Synopses & Reviews
It is virtually impossible to watch a movie or TV show without preconceived notions because of the hype that precedes them, while a host of media extensions guarantees them a life long past their air dates. An onslaught of information from print media, trailers, internet discussion, merchandising, podcasts, and guerilla marketing, we generally know something about upcoming movies and TV shows well before they are even released or aired. The extras, or “paratexts,” that surround viewing experiences are far from peripheral, shaping our understanding of them and informing our decisions about what to watch or not watch and even how to watch before we even sit down for a show.
Show Sold Separately gives critical attention to this ubiquitous but often overlooked phenomenon, examining paratexts like DVD bonus materials for The Lord of the Rings, spoilers for Lost, the opening credits of The Simpsons, Star Wars actions figures, press reviews for Friday Night Lights, the framing of Batman Begins, the videogame of The Thing, and the trailers for The Sweet Hereafter. Plucking these extra materials from the wings and giving them the spotlight they deserve, Jonathan Gray examines the world of film and television that exists before and after the show.
Review
"Show Sold Separately will rewrite the rules of what we look at when we want to understand how audiences make meaning of media franchises. Gray, who has long established himself in the top ranks of contemporary scholars of popular culture, writes with particularity about these varied media properties and their paratexts, yet also writes with a theoretical sophistication which feels effortless."
-Henry Jenkins,author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
Review
"Show Sold Separately will rewrite the rules of what we look at when we want to understand how audiences make meaning of media franchises. Gray, who has long established himself in the top ranks of contemporary scholars of popular culture, writes with particularity about these varied media properties and their paratexts, yet also writes with a theoretical sophistication which feels effortless."
“Exploring the myriad connections and connotations of a wide array of paratextual materials ranging from movie trailers to action figures, Gray deftly challenges established conceptions of textuality, and opens up intriguing and important new dimensions in media and cultural studies. This is an invaluable contribution, and will change how we think about, and make, media.”
Review
“Exploring the myriad connections and connotations of a wide array of paratextual materials ranging from movie trailers to action figures, Gray deftly challenges established conceptions of textuality, and opens up intriguing and important new dimensions in media and cultural studies. This is an invaluable contribution, and will change how we think about, and make, media.”
-Derek Kompare,author of Rerun Nation: How Repeats Invented American Television
Review
" . . . a fruitfull approach to the study of how women in history were able to shape their private stories for public consumption to promote their own legacy."-Robin Miskolcze,The Journal of American History
Review
“Shockley has written a fine historian's biography that is also a good read. The Captains Widow of Sandwich shows how Burgess created her own heroic persona and how that particular version of one womans story embodied and ennobled the ideals of an embattled Cape Cod community.”
-Cynthia Kierner,author of The Contrast: Manners, Morals, and Authority in the Early American Republic
Review
“Shockleys fascinating analysis of the life and writing of Rebecca Burgess complicates our understanding of the construction of white, middle-class womanhood in Victorian America. Burgess neither rejected nor embraced the traditional meanings of womanhood in her day. She was independent and obedient, domestic and a wanderer. She valued ‘separate spheres and loved her ocean travels with her sea captain husband. Burgesss story is a cautionary tale, a reminder that real human beings are generally more complex than we may realize.”
-Sheila Skemp,author of First Lady of Letters: Judith Sargent Murray and the Struggle for Female Independence
Synopsis
Highlights the trailers, merchandising and cultural conversations that shape our experiences of film and television
It is virtually impossible to watch a movie or TV show without preconceived notions because of the hype that precedes them, while a host of media extensions guarantees them a life long past their air dates. An onslaught of information from print media, trailers, internet discussion, merchandising, podcasts, and guerilla marketing, we generally know something about upcoming movies and TV shows well before they are even released or aired. The extras, or "paratexts," that surround viewing experiences are far from peripheral, shaping our understanding of them and informing our decisions about what to watch or not watch and even how to watch before we even sit down for a show.
Show Sold Separately gives critical attention to this ubiquitous but often overlooked phenomenon, examining paratexts like DVD bonus materials for The Lord of the Rings, spoilers for Lost, the opening credits of The Simpsons, Star Wars actions figures, press reviews for Friday Night Lights, the framing of Batman Begins, the videogame of The Thing, and the trailers for The Sweet Hereafter. Plucking these extra materials from the wings and giving them the spotlight they deserve, Jonathan Gray examines the world of film and television that exists before and after the show.
Synopsis
In 1852 Hannah Rebecca Crowell married sea captain William Burgess and set sail. Within three years, Rebecca Burgess had crossed the equator eleven times and learned to navigate a vessel. In 1856, 22-year-old Rebecca saved the ship
Challenger as her husband lay dying from dysentery. The widow returned to her family's home in Sandwich, Massachusetts, where she refused all marriage proposals and died wealthy in 1917.
This is the way Burgess recorded her story in her prodigious journals and registers, which she donated to the local historical society upon her death, but there is no other evidence that this dramatic event occurred exactly this way. In The Captains Widow of Sandwich, Megan Taylor Shockley examines how Burgess constructed her own legend and how the town of Sandwich embraced that history as its own. Through careful analysis of myriad primary sources, Shockley also addresses how Burgess dealt with the conflicting gender roles of her life, reconciling her traditionally masculine adventures at sea and her independent lifestyle with the accepted ideals of the periods “Victorian woman.”
About the Author
Jonathan Gray is associate professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of Television Entertainment and Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality and co-editor of Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era and Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World (both available from NYU Press).