Gary Edgerton

Butler University, Communication, Faculty Member

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Gary R. Edgerton is professor and dean of the College of Communication at Butler University. He most recently was eminent scholar, professor, and chair of the Communication and Theatre Arts Department at Old Dominion University. He has published eleven books and more than eighty book chapters, journal articles, and encyclopedia entries on a wide assortment of media and culture topics. He is also co-editor of the Journal of Popular Film and Television (Routledge). Edgerton received the 2004 American Culture Association Governing Board Award for Outstanding Contributions to American Cultural Studies.
Phone: phone: 317.940.9815
Address: College of Communication
218D Fairbanks Center
Butler University
4600 Sunset Avenue
Indianapolis, Indiana 46208-3485

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Papers by Gary Edgerton

Playing at Being Indian: Spectatorship and the Early Western

The Structure of American Motion Picture Exhibition Since 1948

Introduction: The JPF&TV Legacy of Western Scholarship

On the Road Again with Ken Burns and Country Music

The Past Is Now Present Onscreen

Erik Barnouw's Trilogy on the History of US Broadcasting

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. eBooks, Aug 6, 2018

The Countdown to Y2KTV and the Arrival of the New Serialists

There is certainly a “before” and “after” to television in America and internationally when consi... more There is certainly a “before” and “after” to television in America and internationally when considering The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007). More than a half-century after the first stirrings of prime-time drama in the United States, The Sopranos jump started the aesthetic, narrative, and generic potential of TV to new and ever greater heights. Nevertheless, the seminal and innovative nature of The Sopranos was not achieved in an industrial, technological, and aesthetic vacuum. Showrunner David Chase and his creative team were deeply enmeshed in the practices and techniques of broadcast television, even though they and their sponsoring network, HBO, were aspiring to move beyond these institutional parameters. This lead chapter describes and analyzes the business, economic, and artistic transformation happening within the context of a rapidly evolving media marketplace where the firewall between TV and movies eventually came down at the turn of the 21st century because of the industrial and technological changes brought about by convergence. Special attention is paid to innovations in post-1981 U.S. scripted programming as well as The Sopranos’ aftereffect in relation to business, technological, and aesthetic innovations in theatrical film as well as the broadcasting, cable-and-satellite, and OTT (over-the-top content) streaming sectors of the current television industry

The Creative Team as Historian: Inside the Production Process on Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1992)

Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio was Ken Burns’s eighth major PBS special, premiering on... more Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio was Ken Burns’s eighth major PBS special, premiering on January 29, 1992. Its production history offers a glimpse into Burns’s working methods at Florentine Films during an extraordinarily heady period for both the producer-director and his still-struggling company. This historical documentary was conceived and created while The Civil War was being edited and later released to wide attention and acclaim, a period when Burns’s professional profile changed dramatically as he became a national celebrity virtually overnight. The heightened work environment and reaction surrounding The Civil War also affected Empire of the Air’s shooting and assembly stages, in minor ways at first, but then more tangibly after the summer of 1990. The production of this PBS special, in retrospect, provides a revealing object lesson into the shared authorship which typically occurs when creating mediated history on film for television.

Brody Must Die

The first season of Homeland had so much going for it that by and large the audience overlooked t... more The first season of Homeland had so much going for it that by and large the audience overlooked the fact that the showrunner, Alex Gansa, and his co-creator, Howard Gordon, fudged the ending. The momentum of the principal narrative arc of those initial twelve episodes always led inexorably towards a domestic terrorist act that protagonist and CIA analyst Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) had been obsessively trying to uncover and thwart ever since she set eyes on a video of her antagonist, US Marine sergeant, Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), being pulled bearded and filthy from a ‘spider hole’ à la Saddam Hussein by an elite Delta Force team. Mathison’s colleagues at the CIA congratulated themselves on facilitating Brody’s rescue from al-Qaeda after eight years in captivity. Carrie alone was skeptical as to why al-Qaeda would keep him alive after his usefulness had long ago expired

Ken Burns's America

Rebirth of a Nation: Reframing The Civil War (1990) on Prime Time Television Life Lessons: Learni... more Rebirth of a Nation: Reframing The Civil War (1990) on Prime Time Television Life Lessons: Learning the Basics on Brooklyn Bridge (1982) Variations on a Theme: American Originals, Symbols, and Institutions Inside the Production Process on Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1992): The Creative Team as Historian A Whole New Ballgame: Baseball (1994) and The West (1996) as Event TV American Lives: Thomas Jefferson (1997) and the Television Biography as Popular History Mainstreaming Jazz (2001) for a National Audience: Ken Burns's America Reconsidered Notes Videography

