that of Paris. lt argues that television valorized advertising art as the quintessential American and democratic form, and in the process led the way to the popular embrace of Popism. The essay also considers television's role in the gendered economies of the postwar art world. In particular, it considers how television programs about the arts addressed a family/housewife audience, and it also shows how television portrayed artists in relation to gender and sexual politics.

La télévision dans le cercle de famille.
À partir d'un matériel d'articles de presse (presse de télévision, magazines féminins et presse sur la maison), cet article, second chapitre du livre Make room for TV, Television and the Family Ideal in Post-war America, montre comment, en l'espace d'une dizaine d'années dans les années 50, la télévision est devenue la figure centrale dans la représentation de la famille. La télévision offre dans ces années d'après-guerre une scène nationale sur laquelle se jouent et peuvent se résoudre les conflits sur la façon dont les Américains doivent vivre, en particulier sur la vie familiale et la division sexuelle du travail. La télévision était censée avoir une capacité d'unification, de rapprochement des familles, de « ciment du foyer », pour des familles qui avaient été séparées pendant la guerre et également après, dans la période d'installation des classes moyennes dans les banlieues. L'article analyse le rôle des magazines féminins dans l'organisation de la famille à travers l'organisation de l'espace domestique. En énonçant où et comment regarder la télévision, la presse a eu un rôle d'imposition pratique transformant les interactions familiales. La télé est-elle un remède aux problèmes des enfants et à la délinquance (puisqu'ils resteraient à la maison au lieu d'aller dans la rue), joue-telle le rôle de nurse ou de professeur, ou bien rend-elle les enfants victimes passives des programmes? Ramène-t-elle les hommes à la maison ou usurpe-t-elle l'autorité parentale ? La controverse sur les effets de la télévision sur la famille est présentée non seulement par l'analyse des débats de presse mais aussi dans la façon dont elle est reprise par les sciences humaines et par une série d'experts.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- 1. KIDDIE PORN VERSUS ADULT PORN -- 2. NOT IN MY LIVING ROOM -- 3. THE SEX THREAT -- 4. SYMBOLS OF SEX -- 5. SEX WITH A LAUGH TRACK -- 6. FROM ROMANCE TO RAPE -- CONCLUSION -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX