Donald Trump’s emergence in the field of American politics has had an
undeniable and wide-ranging impact on contemporary American television. As a
medium television has been quick to respond to the extraordinary climate and
fast-paced news environment created by the roller-coaster of events and
political strategies that have defined the Trump administration. CBS drama The
Good Fight, for example, explicitly ties the unfolding events of the Trump
presidency to its characters’ professional and personal lives, while the
dystopian narrative of The Handmaid’s Tale seems an updated warning of the
continuing threats to women’s legal and cultural rights. Each genre from the
satirical show to reality television has demonstrated the centrality of
contemporary politics to viewers’ everyday experience, assuming an atypical
awareness of current events amongst diverse members of the American public. At
the same time, television has been forced to confront its role in the construction
of a media-driven celebrity presidency, as it provides 24-hour breaking-news
coverage and makes celebrities out of the various press secretaries entering
and exiting Trump world. Whether it’s the challenge of depicting the fictitious
car crash politics of Veep with the backdrop of a White House reportedly in
disarray, or news analysis shows wading through the concepts of ‘fake news’ and
‘alternative facts’, the balance between representation, critique,
entertainment, fiction and fact has become the site of television’s negotiation
with the current era.
This volume seeks a range of essays aiming to address the ways in which
the political climate of the Trump era has revealed itself on American
television. The political setting might be defined as much by movements such as
#MeToo, Time’s Up and Black Lives Matter as by the various branches of federal
government, or political moments such as Charlottesville or the release of the
Mueller Report. Similarly, authors might choose to examine individual television
shows or particular genres, and themes including celebrity politics, backlash
culture, journalism as entertainment, genre hybridity, amongst a variety of
topics.
Chapter proposals should be submitted as a 300-400 word abstract by 30
June 2019 to the editor, Karen McNally, at TrumpEraTelevisionthebook@gmail.com.
Please include a full author biography and contact details. Final chapters will
be 5,000 to 6,000 words and due by 15 November 2019. Please feel free to email
also with any queries prior to submission of abstracts. A major publisher is
being sought for the volume.
Dr Karen McNally is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at
London Metropolitan University and a specialist in Hollywood cinema and
American television and culture. She is the author of When Frankie Went to
Hollywood: Frank Sinatra and American Male Identity (University of Illinois Press, 2008) and The Stardom Film: Hollywood and the Star Myth (Columbia University Press, forthcoming). She is also the editor of Billy Wilder,
Movie-Maker: Critical Essays on the Films (McFarland, 2011) and co-editor of The Legacy of Mad Men: Cultural History, Intermediality and American
Television (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
Contact Details: TrumpEraTelevisionthebook@gmail.com
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