Suburbia on the box

Th is chapter addresses the subject of how suburbia is pictured on television: both underwent a growth period in the twentieth century. Indeed at the same time as marketing campaigns for new suburban housing the television was, alongside the labour-saving devices of refrigerator and washing machine, one of the luxuries that was dangled at new suburban dwellers to furnish their home with aft er the shackles of post-war austerity were being shaken off . Spigel ( 2001b :388) has looked at early print advertisements for television sets and fi nds that these off ered and fed into ‘utopian visions and middle-class anxieties about the future of family life and in particular, the future of gender and generational relations in the home’. Th e ideal lifestyle presented in many examples depicts families around the box which is positioned hearth-like as the focal point of the room emitting a rosy glow. From Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation when whole British streets seeking a sighting of this hitherto unprecedented spectacle would cram into the homes of those, at the time rare, families who possessed a set, to its present near-universal penetration (with albeit fragmented viewing habits) via the era of mass audiences and prime time, television has attained a ubiquity and attendant promise of escapism to a far greater degree than the more discerning and arguably stratifi ed or at least more specialized publics for literature, cinema and music.

• Tipo de recurso: Part of book
• Fecha de publicación: 2013
• Institución: Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano
• Repositorio: Expeditio: repositorio UTadeo
• Idioma: eng
• OAI Identifier: oai:expeditiorepositorio.utadeo.edu.co:20.500.12010/16049
• Acceso en línea: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/making-sense-of-suburbia-through-popular-culture/ch5-suburbia-on-the-box; http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12010/16049; http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781472544759.ch-005
• Palabra clave: Suburbia; Vida suburbana; Cultura popular; Suburbios
• License: Abierto (Texto Completo)