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Angharad N. Valdivia and Isabel Molina-Guzmán, "Rebooting Inequality: Critical Takes on Film and Television Remakes" (NYU Press, 2026)
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- [00:02]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best.
- [00:08]
Angarad N. Valdivia
Are you a festival fanatic, a deep
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Isabel Molina Guzman
end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer?
- [00:13]
Angarad N. Valdivia
Just add a song to your chosen
- [00:15]
Isabel Molina Guzman
playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit red bull.com brightsummerahead to learn more. See you this summer.
- [00:28]
Angarad N. Valdivia
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Isabel Molina Guzman
the New Books Network.
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Pete Kunze
Welcome to New Books Network. I'm your host, Pete Kunze. My guests today are Isabel Molina Guzman and Angarad N. Valdivia, co editors of the new collection Rebooting Critical Takes on Film and Television. The book was published by New York University Press in 2026. Good afternoon. Isabelle and Angarad, welcome. How are you doing today?
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Angarad N. Valdivia
We're doing great. Thank you for having us.
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Pete Kunze
I'm really excited to talk about this. It's such a big part of popular culture today and I feel like your collection is giving us some really provocative ways to think through this strain of culture that we are navigating, dealing with, enjoying alternately. Before we dive in, can you tell listeners a bit about your backgrounds and training?
- [02:22]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Sure.
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Angarad N. Valdivia
So I am like, you mean academic backgrounds? Sure.
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Pete Kunze
Like what brought you to studying popular culture and. And the way that you do it.
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Angarad N. Valdivia
Okay, fantastic. Yeah. So I actually had stepped away from academia for a little bit and found myself constantly being drawn back to what was happening in at the time the Elian Gonzalez case was happening. And so I was. And Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek were really hitting their peak. And I found myself being drawn back into thinking through critically, all those moments, I happened to run into Professor Valdivia at a conference, and she was like, okay, you really need to get back into academia. And she is the reason I'm at the University of Illinois, Urbana. She's the reason why I have a PhD period. And so we since then have really been in conversation, have always collaborated and have attended a lot of conferences together. And I don't know, Angie, if you want to step in and talk about you and the conference where this book was born.
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Isabel Molina Guzman
Sure. So I have been a scholar. I did not take a break, but I started as a political economist, which is why that's always present in all of my work. You can't have media without producing it, so that's very important. And I have added. I was doing global studies, and I added gender. And then people looked at me at Penn State and said, you have to study Latinos. So that's when I started doing it. And then I have been collaborating with Professor Molina. It's been an incredibly wonderful career because. Working with her, because it's very seldom that as a scholar, a feminist scholar, a Latinx scholar, that you even get anybody else, you know, to understand what you're talking about or to talk with in your department. And the two of us have been at Illinois for at least two decades together. And before then, we were in conversation. And so we've always wanted to do a book together, and the time has never been right or, you know, we've been so busy. And we were at a conference, a flow conference. We were at a conference where people were talking very passionately, very passionately about the reboot of the Gilmore Girls. Right? And the Gilmore Girls reboot was very meaningful to a lot of people, especially in this panel. And there were maybe three of us, Professor Molina and I, and maybe a couple other people, and we wanted to ask questions, you know, well, the reboot, what about this? And there was almost no space for that to do it. And so we thought, you know, what? We really need to think about reboots in relation to issues of equality and diversity. Because, of course, there's a pleasure. I don't want to deny the pleasure that Gilmore Girl audiences got out of the reboot. Right. Even though they didn't like the way it ended, or some of them did. But the fact is, the reboot, rebooting, or I think the bigger umbrella term is recycling. And recycling has been there for media industries for centuries, really, for centuries. So it comes to broadcasting and television and the new streaming situation. But it is something that Media industries, you know, dating back to the. To the books, to magazines, have been doing for a while. And so Professor Molina and I began to gather a number of really, really great scholars to contribute to this book. We put out a call, and the book is what yout See, which I think is a very good book. I'm very proud of it.
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Pete Kunze
Excellent. And it's an enjoyable read.
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Angarad N. Valdivia
I was really born at it.
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Pete Kunze
No, go ahead. Sorry.
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Angarad N. Valdivia
Yeah, sorry, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't mean to. I was just gonna say, like, to follow on, Angie, it was really born. Born out of a silence at that conference. Around. Yeah, around. Thinking through production, the recycling of careers, all of that stuff. And, you know, we talked about it a lot with other colleagues there between the coffee breaks. And it took a while to get this book out because of the pandemic. But it's out. Yeah, it actually started during the pandemic.
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Pete Kunze
So, yeah, I navigated pandemic editing as well. So solidarity. I'm hoping that we can talk a bit then about, like, what does it mean? How are we using this term here? Reboot? Because you kind of offer us a useful lens because there's kind of several industrial phenomena that are kind of circulating under the idea of reboot. So for the listener who is noticing this, but perhaps wants a little bit more sense of the terminology, how are you using reboot in your collection?
