"The continuing fascination with Gilmore Girls . . . suggest just how much there is to the show, and the essays in this collection mine much of this territory quite well."—The Complete Review
Description
Bringing together seventeen original essays by scholars from around the world, Screwball Television offers a variety of international perspectives on Gilmore Girls. Adored by fans and celebrated by critics for its sophisticated wordplay and compelling portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship, this contemporary American TV program finally gets its due as a cultural production unlike any other, one that is beholden to Hollywood’s screwball comedies of the 1930s, steeped in intertextual references, and framed as a “kinder, gentler kind of cult television series” in this tightly focused yet wide-ranging collection.
This volume makes a significant contribution to television studies, genre studies, and women’s studies.
Screwball Television seeks to bring Gilmore Girls more fully into academic discourse not only as a topic worthy of critical scrutiny but also as an infinitely rewarding text capable of stimulating the imagination of students beyond the classroom.
Table of Contents
Contents
Contributors
Introduction: “You’re about to Be Gilmored”
David Scott Diffrient
Part One. Authorship, Genre, Literacy, Televisuality
1. “Impossible Girl”: Amy Sherman-Palladino and Television Creativity
David Lavery
2. Branding the Family Drama: Genre Formations and Critical Perspectives on Gilmore Girls
Amanda R. Keeler
3. Your Guide to the Girls: Gilmore-isms, Cultural Capital, and a Different Kind of Quality TV
Justin Owen Rawlins
4. TV “Dramedy” and the Double-Sided “Liturgy” of Gilmore Girls
Giada Da Ros
Part Two. Real and Imagined Communities (in Town and Online)
5. The Gift of Gilmore Girls’ Gab: Fan Podcasts and the Task of “Talking Back” to TV
David Scott Diffrient
6. “I Will Try Harder to Merge the Worlds”: Expanding Narrative and Navigating Spaces in Gilmore Girls
Radha O'Meara
7. “You’ve Always Been the Head Pilgrim Girl”: Stars Hollow as the Embodiment of the American Dream
Alyson R. Buckman
8. Town Meetings of the Imagination: Gilmore Girls and Northern Exposure
Jane Feuer
Part Three. Race, Class, Education, Profession
9. Escaping from Korea: Cultural Authenticity and Asian American Identities in Gilmore Girls
Hye Seung Chung
10. “The Thing That Reads a Lot”: Bibliophilia, College Life, and Literary Culture in Gilmore Girls
Anna Viola Sborgi
11. Stars Hollow, Chilton, and the Politics of Education in Gilmore Girls
Matthew C. Nelson
12. “You Don’t Got It”: Becoming a Journalist in Gilmore Girls
Angel
Angel Castaños Martínez, Amor Muñoz Bécares, and Sarah Caitlin Lavery
Part Four. Food, Addiction, Gender, Sexuality
13. Pass the Pop-Tarts: The Gilmore Girls’ Perpetual Hunger
Susannah B. Mintz and Leah E. Mintz, M.D.
14. “Nigella’s Deep-Frying a Snickers Bar!”: Addiction as a Social Construct in Gilmore Girls
Joyce Goggin
15. Java Junkies Versus Balcony Buddies: Gilmore Girls, “Shipping,” and Contemporary Sexuality
A. Rochelle Marby
16. “But Luke and Lorelai Belong Together!”: Relationships, Social Control, and Gilmore Girls
Jimmie Manning
17. What a Girl Wants: Men and Masculinity in Gilmore Girls
Laura Nathan
Appendix: Complete Episode List
Works Cited
Index
About the Author
David Scott Diffrient is Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. His articles have been published in Cinema Journal, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, Journal of Film and Video, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and other journals. He is the author of Omnibus Films: Theorizing Transauthorial Cinema and the co-author of Movie Migrations: Transnational Genre Flows and South Korean Cinema.
David Lavery was the author of more than one hundred published essays, chapters, and reviews, he was author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of several published books, including Late for the Sky: The Mentality of the Space Age, Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to "Twin Peaks", "Deny All Knowledge": Reading "The X-Files", Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", Teleparody: Predicting/Preventing the TV Discourse of Tomorrow, Reading "The Sopranos": Hit TV from HBO, "Lost"'s Buried Treasures, and Finding "Battlestar Galactica".
October 2017