Columbo: Class Struggle on TV Tonight

Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-90-04-51242-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, 74 Seiten, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 363 g

After a 35 year-long career on worldwide TV screens, Lieutenant Columbo has become one of the most famous fictional detectives. Lilian Mathieu shows that the Columbo series owes its success to its implicit but formidable political dimension, as each episode is structured as a class struggle between a rich, famous, cultured or powerful criminal and an apparently humble and blunderer police officer dressed in a crumpled raincoat and driving an antique car. Highlighting the contentious context that gave birth to the series in 1968, he shows that the sociology of culture offers intellectual tools to understand how a TV detective story can be appreciated as a joyful class revenge.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mathieu, Lilian

Weitere Mitwirkende

Bataillard, Pascal

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften Medien & Gesellschaft, Medienwirkungsforschung
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmtheorie, Filmanalyse
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio TV-Drama
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Mediensoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

1 Class against Class

2 A World of Distinction

3 Superiority in Crime

4 A Sense of Limits

5 A Misplaced Police Officer

6 Police Work

7 Just One More Thing …

References

List of Episodes

Über Autor(innen)

Lilian Mathieu is a sociologist and senior researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research (École normal supérieure de Lyon, France). A specialist in social movements, he especially focuses on relations between art, contentious politics and authoritarian regimes.