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Isabel Molina Guzman
If I may, I. Could we kind of define it there on page three, because we're using reboot as a umbrella term. But we realize as scholars that there are different types of recyclings that happen in audiovisual, mainstream, contemporary media. And so reboots are. I'm just kind of reading here, defined by a loose connection to a previous fictional storyline, but with different actors. So something like Charmed, Ghostbusters, Party of Five, One Day at a Time, all of which are discussed in the book. Then there is the remakes. And remakes are an updated reading of the original story. So you have. Disney does remakes all the time. And we have one of those products or one of those cultural products like Aladdin in the book, the remake of it. The. You know, the kind of animated into a CGI live action movie. And so we had that. And then there's the revivals where you're really using the same characters, the same actors usually, and the same themes, but you're moving it up. So something like. And just like that, which we have a chapter about in the book, it's using all of the original. They're adding new Characters, obviously, that's part of what the chapter is. They're adding primarily new characters of color to make it less white, which was the original criticism, one of the criticisms of Sex and the City, but that would be a revival. And so those are three types of reboots that we kind of just, you know, we rebooting for the title. I think it would be too much of a title to say rebooting, remaking and revival or something like that. You know, titles have to be catchy.
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Angarad N. Valdivia
Yeah. To go back to something Angie said at the beginning, if we, you know, if we're in sort of reusing or in using the reboot label as the umbrella, we're really talking about just the perpetual recycling of media across platforms, you know, which, as Angie pointed out, is not new at something that the media has always done, especially like the mass media, the popular media has always done. And so when we think about reboots, it's really about that recycling that happens really across, like, platforms and formats. So from books to films to TV shows, you know, and backwards, you know. So really just thinking through the way that, you know, the media industries are so good at recycling text across platforms and across kind of media forms. So, you know, so for us, that's what we really thought of when we, you know, we have those very specific forms that we look at in the book. But for us, it's really a question about what does it mean to perpetually. For media systems to perpetually be recycling text across time, across platforms, across media products?
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Pete Kunze
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was a kid of the 90s, and when we rebooted something like our computers, our video game systems, it was a start over. Right. It was kind of a clean slate. And I think there's a way in which we might assume that reboots are new and improved or a fresh start. But at the heart of your collection, it feels like you're saying, no, this is a conservative industrial tactic. Right. Like, this is not one that is necessarily invested in repair. This is one that in some ways allows for persistence of those logics and structures that have long been in place. So can you tell us more about this idea? That rebooting of texts is often a reboot of inequality and the important nature of this intervention.
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Isabel Molina Guzman
Okay, so we're getting to the point that at the core of this volume, it is a conservative strategy. Right. And it is, to begin with, as a political economist, I have to highlight the fact that it is economically conservative. Right. Because you are taking less risk, you're doing less investment because you're dealing with, especially in a conglomerate kind of driven media production ecosystem, they own the ip, the intellectual property to the original. So you're just kind of recycling that. And you've already proven that there's an audience, and usually there are audiences clamoring for a reboot. Right. There are people asking for. And just like that, or people have been asking for a new version of the Devil wears product for 20 years. Right. And which is part of what's driving the success of that recycled product right now in theaters, you know, very strategically, right before Mother's Day. So it became a movie that, you know, people took their mothers to. Because 20 years works perfectly. So it's an economically conservative. Less risk, less investment, ideally more profit. But if you. If it turns out to be a flop, you still invested less in that flop than if you would have totally done something new. So it is less risky even if you're going to flop. Right. It is also conservatively, very, very. I mean, historically very conservative because you're rebooting something that was. That was tracking that historical periods, you know, ideology, you know, issues of social issues, political issues. And so you are building from a moment back in time where we could say more than likely was less progressive. Although we are at a moment where we're kind of spinning that a little bit back. Sasha. A lot. Right. And so it's hard. It's kind of like the DNA of whatever's being rebooted was already conservative, so it's hard to. To. To unmoor it from that, you know, raison d', etre, from those tropes that are embedded in there. And so, so, yeah, so it's. It. Even though it's, of course, television and movies, they're always saying we're doing something totally new. But that's just so funny because we all know it's a joke, right? So there's like that. That new show on Apple TV where that's their ad. Their ad is, you know, when they're trying to recruit that guy and they're going, we're going to do something totally new. And then they go, yeah, but don't forget that it's going to be just like the old one. Right? So that's it, you know, that is. I watched that running over and over in Apple TV ads, and I'm like, yeah, that's exactly it. Something totally new. But really don't. Don't change anything because we want to attract the audiences that we already did. So it is a fundamentally conservative strategy that minimizes stress and from their perspective, they're trying to maximize audiences. They're trying not to anger anybody, not to turn anybody off. But we will talk more about the implications of that when we get to the audience questions.
