Smoke and Mirrors: Violence, Television and Other American Cultures

Instead of making a scapegoat of television as the cause of crime on the streets of the USA, stupidity in its schools, and spectacle rather than substance in its government, this challenge to conventional ideas about television sees inside the box an echo chamber and a feedback loop; a medium neither wholly innocent of, nor entirely responsible for, the disorder it brings to people’s homes. Taking on a diverse range of topics from children’s shows to cable, from the cheap thrills of action adventures to the solemn boredom of pledge drives, the author argues for a whole new way of thinking about television.