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Second Lives: Black-Market Melodramas and the Reinvention of Television

Szalay, Michael

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A history of prestige television through the rise of the "black-market melodrama."

In Second Lives, Michael Szalay defines a new television genre that has driven the breathtaking ascent of TV as a cultural force over the last two decades: the black-market melodrama. Exemplified by the likes of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, the genre moves between a family's everyday life and its secret second life, which may involve illegal business, espionage, or even an alternate reality. Second lives allow characters (and audiences) to escape what feels like endless work into a revanchist vision of the white middle class family. But there is for this grimly resigned genre no meaningful way back to the Fordist family wage for which it longs. In fact, Szalay argues, black-market melodramas lament the very economic transformations that untethered TV viewing from the daily rhythms of the nine-to-five job and led, ultimately, to prestige TV.

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Publisher

UNIV OF CHICAGO PR

Bisac Major Subject

Performing Arts

Binding Type

Paperback

Country Of Origin

Number Of Units

Length

9.0 Inches

Barcode Indicator

EAN

Width

6.0 Inches

Publication Date

2023-03-22

Height

0.74 Inches

ISBN 10

0226824802

Weight

1.07 Pounds

Book EAN

9780226824802

Target Audiance

Adults

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Second Lives: Black-Market Melodramas and the Reinvention of Television