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Angarad N. Valdivia
Yeah, and I think, like, the other part of, like, the. The conservative drive of reboots and is really part of the conservative drive of media institutions writ large. We know from industry studies that, I mean, regardless of the media, it's predominantly white, it's predominantly male, predominantly heteronormative. And so those are the creators, those are the writers, those are the executives, and that's the legacy of the media. Since we got. We got television, that's just been the structure of those industries. But you can think about publishing. I mean, it just goes that the stories that have been told have been predominantly told through that perspective. And since the industries have not radically changed, it's not surprising that those are the perspectives that still shape these reboots. They were there at the original, and they're still the same kinds of people, if not the original creators and writers, still producing the reboot. So it really speaks to the conservative culture of media industries writ large, where, because the voices are so homogenous, the message is homogenous, and the message tends to be conservative, predominantly because commercial media, as Professor Valdivia said, has to reach the broadest number of audiences they can globally, nationally. So it's, you know, I think both of those. You know, what Professor Valdivia mentioned, along with the industry itself, kind of pushes us to. Even the reboots are constrained within that. If they break out of it, they have backlash. Most of them don't. And so it's just continuing kind of the. The same ideological narratives with some differences over time, but the bulk of it is very similar. Yeah.
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Pete Kunze
So a key component of the strategy, then, as you're both saying, is that they play it safe. Right. Both politically and economically. But what are the costs of playing it safe in your opinions, particularly for culture and for the audiences that consume it?
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Isabel Molina Guzman
Well, you know, risk aversion is a major component of capitalism. Right. It's profit maximization and risk aversion. So when you get to the cultural industries, the way that that translates into plain and safe. Right. But I guess if we can get ahead a little bit, because this kind of keeps taking me into the audience kind of issue, is that a lot of this common sense about playing it safe, it's not even based on data. It's based on a common sense that is developed by the people that Professor Molina Guzman said are the types that still produce and run our media system. For example, when you're thinking about the reboot of One Day at a Time, which I write about, and also professors Esteban Del Rio and Christine Moore write another chapter about it, was when it. When it's rebooted, you still have Norman Lear producing it. Norman lear, who was 100 years old. I mean, that just tells you everything. So it's like you have a 100-year-old person who's totally kind of wedded to the way. Just from everything, from the way he's shooting the film to the way he thinks about difference. The way he thinks about difference, Right. So you have all of that going in there and the way he thinks about audiences. And I think that many of us would argue that part of the reason that show was not more successful is because it was so retro and so much of that was that it was still kind of coming out of Norman Lear productions. Right. And so there were like two or three decades there of changes that could have been instituted that weren't, and things that were presented as totally cutting edge that weren't. But maybe they were to Norman. But, you know, the coming out story, you know, even LGBTQ teens thought it was, meh. You know what I mean? It wasn't really like, wow, it wasn't like the Ellen moment. Because by the time Norman Lear did it in One Day at a Time, it was already. He was doing a trope of a coming out story. It was already a tropish thing. Right. So I don't want to talk too much, Professor Molina. Yeah, no, no, no.
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Angarad N. Valdivia
Yeah, absolutely. I think when that show was out and you were teaching, it wasn't connecting with a lot of the undergrads. It wasn't connecting with a lot of Latino, Latin, Latinx undergrads. It, you know, it just. It was. It had not updated itself generically. And so I think, as Professor Valdivia said, that's totally shaped by. Even though they had a diverse writers room, totally shaped by the ideals of the. Of one of the executive producers, Norman Learning, and you see this over and over again. I write about it. I don't write about it in this book, but when you think I was so shocked when I started researching Modern Family and realized that the producers, the original writers room and the original producers, I mean, not surprised because of the show, were all white men who identified as all straight white men. And they all said repeatedly that what they really wanted to do was tell a story about them and their families in this new context. And so that, in a nutshell, is why we continue to see these kinds of inequalities and real flattening of storylines that sometimes don't capture audiences very well, because audiences have definitely changed in that time period. And I, you know, you know, I, I think for me, you know, so I was really interested in the sort of hate and the hatred by that sort of anti fandom that shows that tried to break from the original mold faced. And even though the storylines were themselves very generically conservative, right. There was nothing super radical in them. Even though the dialogue might have been in the rebooted Charmed and some of the topics were in the rebooted Charmed, the originals did not want that. The original audiences really wanted what had been offered to them before, and they reacted really virulently against that show, even though new audiences actually found it refreshing. But the original audiences had that expectation of they were going to get what they had gotten before. And to me, that was so interesting that they would be so incensed by a cultural text, not literally, even though media is continually recycling, not recycling, not doing a revival of that original show. And to me, that said something interesting about what, what? You know, that's when I started really thinking about what are these tele reboots? What role are they playing for that, you know, that want it and desire it, those that are left out of the text and those that really don't like the rebooted or recycled text of the original. To me, it seemed like there was something more there than just whether or not fans liked particular actors or characters. There was something more happening in the response to recycled text that told us something broader about the moment we were living in.
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Pete Kunze
And I think a key theory here for how you help us to think through this moment is racial capitalism. How would you explain to listeners the core ideas behind racial capitalism as a, as a body of critical theory? And, and how does it help you to reframe how we might think about these reboots?
