Acknowledgments  vii

Introduction. Why Do We Need to Talk about Socialism and TV?  1

Part I. Genres of Realism and Reality

1. From Socialist Realism to Emotional Realism  27

2. Tele-education  40

3. Crime Appeal  66

4. The Great Socialist Game (Show)  83

5. Postsocialist Ethno-Racial Reality TV  108

Part II. Genres of History

6. The Historical Adventure Drama  133

7. Postsocialist Nostalgia and European Historical Drama  155

8. Commercials as Time-Space Machines  173

Part III. Genres of Fiction

9. Women and TV  187

10. Socialist Soaps  199

Part IV. Genres of Humor

11. Socialist Comedy  227

12. (Post)socialist Political Satire  242

Afterword. Afterward  257

Notes  261

Bibliography  299

Index  311

"TV Socialism is a must read for any scholars of television history, historians of socialist everyday life, those interested in memory and students exploring socialist history. Imre provides invaluable insights and poses bold questions that will stimulate debates on socialist television for years to come." — Kinga S. Bloch, H-Soz-Kult

"... [Imre] has composed an engaging and path-breaking study offering further insight into the multiplicity of phenomena long obscured behind the notion of totalitarianism." — David Sockol, H-Socialisms

"Anikó Imre has written a field-transforming book, with implications that reach far beyond television studies."

  — Christine E Evans, European Journal of Cultural Studies

"...TV Socialism has as much to offer scholars of post-socialism as scholars of state socialism itself. Imre’s insightful analyses of often-trivialized popular television genres offer novel perspectives on key themes in post-socialist media studies such as nostalgia and nationalism." — Catherine Baker, Feminist Media Studies

"... this book reveals a treasure chest of televisual discourses neither positive nor negative but productively conflicting in many fascinating ways.... [W]ell worth reading and one hopes that she [Imre] is now busily engaged in the projected sequel she mentions in her conclusion." — Tony Williams, Film International

"TV Socialism is a timely and invaluable contribution to the history of everyday life in socialist Eastern Europe that poses an authoritative challenge to the standard and rigid interpretations of socialist media. " — Martin Marinos, Social History

"Apart from contributing to the still ongoing process of laying the foundation of the socialist television studies, TV Socialism is also a profoundly personal and exceptionally scholarly work, which challenges established views and places this emerging field on stable ground, providing it with a solid theoretical fabric and revealing different connections in time and space. Last but not least, its great merit is that it manages to escape the Europocentric perspective, which inevitably colours the work of so many scholars from European academic hubs." — Annemarie Sorescu Marinkovic, Balcanica

"Pathbreaking and powerfully informative." — Olga Mesropova, The Russian Review

"This book’s broad and ambitious reach will catalyze further conversations not only on the medium of television but also on gender, nationalism, transnationalism, and above all on the meaning of socialism." — Diane P. Koenker, Canadian Slavonic Papers

"TV Socialism is a very fine and well written piece of research, definitely worth a read for everyone attracted by Eastern European popular culture. It offers a wonderful and always entertaining journey into the realm of socialist television, and by doing so, a journey into an audio-visual world of the past. It is a must read for anyone who is doing research in the field of television history, socialist history, not to forget those intrigued by insights into everyday socialist life." — Stefan Zimmermann, Europe Now

"A long overdue transnational inquiry of the multiple continuities of television and socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. . . . Imre masterfully delineates contemporary Eastern European anxieties about nationalism, economy, memory, and historiography since the fall of the Iron Curtain." — Sebastian Heiduschke, German Studies Review

“The main strength of TV Socialism lies in the analysis of programs themselves; it is here that Imre develops some of her most original and intriguing arguments, which will no doubt continue to shape debates on socialist television and its place in global television history for some time to come.” — Sabina Mihelj, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

"TV Socialism is a must read for any scholars of television history, historians of socialist everyday life, those interested in memory and students exploring socialist history. Imre provides invaluable insights and poses bold questions that will stimulate debates on socialist television for years to come." —Kinga S. Bloch, H-Soz-Kult

"... [Imre] has composed an engaging and path-breaking study offering further insight into the multiplicity of phenomena long obscured behind the notion of totalitarianism." —David Sockol, H-Socialisms

"Anikó Imre has written a field-transforming book, with implications that reach far beyond television studies."

  —Christine E Evans, European Journal of Cultural Studies

"...TV Socialism has as much to offer scholars of post-socialism as scholars of state socialism itself. Imre’s insightful analyses of often-trivialized popular television genres offer novel perspectives on key themes in post-socialist media studies such as nostalgia and nationalism." —Catherine Baker, Feminist Media Studies

"... this book reveals a treasure chest of televisual discourses neither positive nor negative but productively conflicting in many fascinating ways.... [W]ell worth reading and one hopes that she [Imre] is now busily engaged in the projected sequel she mentions in her conclusion." —Tony Williams, Film International

"TV Socialism is a timely and invaluable contribution to the history of everyday life in socialist Eastern Europe that poses an authoritative challenge to the standard and rigid interpretations of socialist media. " —Martin Marinos, Social History

"Apart from contributing to the still ongoing process of laying the foundation of the socialist television studies, TV Socialism is also a profoundly personal and exceptionally scholarly work, which challenges established views and places this emerging field on stable ground, providing it with a solid theoretical fabric and revealing different connections in time and space. Last but not least, its great merit is that it manages to escape the Europocentric perspective, which inevitably colours the work of so many scholars from European academic hubs." —Annemarie Sorescu Marinkovic, Balcanica

"Pathbreaking and powerfully informative." —Olga Mesropova, The Russian Review

"This book’s broad and ambitious reach will catalyze further conversations not only on the medium of television but also on gender, nationalism, transnationalism, and above all on the meaning of socialism." —Diane P. Koenker, Canadian Slavonic Papers

"TV Socialism is a very fine and well written piece of research, definitely worth a read for everyone attracted by Eastern European popular culture. It offers a wonderful and always entertaining journey into the realm of socialist television, and by doing so, a journey into an audio-visual world of the past. It is a must read for anyone who is doing research in the field of television history, socialist history, not to forget those intrigued by insights into everyday socialist life." —Stefan Zimmermann, Europe Now

"A long overdue transnational inquiry of the multiple continuities of television and socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. . . . Imre masterfully delineates contemporary Eastern European anxieties about nationalism, economy, memory, and historiography since the fall of the Iron Curtain." —Sebastian Heiduschke, German Studies Review

“The main strength of TV Socialism lies in the analysis of programs themselves; it is here that Imre develops some of her most original and intriguing arguments, which will no doubt continue to shape debates on socialist television and its place in global television history for some time to come.” —Sabina Mihelj, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

“TV Socialism is a comprehensive and highly original contribution to television studies, and it will become indispensable in socialist/postsocialist studies. Anikó Imre’s scholarship is superior and her book is outstanding in its breadth and depth of coverage.” — Kristen Ghodsee, author of, The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfulfilled Promise of Communism in Eastern Europe

"Cautioning us against simplistic uses of Anglo-American categories of television genres, Anikó Imre explains how the industry definitions of genre and audience expectations of genres evolved very differently in socialist societies. By defining genre as a 'transcultural form of expression' rather than as a given set of conventions, Imre demonstrates how the genric logic of television is embedded in the aesthetic, political, cultural, and ideological transformations in socialist and postsocialist societies." — Shanti Kumar, author of, Gandhi Meets Primetime: Globalization and Nationalism in Indian Television

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