Television and the Moving Body
Explores the significance of the moving body on television
- Presents the first focused analysis of the moving body on television
- Discusses a broad range of examples from different genres and formats, from dramas and comedies to reality, game, and sports programming
- Analyses how the moving body expresses ideas surrounding disability, race, gender, and queerness
- Organised thematically to allow detailed analysis of specific types of movement e.g. sport, walking, craft, dance
- Includes close analysis of recent programmes that have yet to receive scholarly attention
To watch television is to watch bodies in motion: walking, dancing, cooking, fighting, running, playing, travelling, and so on. Television and the Moving Body presents the first detailed exploration of the moving body on television. It analyses different types of movement, including walking, dancing, sports, and craft, outlining how these different movement profiles are employed to construct time, tell stories, work through cultural issues, and foster empathy.
Through a range of case studies across different genres and formats, including Gogglebox, The West Wing, Taskmaster, The Repair Shop, Strictly Come Dancing and Sense8, this book examines what television’s moving bodies tell us both about normative ideas of movement and identity, and about television itself.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. Moving Along: Flow and Seriality
Chapter 2. Walking and Talking
Chapter 3. Sport
Chapter 4. Making and Mending
Chapter 5. Choreography
Chapter 6. Empathy
Bibliography
"This inspired study of television as a medium of movement gifts us a powerful new toolbox for questioning problematic associations between television, sedentariness, and passivity. Through wide-ranging analysis of both moving bodies on screen and embodied responses to television, this book launches kinaesthesia as an exciting new theoretical framework for television studies, offering new insights into many of our key concepts, from flow, liveness and seriality, to intimacy, empathy and care."
Shacklock does an excellent job of building on foundational theoretical ideas and contemporary television studies to offer a unique framework for exploring movement on television. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.
