| Description |
1 online resource (xiv, 270 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
Introduction: Christianity, religion, and Hollywood television production cultures -- Christianity's broad appeal in the 1990s: Touched by an angel and 7th Heaven -- Biblical miniseries in the 2010s: Mark Burnett, Roma Downey, and faithful Christian representation -- Southern realism: Christianity in Friday night lights and Rectify -- Nonwhite Christian dramas: exploration thought otherness in Jane the Virgin and Greenleaf -- Religion as unreality: fantastic TV's generic displacement of Christianity -- The biblical book of Revelation as mythology: apocalyptic TV the post-Christian end of the world and apocalyptic television -- Streaming religion: Netflix's Daredevil and Amazon's Hand of God -- Conclusion: polarized culture and dual approaches to Christianity on TV |
| Summary |
In Divine Programming, author Charlotte E. Howell investigates the disconnect between dramatic television narratives of white Christianity and the religion they are meant to represent, focusing on key series including 7th Heaven, Friday Night Lights, Supernatural, Jane the Virgin, and Daredevil |
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"From the mid-90s to the present, television drama with religious content has come to reflect the growing cultural divide between white middle-America and concentrated urban elites. As author Charlotte E. Howell argues in this book, by 2016, television narratives of white Christianity had become entirely disconnected from the religion they were meant to represent. Programming labeled 'family-friendly' became a euphemism for white, middlebrow America, and developing audience niches became increasingly significant to serial dramatic television. Utilizing original case studies and interviews, Divine Programming investigates the development, writing, producing, marketing, and positioning of key series including 7th Heaven, Friday Night Lights, Rectify, Supernatural, Jane the Virgin, Daredevil, and Preacher. As this book shows, there has historically been a deep ambivalence among television production cultures regarding religion and Christianity more specifically. It illustrates how middle-American television audiences lost significance within the Hollywood television industry and how this in turn has informed and continues to inform television programming on a larger scale. In recent years, upscale audience niches have aligned with the perceived tastes of affluent, educated, multicultural, and-importantly-secular elites. As a result, the televised representation of white Christianity had to be othered, and shifted into the unreality of fantastic genres to appeal to niche audiences. To examine this effect, Howell looks at religious representation through four approaches - establishment, distancing, displacement, and use - and looks at series across a variety of genres and outlets in order to provied varied analyses of each theme."-- Provided by publisher |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (viewed September 3, 2020) |
| Subject |
Religion on television.
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Christianity in mass media.
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Christianity in mass media
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Religion on television
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9780190054397 |
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0190054395 |
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