Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery by Eva Illouz

Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery by Eva Illouz

Oprah Winfrey is the protagonist of the story to be told here, but this book has broader intentions, begins Eva Illouz in this original examination of how and why this talk show host has become a pervasive symbol in American culture. Unlike studies of talk shows that decry debased cultural standards and impoverished political consciousness, Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery asks us to rethink our perceptions of culture in general and popular culture in particular. At a time when crises of morality, beliefs, value systems, and personal worth dominate both public and private spheres, Oprah's emergence as a cultural form-the Oprah persona-becomes clearer, as she successfully reiterates some of our most pressing moral questions. Drawing on nearly one hundred show transcripts; a year and a half of watching the show regularly; and analysis of magazine articles, several biographies, O Magazine, Oprah Book Club novels, self-help manuals promoted on the show, and hundreds of discussions on the Oprah Winfrey Web site, Illouz takes the Oprah industry seriously, revealing it to be a multilayered "textual structure" that initiates, stages, and performs narratives of suffering and self-improvement that resonate with a wide audience and challenge traditional models of cultural analysis. This book looks closely at Oprah's method and her message, and in the process reconsiders popular culture and the tools we use to understand it.

We should commend Illouz in her willingness to blaze a new, and certainly untested path in anthropological writing-- Seth Jacobs Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Outstanding... its author digs deeper into her subject matter than any other researcher yet to address Oprah. -- David W. Park Journal of Communication

Eva Illouz is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (University of California Press) and The Culture of Capitalism (in Hebrew).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780231118132
ISBN 10	0231118139
Title	Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery
Author	Eva Illouz
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Columbia University Press
Year published	2003-11-05
Number of pages	352
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable