High Anxiety

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part I: Packaging the Difference: Franchise Culture

"The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe"
High Anxiety
A Method to the Madness

I. Differentiation
Passionate Consumption
"Betcha Can't Eat Just One"
Death and the Market

II. Obsession (Not Just a Perfume)
"Rat Man"
Money and Culture

III. Deregulation
Econologic: "The Luster of Capital"
TV and the FCC
The Global Village or the New World Information Order?

IV. Representing Difference(s)
"Egad, It's Plaid"
Not a Pretty Picture
Critical Differences
Anita Hill

Part II: Beyond the Pleasure Principle of Television: TV Time, History, and Catastrophe
V. Shocking Thoughts
"Jump Behavior": Rene Thom
"From Libido to Anxiety": Sigmund Freud

VI. Disastrous Events
Before the Fall, After the Fall: Baby Jessica and Black Monday
Death, Shock, Art: Kennedy, Walter Benjamin, and Eternal Frame
Sublime Visions: The Challenger Explosion
Diaster Studies
Seeing Is Believing: "The Great Quake"
Aerial Views: Operation Desert Storm
The Machine That Killed Bad People
Nuclear Disavowal
Catastrophists

Part III: Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Gossip and Scandal
Secret Pleasures
Face-ism: "Women through Time"
Trival Pursuits: Harping at Harper's

VII. Gossip Theory
Scholars, Tourist, Ecouteurs
Losing It: Roseanne and Oprah
Taking Things Literately: Patricia Spacks
A Cry in the Dark

VIII. Gossip Law

IX. Gossip and the Market
Women and the National Enquirer
Idle Chatter: Syndication and Tabloid Talk
Loose Talk: Oprah, Geraldo, and Phil
Any Woman's Blues
Shady Relatives: Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker

X. Theorizing Affect
It's a sin
A Sexual Detour to Twin Peaks
Fall from Grace and Narrative Absolution
Keeping Secrets

Part IV: Calculating Difference: The Body and Age
The Cultured Body
The Lover
Not a Jealous Bone
The Disciplined Body

XI. Obsessive Subjects: Renifleurs
Women's Bodies

XII. Aging Bodies
The Young and the Restless
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
Murder, She Wrote

Part V: Regime of Domiculture: Women and Situation Comedy
XIII. Gracie
XIV. Lucy
XV. Jokes and Their Relation to TV
Roseanne
Who's the Boss?
Murphy Brown

Part VI: Countercultures: Women's Economies
XVI. Women's Spaces/Women's Work
XVII. Family Therapy
Revising the Counterculture
XVIII. The Seach for Signs of Intelligent Life
Epilogue: The Condensed Version

Notes
Index