Latest / New Books in Sociology
Karen Tongson, "Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us" (NYU Press, 2023)
In Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us (NYU Press, 2023), Karen Tongson presents an irreverent look at the love-hate relationship between queer viewers and mainstream family TV shows like Gilmore Girls and This Is Us. After personal loss, political upheaval, and the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us craved a return to business as usual, the mundane, the middlebrow. We turned to TV to find these things. For nearly forty years, network television has produced a constant stream of “cry-along” sentimental-realist dramedies designed to appeal to liberal, heterosexual…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.