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Joshua Gamson

Joshua Gamson is a professor of sociology at University of San Fransisco and author of Freaks Talk Back and Claims to Fame.

Recent Articles

Incredible News

The rise of infotainment and tabloid TV news reflects popular acceptance of the summons to turn news into play -- which people are willing to do when they have given up on public life.

Joshua GamsonNov 19, 2001

Way back in the days when Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan were still an item, an earnest news reporter from a local television station called with a request: He wanted me, as a media critic, to comment on camera about the appearance of Tonya Harding's breasts on A Current Affair. I declined, and not because I had anything against either Ms. Harding or her breasts, or even the tabloids. Stoically pushing aside the temptation of minor celebrity, I simply saw the request to criticize the phenomenon as a veiled invitation to feed it.

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Do Ask, Do Tell: Freak Talk on TV

Daytime television has become a "freak show," but it's also an opportunity (and not an entirely bad one) for gays and others with nonconforming lives to talk directly with the public.

Joshua GamsonNov 19, 2001

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Mr. Mischief

Joshua GamsonNov 16, 2001

In his films, underdog-with-a-camera Michael Moore has taken on former GM Chairman Roger Smith (Roger & Me) and Nike CEO Phil Knight (The Big One), but the premiere of Moore's newest half-hour series on Bravo, The Awful Truth (Wednesday nights, continuing through August 9), went up, appropriately, against Jesus Christ. It didn't make a dent in the ratings of CBS's Jesus, though Moore's stories are as much about morality and politics and villains and heroes--and they're funnier.

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Essay: Look at Me! Leave Me Alone!

Which is stronger, the craving for publicity or the desire for privacy? The Truman Show demonstrates how tightly married these impulses are.

Joshua GamsonNov 14, 2001

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Ad Creep

Joshua GamsonNov 14, 2001

It is quite rare to find ad criticism anywhere near the medium of television, except in such criticism's natural habitat, the suburban basement TV room, where stoned teenagers have deconstructed Coke campaigns for generations. Sure, Dick Clark includes zany outtakes from commercials on his TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes shows, ABC's Best Commercials You've Never Seen (And Some You Have) won its time slot back in February, and in October, FOX offered a second installment of its Banned in America: The World's Sexiest Commercials. But aside from these occasional, oh-those-crazy-kids celebrations of commercial culture's undeniable capacity to provide laughs and raunch and raunchy laughs, television gives next to no attention to the ubiquitous spots that make it run.

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