Table of Contents
Issue #1 as well as supplement added at the end.
Communication Research Trends:
The Crisis in Public Service Broadcasting
vol. 8 no. 1 1987
Research Trends in Religious Communication:
Mass Media and the Religious Imagination
vol. 8 no. 1 1987
Abstract
Main issue abstract:
Every nation and culture finds a way to continually retell its folktales and myths. If once we did this around camp-fires and through wandering bards, today we recast our traditional stories in modem clothes through our most popular medium, television. Throughout the world the highest audience ratings are for folktale- like soap operas that embody our historical contests, heroes and villains, and, usually, happy endings. The American-produced Dallas and Dynasty are set in the old 'wild West' states ofTexas and Colorado - but extended into new frontiers of high finance and international intrigue. The BBC'sEastEnders celebrates the mythic Cockney, working class community of East London. In the telenovelas of Mexico and Brazil one detects a continuation of classical Latin American folktale themes.
In recent years, media researchers have focussed more on the role of TV myth and folktale forms in creating whole national cultures. The broad mythic dimension of TV is the context for understanding TV's influence on individual attitudes and behaviours. While TV violence, for example, may influence direct imitative behaviours in some individuals, reproducing myths of violent national expansion or male dominance may shape the values of virtually everybody in the society. To study whole cultures, media studies are borrowing concepts such as myth, folktale and ritual from cultural anthropology and applying these to TV.
This issue reviews research on television as myth and ritual at three levels: 1) the mythic functions of television in a culture, 2) the folktale and mythic structure of television programming, and 3) the audience's experience of television as a quasi-religious ritual.
Recommended Citation
(1987)
"Television as Myth and Ritual,"
Communication Research Trends: Vol. 8:
No.
1, Article 1.
Available at:
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/crt/vol8/iss1/1