The Movie of the Week: Private Stories/Public Events, Vol. 5 FROM THE PUBLISHER
The purpose of this book is to help viewers appreciate, from an informed and critical perspective, how TV movies work--for good and ill--and to themselves a active viewers who, in watching a movie of the week, are participating in an important public event that calls upon them to make judgments and perhaps even, as a result of viewing, considering, and discussing, to act upon those judgments.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Made-for-television movies, Rapping argues cogently and thoughtfully, probe serious issues better than most other TV genres. A professor of communications at Adelphi University, Rapping consigns heavy academic discussion to a long introduction, though she makes her feminist and media theories accessible throughout the book. Theatrical films are increasingly aimed at youths who want to get out of the house and at men who usually decide what a couple will view. TV movies, which often are shown only once, can take more risks, Rapping notes, and cater more to women, the primary shoppers. She's aware of the contradictions in TV movies: serious themes are sold through sex and violence, and a concentration on family themes, even in histories like Roots , ``trivialize issues of power and money.'' But some films, like Roe vs. Wade , recreate histories lost to many viewers, including her students. Rapping also suggests that the subtle, psychologically insightful narrative structure of film serves, in contrast to the more straightforward plots of TV movies, to ``deny the existence of a relevant larger community.'' She compares theatrical and TV films in several genres; a TV movie like Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal, she argues, is far more feminist than Silkwood. (Sept.)
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