The Sopranos

Syracuse University Press eBooks, Oct 14, 2018

Westerns

Introduction: The 'Journal of Popular Film and Television' Legacy of Western Scholarship ... more Introduction: The 'Journal of Popular Film and Television' Legacy of Western Scholarship Part I: Silent Westerns Chapter 1. The Earliest Western Films: A Checklist of Pre-1900 Prototype Western Films in the Library of Congress Paper Print Collection Chapter 2. 'The Cross-Heart People': Race and Inheritance in the Silent Westerns Chapter 3. 'Arizona Jim': The Westerns of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Part II: Classic Westerns Chapter 4. Soldiers in Stetsons: B-Westerns Go to War Chapter 5. 'Be Sure You're Right, Then Go Ahead': The Early Disney Westerns Chapter 6. 'Let's Go Home, Debbie': The Matter of Blood Pollution, Combat Culture, and Cold War Hysteria in 'The Searchers' (1956) Part III: Race and Westerns Chapter 7. Playing at Being Indian: Spectatorship and the Early Western Chapter 8. A Fate Worse Than Death: Racism, Transgression, and Westerns Chapter 9. A Politically Correct Ethan Edwards: Clint Eastwood's 'The Outlaw Josey Wales' (1976) Part IV: Gender and Westerns Chapter 10. Howard Hughes and His Western: 'The Maverick and The Outlaw' (1943) Chapter 11. Carrying Concealed Weapons: Gendered Makeover in 'Calamity Jane' (1953) Chapter 12. Redesigning Pocahontas: Disney, the 'White Man's Indian', and the Marketing of Dreams Part V: Revisionist Westerns Chapter 13. 'McCabe and Mrs. Miller' (1971): Robert Altman's Anti-Western Chapter 14. Blending Genres, Bending Time: Steampunk of the Western Frontier Chapter 15. 'Deadwood' (2004-2006), Generic Transformation, and Televisual History Part VI: Westerns in Global Context Chapter 16. Shouldering the Weight of the World: The Sensational and Global Appeal of John Wayne's Body Chapter 17. 'The Man With No Name' (1968): Shane Comes Back in a Korean 'Manchurian Western' Chapter 18. Hollywood Border Cinema: Westerns with a Vengeance Selected Bibliography of Westerns on Film and Television

Thinking Outside the Box: A Contemporary Television Genre Reader

The Journal of Popular Culture, 2007

Washington politicians should not be neglected because those opposed to zoos and what they stood ... more Washington politicians should not be neglected because those opposed to zoos and what they stood for were a strong political lobby. The AZA learned that the wheels of government turn slowly, especially with regard to animal legislation. While the AZA did not always get the exotic animal legislation that they and their zoos needed, they learned how to navigate and negotiate within the American political system. Jesse Donahue and Erik Trump, both political science professors at Saginaw Valley State University, present an unbiased book, well documented with photographs, notes, a selected bibliography, and index. While rather a dense book, it is worth reading to learn how far American zoos have come and how far they have yet to go as an important institution in popular culture.

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Terror, Torture, Soldier, Spy

When it comes to making sense of 9/11 and its aftermath, most Americans are still watching screen... more When it comes to making sense of 9/11 and its aftermath, most Americans are still watching screens, looking for answers. It is no accident that the most iconic image related to the killing of Osama bin Laden is a picture of President Obama’s National Security Team taken by White House photographer, Pete Souza, viewing a live video feed of the raid being transmitted back by an unmanned drone as it happened at 4:06 p.m. ET (1:06 a.m. Abbottabad, Afghanistan time) on May 1, 2011. We watch everyone in that small conference room staring intently at some unseen screen, but no one more so than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose expression of shock and awe (which she later downplayed as suppressing an allergic cough) adds emotional power to an unexpectedly arresting image. They are our surrogates in this photograph. We are all voyeurs in the War on Terror

Spelling, Aaron (22 Apr. 1923–23 June 2006), television producer

American National Biography Online, Mar 28, 2019

Mad Men’s Legacy in the Quality Television Tradition

Mad Men (AMC, 2007–2015) captured and expressed the zeitgeist in the late 2000s and early 2010s. ... more Mad Men (AMC, 2007–2015) captured and expressed the zeitgeist in the late 2000s and early 2010s. In this preface, Edgerton describes and analyses how the series evolved from being that little program that nobody watched on an also-ran basic cable channel to the most celebrated scripted drama of its era. He contends that Mad Men is widely recognized in the popular, professional, and scholarly communities as a transformational series in the history and development of US television. Edgerton pays special attention to Mad Men’s industrial, aesthetic, and cultural legacy within the quality television tradition of the past half-century as well as its continuing influence and impact on subsequent programming today.

Introduction: When Our Parents Became Us

The Selling of Mad Men: A Production History

50 Years of “First Frame” Fundamentals: Remembering a Half-Century of Editing <i>The Journal of Popular Film and Television</i>

Journal of Popular Film & Television, Oct 2, 2022

Life Lessons: Learning the Basics on Brooklyn Bridge (1982)

Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2001

Ken Burns took a giant leap of faith when he fell in love with the idea of adapting The Great Bri... more Ken Burns took a giant leap of faith when he fell in love with the idea of adapting The Great Bridge into an hour-long nonfiction film. Historical documentaries were neither all that popular with audiences nor the style of choice for most filmmakers during much of the 1970s. The documentary world was still engaged in the waning days of direct cinema and cinema verite as the preferred approaches for most nonfiction veterans. Creating a history of the Brooklyn Bridge on film, no matter how beautiful and culturally significant the structure remained 105 years after its completion, hardly seemed like the kind of breakout project that would ultimately launch a newly established independent production company. No wonder, then, that Burns was greeted with incredulous looks when he left his sickbed and came into the living room of the apartment he was sharing with friends and excitedly announced his plans for Brooklyn Bridge. Buddy Squires remembers, in hindsight, “we told himtogobacktosleep.”2 Apparently the other members of Florentine Films would need some convincing before the idea finally gained a working consensus among them.