The Beast, the Eunuch and the Glass-eyed Child: Television in the 80's - Hardcover

Powers dissects all facets of television in this collection of nearly 50 critical essays originally published in GQ mazagine. They range from "The Popcorn Pugilists" (about those "Movie Guys" like Siskel and Ebert) to "Where There's a Will, There's a Moyers." Powers, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is a powerful writer--his prose is brilliantly biting, quick-witted, thoughtful, and to the point. (He describes the male star of Beauty and the Beast as "a sort of mixed-up MGM lion with the heart of Leo Buscaglia.") In "Broadcast Ooze," he asks "Can you recall a TV book--and perhaps this is getting close to the nub of it--that merely displayed a love of written English?" Certainly this one does. It would be a useful supplementary journalism text, and it is an important addition to mass media and popular culture collections.
- Jo Cates, Poynter Inst. for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Powers, the first TV critic to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize, here offers a collection of his GQ columns, 1984-1990. The pieces reveal an articulate, civilized reviewer who is profoundly disturbed by certain trends in televisionland. His targets include children's programs, which he argues are calculated to create future consumers; the spreading influence of USA Today -type news broadcasts that do not cover news, and are only headlines; and the unending procession of talk-show celebrities who have no claim to fame other than their celebrity. Readers will respond to Powers's profound lament that "television in our time has virulently attacked the very consciousness of a world beyond itself." He is not sanguine that mainstream television will redeem itself and sees hope only in the newly resurgent "independent movement" and in public television. This is a searching and disturbing anthology.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.