Böcker av Janet Staiger

Argues that a historical examination of spectators' responses to films can make a valuable contribution to the history, criticism, and philosophy of cultural products. This title gives special attention to how questions of class, gender, sexual preference, race, and ethnicity enter into film viewers' interpretations.

In the history of American TV only four sitcoms have been true hits - "All in the Family", "The Beverley Hillbillies", "Laverne and Shirley" and "The Cosby Show." This book seeks to account for the appeal of these sitcoms, detailing the factors that go into the construction of mass audiences.

Surveys the past century of scholarship on the ways in which audiences make meaning out of mass media. The book synthesizes social scientific, linguistic, and cultural studies approaches to film and television as communication media.

This work shows that studying the interpretative methods of spectators in their historical contexts is necessary to understand the media's role in culture and in our personal lives. This approach is applied to topics such as depictions of violence and demonstrated through works like "JFK".