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Angarad N. Valdivia
Yeah, and that's one of the most difficult texts to read and work with. So please, those of you who might listen to this, who are experts in racial capitalism, forgive my simplistic explanation or my attempt to provide a more simplistic explanation. So the way I read racial capitalism is really an intervention into traditional Marxist theory and traditional Marxist history in the sense that Cedric Robinson argues that the foundation of capitalism, really the formation of economies and the foundation of what we know as capitalism, what Marx and others have discussed as capitalism, rest on the need to racialize and racially categorize others in order to provide less value to some and greater value to. To those in power. And so Cedric Robinson begins this narrative by talking about, well, you know, medieval culture, right? And the way that the peasant class or those without property were really marginalized and made other in that context and then continues to the contemporary moment. And so for me, I, given that we're really talking about global media, global mainstream media in particular, I saw that within that history. And for me, if we're going to redefine or if we're going to make an intervention into our understandings of Marxist theory and capitalism, and if we're going to foreground the need for capitalism to. To accumulate wealth by marginalizing some, in the worst case, of course, we're talking about the transatlantic slave trade and valorizing others. Right. And I think both in the United States and Europe, we have lived under the history of really Western, Eurocentric, you know, masculine power. Then you had. Then, for me, I had. You know, we had to think through that. We had to. We. I wanted to think through that. We wanted to think through that in this context, right? So if. If capitalism occurs in this context, then mass entertainment or mass media, mass popular culture has to, you know, as a mechanism of capitalism, has to be equally kind of part of that, part of the formation of those structures. Right? And we know, you know, there's so much research at this point, or at least there's a good foundation, and there's increasing work in this area that is looking at the history of film, the history of television, the history of radio, the way that the initial audiences for those were really served representations of difference in race that erased the actual racial identities of the characters or the racial lineages of the storylines. And we continue to see that today. And so for me, that's why I was really driven to, and was really excited about thinking through the role of racial capitalism and structuring the media industries and the implications for that in continuing the sort of structures of inequality that we currently live in. And so that's what drew me to that concept and drew us to really, especially trying to address the silences that we heard at that initial conferences really drove me to think about. I think that concept drove us to think about if this erasure of difference continues to happen both in our scholarship, in that context and within the media industries themselves, how can racial capitalism help us to understand the way that those. In the sort of role those industry industries have served in producing, in sort of contributing to inequality and being shaped by inequality and telling stories grounded in inequality and, and how we can make sense of that today and in this moment. So. So for me, I hope I'm going to stop talking for the podcast and ask you, Peter, if that, like, made sense, if it wasn't too jargony, if
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Isabel Molina Guzman
I may add, a little bit too. Yeah, I think that at, at the level of production, obviously the extractive nature of capitalism, what Cedric Robinson wrote about and then what the media scholars have been writing about is that the, the, the theft, if you will, of intellectual property. And. Right. So at a very structural level, the fact that regimes of intellectual property are themselves racialized. So we're drawing on the work of the great Angeli Vats and the Color of Creatorship and her really great conference, the Race and Intellectual Property Conference, that it's held all over the world. And the fact that regimes of intellectual property don't even count what it is that the racialized peoples of the world count as protected by intellectual property regimes. So you're thinking about something like boa temporary writing about Adinkra Textiles in Ghana and how that's not protected because it's not considered intellectual property. So talking about the very regimes that generate wealth in the capitalist formation and exclude racialized production. So we're talking about that and the work. So we have Angeli Boatema, Armand Townes, whose career has been devoted to media and racial capitalism and to looking at how, beyond just the level of representation, but at the very level of how this structural, systemic definition of, of what counts as something that can be remunerated within capitalism rules out or steals, or there's theft of the creation of racialized people. And so that is very, very foundational to what we're writing about in terms of the production of programming and the rebooting of it.
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Angarad N. Valdivia
Yeah, And I think we talk a little bit about that, or we talk about it in the introduction. Yeah. Because when it comes to recycling text, so much of it happens at a transnational level and a global level. Right. And so, you know, we, we see that and the sort of, you know, as Angie, you know, really pointedly put it, the sort of extraction of that cultural capital and the recycling of it then into these Westernized texts that certainly have a much broader and greater global reach than the local could.
- [32:04]
Pete Kunze
Yeah, I think we can kind of build on that with the next question, which is thinking about the influence of political economy of communication, as Professor Valdivia has pointed to already, and specifically paying attention to the increasing concentration of media ownership and the ways that these conglomerates work to maximize profits by exploiting their IP across all the various sectors and divisions that they're managing. And, you know, many listeners are probably aware of this increasingly as we see the, the battle to buy Warner Brothers Discovery between Netflix and Paramount Skydance, which will further reduce the number of major players in the US and global media market. So in thinking about these macro level concerns, you know, I'm curious if you could talk more about the importance of, you know, situating a reboot in this kind of larger structural practice and kind of balancing those scales, Right? Because on the one hand, you know, focusing on a reboot like say One Day at a Time or Arrested Development or Gilmore Girls seems manageable. And yet in order to kind of get the resonance and the significance, we do have to situate it in this larger kind of macro structure that can seem intimidating but necessary for understanding fully what's happening. So that's a very long way of asking if we could talk a little bit more about macro level concerns and then the value for understanding reboots, but also in balancing in these case studies that you offer us here, you know, the kind of the textual analysis and the discourse analysis with that kind of industrial analysis as well.
