Dissertation (S. Pepper)
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ABSTRACT PEPPER, SHAYNE DAVID. Public Service Entertainment: Post-Network Television, HBO, and the AIDS Epidemic. (Under the direction of Dr. Jeremy Packer.) This project explores the state of public service television in the post-network era. In this dissertation, the complex history of HBO, cable television, and PBS is set against the AIDS epidemic – providing an opportunity to see logics of governmental rationality, industrial change, and medical discourse at work. This project is therefore a vital intervention in studies of governmentality and popular culture, studies of HBO and post-network television, and studies of the history of HIV/AIDS media in the United States. By examining HBO through the often-competing logics of profitability and public service, it is possible to open up new and interesting ways to think about HBO and its programming – as one example of what might count as public service television in the post-network era. Chapter one sets up the framework of the dissertation by situating my intervention in studies of HBO, public television, and governmentality. Chapter two thinks through media history in the modern neoliberal state by examining the historical juncture of the creation of public service television, the rise of cable television, and the intensification of neoliberalism. Chapter three works through the early history of HBO during a time of tremendous expansion in the cable industry due to the deregulatory environment of the 1980s. Chapter four examines the tension between entertainment, information, and education through the role of popular aesthetics in public service television on PBS and HBO. Chapter five provides a history of AIDS media on television and in Hollywood cinema in order to situate a more complete history of PBS and HBO’s engagement with HIV/AIDS programming. This history puts the twenty-two HBO programs that deal with AIDS in direct conversation with network television, PBS, and cable television as they help to construct the narrative of the AIDS epidemic. Chapter six demonstrates the way in which cultural discourse of the AIDS epidemic has changed from the late 1980s to a post-9/11 world through closer analysis of four HBO programs: AIDS: Everything You and Your Family Need to Know But Were Afraid to Ask (1987), Pandemic: Facing AIDS (2003), And the Band Played On (1993), and Angels in America (2003). Chapter seven considers how the examples discussed in this research project suggest the need to reconsider how popular media and political activism may be linked. In this conclusion, I parse the impact of embracing governmental rationality as a solution rather than encouraging the ethical responses of individuals and collective action to pursue state- centered solutions to the AIDS epidemic and other societal concerns such as global poverty or climate change. I end by offering this research project as an example of how reconceptualizing public service television in the post-network era demands a new way of thinking about what public service looks like in the modern neoliberal state. © Copyright 2011 by Shayne David Pepper All Rights Reserved Public Service Entertainment: Post-Network Television, HBO, and the AIDS Epidemic by Shayne David Pepper A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Communication, Rhetoric, & Digital Media Raleigh, North Carolina 2011 APPROVED BY _________________________________ ________________________________ Jeremy Packer, Ph.D. Steve Wiley, Ph.D. Chair of Advisory Committee _________________________________ ________________________________ Maria Pramaggiore, Ph.D. Sarah Sharma, Ph.D. _________________________________ James Hay, Ph.D. DEDICATION For Nancy and My Parents ii BIOGRAPHY Shayne Pepper is a media studies scholar with interests in film, television, digital media, and political activism. He grew up in Houma, Louisiana and received a B.A. in Drama and Communication from the University of New Orleans in 2004. After earning his M.A. in Film Studies from the University of Iowa in 2007, Shayne began his doctoral work in the Communication, Rhetoric, & Digital Media Program at North Carolina State University in 2007. His work draws upon the traditions of film studies, television studies, and cultural studies. Shayne’s work has appeared in Nebula, FlowTV, Culture Machine, Scope, The Journal of Popular Culture, Film Criticism and edited book collections. He has presented work at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, the National Communication Association Conference, the Cultural Studies Association Conference, and the Popular Culture Association Conference as well as local and regional conferences and symposia. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I feel very lucky to have spent four years at NC State with such wonderful people. The faculty and students have made my time in Raleigh unforgettable in countless ways. While at NC State, I made lifelong friends and fell in love with the young lady who became my wife. It is only within such a pleasant and supportive environment that completing this long dissertation project was possible. I would first like to thank my committee. They have been tremendous resources to me, and this project could only exist with their guidance. My committee chair, Jeremy Packer, has done a great deal more than just guide me through this dissertation. He has been an advisor in every sense of the word, and I will be forever thankful for knowing him and learning from him. From my first week in the CRDM program, Steve Wiley has offered unwavering support and has helped me to find points of connection among my various interests. Maria Pramaggiore has been the type of teacher, scholar, and mentor that I will always strive to be. Sarah Sharma helped me to work through the ideas in this project by allowing me to be a guest lecturer for her class at UNC-Chapel Hill and has been a wonderful committee member (even long before she became an official committee member!). James Hay has always been a source of knowledge and advice and has been incredibly generous with his time. All five of my committee members have opened their lives to me in ways that go far beyond the scope of this scholarly endeavor, and my life is better having spent time with them. One of the best parts of the CRDM program has been that the faculty members have always treated us as colleagues and not just as students. They have fostered our intellectual iv and professional growth while at the same time welcoming us as scholars and friends. Both in and out of the classroom, the following people in particular have helped me to get where I am today: Vicki Gallagher, Melissa Johnson, Deanna Dannels, Susan Miller-Cochran, Carolyn Miller, Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron, Ora Gelly, Tom Wallis, Andrea Mensch, and Mark Nance. As a member of the third cohort to enter the CRDM program, my fellow classmates have been an integral part of navigating the world of doctoral studies. From our first class together, Dawn Shepherd, Kathy Oswald, Kelly Martin, Nick Temple, Jon Burr, Karla Lyles, Christin Phelps, and Ruffin Bailey have helped to make the past four years some of the best of my life. In particular, I want to thank Dawn, Kathy, and Kelly for a million things that, if listed, would double the page count of this dissertation. You’re “Simply the Best.” I also want to thank Daniel Kim, Adam Richard Rottinghaus, Kevin Flanagan, Jordan Laster, and James Burka for being great friends, true gentlemen, and “Honorary CRDM Affiliates.” On a practical level, I owe a great deal of thanks to our library staff for assisting me in getting videotapes and trade journals from all across the country. I’d also like to thank the libraries and archives that have made these materials available, particularly the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Thanks to Steve Moore for generously agreeing to an interview about his work. Thanks to Sadie Tillery for bringing me on as a member of the Selection Committee for the Full Frame Documentary Festival, as that experience helped to shape my approach to this material in a number of ways. I’d also like to thank Jesse Schlotterbeck, Emily Heiden, Judith McVittie, Daniel Kim, Nathan Koob, Kimberly Callais, Susan Ivey, Lauren Clark, Matt Morain, and Christy Tidwell for agreeing to take part in my experiment v of crowdsourced proofreading. I’m thankful as well to our CRDM Program Assistant, Jan Raymondi, for juggling the many, many requests asked of her by the students and faculty of a young program still finding its way. I want to thank my parents, Paul and Zelina Brewer, and my grandparents David and Aline Duke for their love and support. The encouragement of my family has meant a lot to me as graduate school has taken me all over the country, far away from my childhood home. Finally, I owe a tremendous amount of thanks to my wife, Nancy McVittie. I am a happier, better person because she is in my life. After several years of attending different Ph.D. programs and having to live very far apart, I am grateful to finally begin the next chapter of our lives together. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction: Corporate Media, Public Service, and the State ...................... 1 Moving Beyond Ideology Critique Through an Analytic of Governmentality .................... 8 Rethinking the Histories of HBO and AIDS Media ........................................................... 21 Chapter Summaries............................................................................................................