Gender and Race in Postwar Variety Television ― Colorful Performance

This book expands our understanding of postwar television and US culture by focusing on variety programs. It looks at how variety television articulated a cosmopolitanism that served to expand televisual constructions of gender and race in the postwar period, demonstrating how the entertaining of racial and ethnic identities by white variety show hosts was achieved through the featuring of people of color, musical performances, and representations of travel--simulated and actual. The emphasis on variety show performances reveals the transnational cultural flows at work in song choice, staging, and costume design. Through an analysis of industrial and press discourse as well as television programs this project situates the history US television in a global and transnational context.

Meenasarani Linde Murugan is Assistant Professor of Screen Studies in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, USA