- [33:45]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Okay? So the whole book is really about the production. You know, recycling is a, is a productive, you know, work is productive and it produces representations, but none of it can be even understood without looking at the systemic industrial context, right? So what we media studies call the political economy, right? Because every, every discipline has a different definition for political economy, right? So whenever I talk about it with my historian friends, they, when they talk political economy, they mean they're going to talk about labor, right? And for us media scholars, of course, we also look at issues of labor, but we look at issues of ownership, control, distribution. All of that is part of the political economy of media industries. And we're looking at, as Professor Molina Guzmana said, and I have said too, is we're looking at mainstream here, right? We're looking at the conglomerate, the stuff that the conglomerates produce, and that's the stuff that most people have access to, and that's the stuff that's widely distributed transnationally and subverting any kind of local productions because it's so slick, it's so seductive, you know, and so it's very, very difficult even for local producers, working with local actors, working with local budgets and local themes to kind of compete against Disney in children's television. It's almost impossible. It's almost because Disney is so sticky in terms of its desirable production, visual aural, kind of techniques. We drew a lot on the work of the great political economist Eileen Meehan, who's also an alum of one of our departments. She's also an alum of the Institute of Communications Research, where we had a real strong traditional political economist. And she wrote about trans industrialism and synergy. And this was an article in 2005, and she identified five behaviors, that's what she called them, behaviors of synergy. And she was looking at Hercules and how the cross ownership allowed a conglomerate to place that product in the news, in sports, in clothing. So you can really deploy the kind of display and the launching of the movie across so many different platforms, you know, and, and to synergize it. So if you're Disney, you can, you can have the whole thing discussed in Good Morning America because you own abc, so it becomes part of the news. And, and then of course, the, the theme park and. And then you do the reboot and all of that. So she reminds us that media concentration allows conglomerates to maximize profit. And then. But they also. I keep going back to also the intellectual property, the more intellectual property. This is one of the concerns, right, with the current mergers, as it has been with previous mergers, is that more and more intellectual property is being held in the hands of fewer and fewer. Not people, but corporations. Right. And I don't want to take you on a big, you know, kind of whole rabbit hole of intellectual property, but the whole reason for the loss of it was to re. To incentivize creators to produce creative products. But the money does not go to the creators. It either gets stolen from creators, the stuff that Professor Vats writes about, or it gets bought by these conglomerates who didn't have the control to display it and to recycle it and to regenerate different kind of combinations. It's almost like they're. Yeah, it's like a digital kind of what can we take from Star wars and Aladdin and can we put it all on a magic carpet and launch it on that? So people are concerned about it, but this is not a new concern. The Paramount discovery thing is producers, because they're seeing that the concentration of ownership generates less jobs, right. And less creativity, less room for innovation and huge barriers to entry. Huge barriers to entry. And also in the current precarity economy, just, you know, the kind of very under, you know, underpaying, you know, and the fact that lots and lots of people who used to have actual jobs are now in the precarious economy. And you know what that means in terms of Benefits. So these are labor issues. This is why you have thousands and thousands of actors and people who work in media industry say, no, no, this is not a good idea, because it makes their whole existence ability to make a living more precarious, but it also reduces the number of stories that potentially will get produced. So I'm thinking more reboots, right? Because right now, I mean, just look what's going on with Star wars prequels, sequels. I mean, you know, just the whole thing keeps like, exploding into the Star wars thing, keeps going on and God knows how many other stories people have written that we'll never get to see.
- [39:10]
Angarad N. Valdivia
You know, Star wars is now a Disney product or has been now for, you know, and I think, you know, for me it's, it is the concentration of ownership that these conglomerations create and then the increasing, you know, there used to, you know, it's been a while since I've taught political economy, but I remember I had a chart with like, I don't know, there were only nine at the time, major conglomerates that owned, you know, kind of distribution and production. And, and now, you know, what you're seeing that is like a restructuring. Nine. Yeah. Down. And it just, it keeps being pushed further. And that's capitalism. That's, you know, and I, and I think, you know, that's capitalism. And, you know, and it is, it does come down to people, right? There are people at the top who are benefiting from this. That's why they do it, right, because they know it's gonna, It's a profitable, it's a profitable way to structure media organizations. And, you know, and, and there are, there are people benefiting at the top. And those people are not very diverse, nor are they. And, you know, as it's become obvious, apparently not even very politically diverse.
- [40:33]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Right?
- [40:33]
Angarad N. Valdivia
They're not politically diverse. They're not. You know, I think it's become apparent in the last couple of, in the last couple of months, in the last year and a half sort of, you know, where they rest in terms of thinking through issues of diversity and inclusion. And so we're going to continue to see, as Professor Valdivia said, more recycling of products that they own the IP for. And it's going to continue that kind of conservative drive of television that, know, we've, we've talked about and studied for, for decades in terms of what we know, the, you know, film and media tend to do. Mainstream film and media tend to do like that drive towards the middle. And so, yeah, so it's, it's very. It's very worrying. And I think Professor Valdivia hit it because the end result, it just means storytelling in less and less hands and the kinds of stories being told being even less, you know, less broad, less. Less able to speak to audiences who aren't perceived already by. By the people in control of these organizations as having economic value. Right. The belief that really, even though it makes very little sense, you know, African American and Latino, Latino, Latinx audiences don't consume media and therefore aren't really that important to the kinds of stories that the media tell, which we know is not true. But as long as they continue to hold on to those kind of, you know, the legacy of mainstream media where the valued audiences are this presumably white, middle class, upper middle class, you know, audience, mostly women in some. In. In most sort of genres, we, you know, that doesn't look like it has any chance of really shifting under this current restructuring that's happening where less. Where less people own more.
