The Talking Cure: TV Talk Shows and Women

By Jane Shattuc

Book Overview

The Talking Cure examines four nationally syndicated television talk shows--Donahue, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Geraldo and Sally Jessy Raphael--which are primarily devoted to feminine culture and issues. Serving as one of the few public forums where working-class women and those with different sexual orientations have a voice, these talk shows represent American TV at its most radical. Shattuc examines the tension between talk's feminist politics and the television industry, who, in their need to appeal to women, trades on sensation, stereotypes and fears in order to engender product consumption. However, this genre is not a one-way form of social interaction. The female audience complies and resists in a complex give-and-take, and it is this relationship which The Talking Cure aims to understand and reveal.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415910889
• ISBN13: 9780415910880
• Release Date: March 1997
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 250 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Critical Analysis of Daytime Talk

Jane Shattuc goes into detail analzying four major daytime talk shows of the early 1990's and how they reflect womens issues and ideas. She does extensive (not to mention exhaustive) research on how talk shows are made, who watches talk shows, and what talk show topics reflect in today's society. I found some of her analyzations a bit long (ex: a long chapter on Freudian psychology), but the undertones of each talk show topic (re: feminist ideals) and how talk shows were made did spark some interest. Shattuc's use of lots of quotes and facts does provide adequite information for one's own critical analysis of the talk show genre. The Talking Cure is a good book if you're looking for something that will make you think.