Book dossier

Screen tastes

by Charlotte Brunsdon

In Screen Tastes: Soap Opera to Satellite Dishes Charlotte Brunsdon analyses a wide range of contemporary film and television programmes, from British soap operas and crime series to Hollywood movies such as Working Girl and Pretty Woman. As well as interpreting the pleasures and meanings that these texts offer - particularly for women viewers - the book is concerned with the language of criticism, particularly feminist criticism, and the aesthetics of popular culture. Why have feminist media critics been so interested in the soap opera viewer? What is meant by 'quality' in television? What are the 'race' politics of the television crime series? And was the fuss about the erection of satellite dishes on British homes really about architecture? Screen Tastes documents an important contribution to the development of a feminist cultural studies in the 1980s and 1990s with concerns ranging from 'shopping films' to the deregulation of public service broadcasting, from feminist teaching to the aesthetics of television. While acknowledging debates about the female spectator which underpinned the defence of soap opera and women's films, Brunsdon argues against feminist criticism getting stuck forever in a girly zone. In a period in which global television is undergoing radical transformation, the book responds to problems facing the cultural studies agenda in an age of aggressive de-regulation.