- [42:57]
Isabel Molina Guzman
So I always joke with my students that for Disney we really have to change our names to Bob because it's not just that it's all white males, it's Bob's. So Bob Iger. Bob Chapek. Bob Iger. So the new CEO is not named Bob. And I'm like, what is happening? They're actually allowing another white male name because it wasn't just that it was all white males, but they were all white named Bob. It was down to that kind of similarity. So it's just a little joke that, you know, me and my students like another Bob. Yeah.
- [43:33]
Pete Kunze
Yeah. It's interesting to think about how media production is also about reproduction and the reproduction of these power systems and structures. And I think your collection really gets us thinking about how, you know, them, the Bobs and now the Josh, you know, and the Davids and the. And actually the two Davids. Right. Zaslav and Ellison. You know how approving IP reproduction also reproduct reproduces their power structure? Right. You know, the idea that the common sense that we know is ideological. The industry lore always tells them to kind of stick with what works, go back to the basics, you know, and in the process, who are the audiences that lose out? It's the audiences of color. Who are the audiences that win? The white audiences. And who are the power players that win? The ones that have always won. Right. The kind of the straight white men. So it kind of reproduces the system that keeps them in power. Right. And appreciating that kind of hierarchical maintenance that's at work I mean, I think,
- [44:38]
Angarad N. Valdivia
like, you know, there are a couple of examples in the book of the creative capacity that it's still working within the structure. Right. But when you look at some of the, like Showtime or hbo, even, dare I say prime and Netflix and Hulu and those, every once in a while, they will let a storyteller tell a story in a fairly radically different way. And those become really ruptural moments for audiences who don't see themselves in the sort of normative mainstream text, you know, and I'm haven't seen it, so I can't really talk about it. But, you know, the. Even though the Boys and Watchmen and those are also recycled text and, you know, they're doing something different enough that, you know, and could. Could they do that on Netflix? I don't even know. You know, they definitely couldn't do it in any of the. Through the. Any of the sort of traditional mainstream media that's out there, you know, so it. I mean, and in this case, I think Netflix is becoming more like the traditional it is media than it is, like, you know, what you might be able to see in Hulu or Prime.
- [46:17]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Apple.
- [46:18]
Angarad N. Valdivia
And Apple. Yeah. So that's an interesting opportunity, but even in those outlets, there's so little of it. It's still very little. You know, and like, in the case of Watchmen, you're still having a producer that's, you know, I mean, he was very political as. Or more politically, you know, the way he wanted to tell the reboot in the chapter that, you know, that's discussed in the book, you know, they talk about that. You know, he still, you know, kind of in a. Still falls within the norm within the industry. He's a white. He. He was a white male creator and writer. And so. But, you know, and maybe because of that, he had access to telling a story in a different way that maybe others wouldn't. I'm thinking, like, day, you know, one day at a time. The, you know, the head writer for that show, she didn't. I think she had to constantly be pushing against constraints by the executive producers and other writers in terms of how she told stories about her own community.
- [47:32]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Calderon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [47:35]
Pete Kunze
And I talked to my students about this. You know, they talk about something like get out being kind of so unorthodox. Right. And how Universal took a risk on it. But Universal only gave that film, or Blumhouse, which was kind of the producing partner, $5 million to make that film. You know, like, Marvel spends that on, like, craft service. So, you know, the way in which creators of color are often kind of circumscribed financially as a way of kind of controlling risk and how risk itself gets racialized. Right. Along those lines, we need to also discuss nostalgia, which is a huge part of what's happening here, and the whiteness of nostalgia as you draw our attention to in the beginning. Right. The rise of Trump and this whole notion of make America great again. It's like, what version of America are we thinking of here? How far back are you going? Whose vision of America is being served by this idea? Um, this growing interest in a return to the past. One that is obviously both mythic, romanticized, illusory, and also fundamentally unequal. Right. Because the 50s doesn't work out well for most populations, and that's kind of often held up as, like, the. The ideal America. Right. How is this impulse for a going back, a return, this romantic ideal? How is that driving contemporary media culture's interest in reboots, this. This rise of what we might think of, or what you call white nostalgia?
