Watching television need not be a passive activity or simply for entertainment purposes. Television can be the site of important identity work and moral reflection. Audiences can learn about themselves, what matters to them, and how to relate to others by thinking about the implicit and explicit moral messages in the shows they watch. Better Living through TV: Contemporary TV and Moral Identity Formation analyzes the possibility of identifying and adopting moral values from television shows that aired during the latest Golden Era of television and Peak TV. The diversity of shows and approaches to moral becoming demonstrate how television during these eras took advantage of new technologies to become more film-like in both production quality and content. The increased depth of characterization and explosion of content across streaming and broadcast channels gave viewers a diversity of worlds and moral values to explore. The possibility of finding a moral in the stories told on popular shows such as The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, and The Good Place, as well as lesser known shows such as Letterkenny and The Unicorn, are explored in a way that centers television viewing as a site for moral identity formation.
Steven A. Benko is a professor of religious and ethical studies at Meredith College.
Acknowledgments Foreword Martin Shuster Introduction: Television: What is it Good For? Steven A. Benko Chapter One: Sleeping with Fishes and Talking with Horses: Animality, Identity, and Vegetarianism in The Sopranos H. Peter Steeves Chapter Two: The Bigger the Lie, the More They Believe: Morality and Ethics in The Wire John Hillman Chapter Three: The Two Walters: Walt Whitman's Poetry and the Moral Vision of Breaking Bad Douglas Rasmussen Chapter Four: Check Your Settings: Change to a Democratic Framework for Feminist Subtitles Leigh Kellmann Kolb Chapter Five: "The Lord of War and Thunder": The Morality of Nemesis and Retributive Justice within Justified James L. Shelton Chapter Six: Law and Loyalty in Hellcats Matt Hummel Chapter Seven: Justice is Served: Bryan Fuller's Hannibal and the Evolution of Cultural Morality Douglas L. Howard Chapter Eight: What Made the Devil Do It? Matilde Accurso Liotta and Martina Vanzo Chapter Nine: Letterkenny: Tolerance Meets Tradition Dutton Kearney Chapter Ten: Morality versus Mortality: The Meaning of (After)Life in The Good Place Jill B. Delston Chapter Eleven: How Television Produces Invisible Communities in an Age of Loneliness. A Detailed Look at 13 Reasons Why Denis Newiak Chapter Twelve: Can Watching TV Make Me a Unicorn? TV and the Ethics of Decency Steven A. Benko and Eleanor Jones Chapter Thirteen: The Baby Yoda Effect: A Kantian Analysis of Mandalorian Ethics James Rocha Chapter Fourteen: "So, a Black Captain America, huh?" Race in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Alisa Johnson and Steven A. Benko Index About the Contributors
