Full Description
Television/Death intertwines the study of death, dying and bereavement on television with discussion of the ways that television (and the TV archive) provides access to the dead.
Section One looks at the representation of death, dying and the afterlife on television, in historical and contemporary factual television (from around the world) and in US television drama.
Section Two focuses on dramas of grief and bereavement and discusses how the long form seriality and narrative complexity of television, from family melodramas to the ghost serial, allows for an emotionally realist representation of experiences of grief, bereavement and death-related trauma.
Finally, Section Three proposes that television has been overlooked in critical analyses of recorded sounds' and images' propensity to 'bring back the dead'. It argues that television is the posthumous medium par excellence and looks at how the dead return via incorporation into new television programmes or through projects to bring television out of the archive.
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Television/Death
Section One: Death and Dying on Television
Chapter One: Everyday death: The early history of death on British television
Chapter Two: Signs of care: Assisted suicide on television
Section Two: Dramas of Grief, Bereavement and the Television Afterlife
Chapter Three: A good death? Death and the afterlife in US television fiction
Chapter Four: Dramas of grief: television and mourning
Chapter Five: Haunted houses, haunted landscapes: grief and trauma in the television ghost story
Section Three: Posthumous Television
Chapter Six: Entering the mausoleum: Posthumous television
Chapter Seven: Ghost town: Posthumous television in the city
Notes
References
Index