- [49:05]
Angarad N. Valdivia
Yeah, And I think in the introduction, and certainly throughout several of the other, you know, chapters in the collection, I think the more unsettling the present becomes. Right. The more. I mean, now we're living through, like, pretty intense economic turmoil again. But, you know, during, you know, I think the. I mean, it's hard to think about a moment in history in the US where there's ever been an ideal. An ideal point, at least not for those of us who don't identify as white and wealthy and, you know, middle class and. And heteronormative. So I, you know, that. That, like, as you rightly pointed out, that past doesn't really exist, not even for the people who see themselves in that past, more than likely, because there's so few people that are actually in that category, that idealized category. But for me, I think this drive towards nostalgia is really shaped by a desire for comfort and escapism, which is part of what we get when we look at fictional film and television and other media. Other. And so it's really about that. A moment where everything is really unsettled. And I think Trump won, And now Trump 2 is doing that. Right. So audiences really want. If they want that escape, they want a return to some kind of moment in the past where they idealized that things were better for them, whether it's in their teenagehood or in their young adulthood. You know, memories of their parents, memories of their grandparents. This sense that, you know, this text at that moment represented a really ideal moment for them, like a moment where things were good, and now we're living in a moment where things are crazy crap, for lack of better word, like, things are not good. And, and so, yeah, like, you get that the, the escapist drive of, of, of media, which, as, as, as Professor Valdivia said, there's nothing wrong with that. You know, there's nothing wrong with wanting to escape. I do that all the time, you know, watch mindless things just to, like, get my mind off of something. Something. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just the sort of, you know, it's happening at a time where there just seems to be this explosion of rebooted films and rebooted text and then the backlash towards them. Because so much of what happened pre Trump were these flipped reboots and these flipped texts, which now I don't think, you know, it'll be interesting to see, but I haven't seen many of those coming out. Instead, we get the Arrested Development reboot with, you know, which is very. Which is, which is, you know, not really flipped. So, yeah, so I think, you know, it's going to be interesting to see what kinds of recycled or rebooted texts come out. But for us, in the moment that we were looking at, these texts that came out either right before Trump and really during Trump, some of them came out in response to Trump. And so, like the Roseanne reboot, I mean, clearly that's all about his discourse of white nationalism, white resentment, anti gltbq, anti immigrant. I mean, that's, that's all in that text, you know, and, and some audiences loved it. And then, you know, it probably would still be on if Roseanne didn't, you know, stick her. I have no doubt that that show would still be on. And, you know, and then you, you have shows like Charmed, which also pivoted because of Trump, and to try to respond to that. But the whole political moment we're in is all about trying to return us to the past, which people in power, political power and media power and economic power, for them, seems like a good moment, but for the rest of us, maybe not so much. Yeah, no, go ahead.
- [54:06]
Pete Kunze
No, I'm just curious if we can kind of, you know, where we could talk a little bit more about the role that audiences play in all this. Right. We've been, we've been focusing on the, the corporations and the producers. Right. But the, the, the other end of the cycle is, is where audiences, both those that exist and are embodied actual beings in the world, and and imagined audiences, which are such a large part of the, the common sense that Professor Valdivia talked about, right. This, this idea of like, this is what the audience wants, this is what the audience likes, and it's like, based on what? Right. So how do we bring them into the analysis? And how does consideration of audiences, real and imagined, factor into the work you're showcasing in your volume?
- [54:57]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Well, I think that audiences are made out of people, right? And people are the wild card. It's very hard to predict people. If media industries could, they would never have a flop and we would have never ending reboots of things that everybody loved. But that's not, you know what I mean? But that's not the way that, that it works. And the thing with audiences is, I think here's when we see the kind of how these are, you know, the production is racialized and it's gendered because the whole reason or raison d' etre for capitalism is profit maximization. And yet they're ignoring audiences that could increase profits. So when you're seeing that kind of irrationality, then you know, you're deep in ideology. Because if they really wanted to increase audiences and advertising revenues, which is what legacy media survives on, then they would appeal to a broader range of audiences, which is what Spanish language television is doing. There's just a great book, I don't know if you're going to interview them, but Manuel de Santiago Angelian buys Spanish language television. And what they demonstrate there is that the audiences are increasing and so are the advertising revenues. And it's the only segment of the legacy television industry that is increasing in audiences and advertising revenues. And the main reason is, is because they have worked really, really hard at trying to figure out who the audience is. And it's not as easy as saying, oh, we're going to target to people who speak Spanish, you know, because it's like, what Spanish? Which Spanish? Right, yeah. Are you talking about Mexicans? Are you talking about Puerto Ricans? Are you talking about bilnuals who are bilingual millennials? Or are you talking about people who are single? These are all research projects and processes that had to be done by Univision and Telemundo before they could be floating, still survive as an economic concern in a competitive capitalist market which is now being watched by Netflix and by the legacy networks going, hey, how are you guys? How are you guys doing it? And they're like, we are trying to figure out who the audience is, and it isn't easy, and it's very diverse and the way we do it is, wow, we have to talk to the audience. You know, we have to actually go out there and figure out and get some readings. And some of the stuff they hear is Latino audiences are not happy with the near erasure of indigeneity. Latino audiences are not happy with the way that Afro Latinos are being portrayed. And underrepresented Latino audiences are not happy with only being portrayed as