Gender Politics and MTV

Lisa A. Lewis, Ph.D., is a writer based in Tucson, Arizona.

• Acknowledgments Introduction 1. MTV's Industrial Imperatives 2. The Making of a Preferred Address 3. Male-Address Video (1983) 4. Conditions of Cultural Struggle 5. Four Female Musicians 6. Female-Address Video (1980-1986) 7. Fandom, Lived Experience, and Textual Use 8. Five Fan Events 9. Polysemy, Popularity, and Politics Notes Bibliography Index

"[A] significant moment in the history of feminist research in the field of communication.... [It] should be seen as a guidepost tot he directions feminist work needs to take."-Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media "Provocative and important, ...[Lewis's] theoretically ambitions study of women rock musicians and their fans...makes a strong case...that popular culture is contested terrain and that women, as artists and as spectators and fans, can and have made astonishing inroads into a commercial, male-defined turf.... The book is full of substantive theoretical gold. It's audacious, original and...very much engaged in its subject.... Her profiles of four performers-Madonna, Tina Turner, Pat Benatar and Cyndi Lauper-are eye-openers.... Lewis understands fully that most commercial and pop culture is far from liberating.... Still, there's something exhilarating about her unfashionable cultural radicalism."-The Nation"[Lewis] explores her fascinating topic with a frank feminism and with the recognition that female viewers play an active role in their experience of MTV. Readers will be rewarded not only by her insights, but by the fact that her prose is relatively free of the jargon that usually riddles these studies."-The Women's Review of Books