Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual NonconformityUsing extensive interviews, hundreds of transcripts, focus-group discussions with viewers, and his own experiences as an audience member, Joshua Gamson argues that talk shows give much-needed, high-impact public visibility to sexual nonconformists while also exacerbating all sorts of political tensions among those becoming visible. With wit and passion, Freaks Talk Back illuminates the joys, dilemmas, and practicalities of media visibility. "This entertaining, accessible, sobering discussion should make every viewer sit up and ponder the effects and possibilities of America's daily talk-fest with newly sharpened eyes."—Publishers Weekly "Bold, witty. . . . There's a lot of empirical work behind this deceptively easy read, then, and it allows for the most sophisticated and complex analysis of talk shows yet."—Elayne Rapping, Women's Review of Books "Funny, well-researched, fully theorized. . . . Engaged and humane scholarship. . . . A pretty inspiring example of what talking back to the mass media can be."—Jesse Berrett, Village Voice "An extraordinarily well-researched volume, one of the most comprehensive studies of popular media to appear in this decade."—James Ledbetter, Newsday |
Contents
Why I Love Trash | 2 |
The Monster with Two Heads | 28 |
Truths Told in Lies | 66 |
Sitting Ducks and Forbidden Fruits | 106 |
I Want to Be Miss Understood | 138 |
Flaunting It | 170 |
The Tight Rope of Visibility | 208 |
Methods | 227 |
Notes | 241 |
265 | |
277 | |
Other editions - View all
Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity Joshua Gamson No preview available - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
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Popular passages
Page 256 - Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Praeger, 1966). 67. Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., "Arkansas Negroes in the 1890s: Documents," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 33 (Winter 1974): 307-8; Joan Perry Morris and Lee H.