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Television Aesthetics and Style Eds. Jason Jacobs and Steven Peacock. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 352 pages. $32.95, Paperback.
Together, editors Jason Jacobs, an Associate Professor of Film and Television at the University of Queensland, Australia, and Steven Peacock, a reader in Film and Television Aesthetics at the University of Hertfordshire, present a volume of essays which convincingly argues that the discipline of Television Studies would benefit from a discussion of style and aesthetics. As they note, "academic work on television remains, for the most part, entrenched in theoretical frameworks" (2). Building on the work of Jeremy Butler's Television Style (Routledge, 2010) and Gibbs and Pye's Close-Up series, Jacobs and Peacock maintain that television studies must address the role of aesthetics and style in the production, reception, and distribution of television programs; they note that "television is as capable as film of creating expressive richness in moments that are at once fleeting, demonstrative and dramatically declamatory, climatic, or seemingly inconsequential" (6). While their position is not without controversy, this volume of essays by American and international television scholars demonstrates the importance of style, aesthetics, and textual analysis in evaluating television as a cultural medium and form of art.
Jacobs and Peacock seek to elicit debate and dialogue between the essays and in the reader: "the collection," they note, "forms an invitation to talk and think about television aesthetics and style both more widely and more closely" (11). They organize the book in four parts: conceptual debates, the aesthetics and style of television comedy, critical analyses of television drama, and non-fiction and history. This division allows readers to peruse those areas that are most pertinent to their interests and scholarship; it also reflects a commitment...