sports, you know, or sexy senoritas, but they are paying attention to that. So as we said before, a lot of the audience, common sense makes no sense, you know, once you're looking at demographics. So I would think, you know, that legacy networks and even Netflix, you know, you got to look at the demographics. It's like the other day I was listening to NPR and they were talking to some diplomacy person. They go, what should the US have done before they went to do things that they did in Iran? And he goes, well, it would have helped if they would have looked at the map. You know, this is a major, like, conservative diplomat studies person from Johns Hopkins. And he goes, it would have helped if they looked at the map. So basically, it's the same thing here. It would have helped if you looked at demographics. You're trying to grow your audience, as Professor Molina says, by going back to some kind of nostalgic moment where maybe the audience that watched television was 90% white middle class. But, you know, the white middle class has not reproduced itself since 1970. 1970 is the last year that it reproduced to replace itself. So it's been. It's been a while. It's been a while. And we're acting like that's still happening. You could actually increase your profits if you figured out what it is that multiracial audiences want to watch. And you don't have to go totally like, you don't have to do too many things to increase that audience. Because right now there's such a thirst for representation, for visibility. There's so many stories that are frankly just lovely, just wonderful, just audience engaging. But you do have to do research and you have to do your production, and you're relaunching and you're hiring on research. And it doesn't help to just diversify the writer's room, although that is one way to do to less one part of it. It has to be a holistic approach, you know, which includes breaking that glass ceiling of executive producer. Because if you still have Norman Lears producing stuff, you can have kind of a more or less diverse writer's room. But Norman is Saying three camera angle. And let's. I'm like, wow. Coming out is like the most diverse thing I've ever heard of, you know, so that comes down from. From. From the top. So it is. You have to do more research. You have to look at demographics, and you, you know, do things a little bit differently. And I'm like, I not. So, I mean, obviously I would love something wildly different, but I know I'm talking about Disney, and I've published this. You can't expect a revolution from Disney. The revolution is not going to come from Disney. Okay, but. But you could do things that get you to different audiences, and Disney has done some of this. I would argue that Moana was incredibly alluring for a number of. I mean, clearly the Rock played a character that is very problematic, but there were other things going on there. Same with original Mulan. Original Mulan was queer Disney. Right. And it really spoke to queer audiences. And I think in a way that Disney was not anticipating, it's like, what, did we just produce Queer Disney? Yeah, you did, and it was good, you know, for that. Yeah. So. So more research and looking at the demographics. Just like, let's just start with the basic, you know, what is our. What. What is our population nowadays? It's. It's not what you think it is, and you cannot retrofit it. I mean, let's hope that they don't try. Yeah.
- [61:43]
Angarad N. Valdivia
You know, and I think for the, you know, the chapters in the. In the collection that, you know, focused on audience responses, it's, you know, one of, again, to go back to white nostalgia and really, like, kind of white heteronormative resentment. It's obvious, or from those case studies that when. When there is a deviation from what is believed to be the common sense audience, you're gonna get a backlash. And you see that all the time in these recycled texts. Like, Marvel is always, you know, like all the new recycled versions, I mean, they. They exist right. In the. In the comics as. As they are depicted. But the fact that they're depicting, you know, these really popular superheroes in ways that don't match the perception of audiences who have a different kind of expectation is really seen as evidence of, like, what the current politics in the US Is, is. Right. This evidence of, like, the need to make America great again, I. E. Make America white again. Right. And so you see that in the audience responses. And it's interesting because some of the responses, like in. In the chapter on Charmed, the one that I wrote, you know, there are some Latino audiences who also want the normative, you know, and that's not unusual.
- [63:26]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Right.
- [63:26]
Angarad N. Valdivia
Because audiences are always complicated. And, you know, we know, you know, for whatever reason, that audiences especially like English dominant Latino audiences, they like watching white media text. And so it's not surprising that they would be offended by something that is trying to represent Latinidad in a non white way, such as that show charm. So that's one of the things that really struck me as interesting is when audiences of color also push back on these kinds of representation in the case of who was about gender. Right. A gender flip. And what's interesting in that case is that audiences aren't reacting the same way to the first black doctor who than they did to the first white woman doctor who. So then that reinforces. Yeah. Issues of masculinity and heteronormativity that were challenged by the casting of a. Of a. Of women doctor who. And so I, I think, you know, what is clear, I think for both Professor Valdivia and I, and this is why the conglomeration issue is so such a concern, is that there is a craving for audiences who don't usually see themselves represented in these recycled texts, which are now such a big part of the mainstream media or text in general, that there is, you know, that that is a need, as Professor Valdavia was saying, that is untapped. And recycled texts contribute to that sort of erasure of those audiences in a way that I don't think helps to, as Professor Valdivia said, expand the audience and the profit that they're seeking. I think one of the things that those of us who teach in media studies know, audiences are complicated and they're not one dimensional.
- [65:38]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Yeah.
- [65:39]
Angarad N. Valdivia
And, you know, and, and they, you know, actively engage and respond to these texts. And it's not homogenous, you know, and, and that makes it difficult obviously, to, to, you know, but it makes it difficult or in the. Through these conglomerates, like those audiences are going to continually be underserved. It's going to be difficult to produce storylines that might speak to those audiences, especially as we see this increasing or this continued conglomeration and the real, like, Hollywood structures not change, not really change in any kind of meaningful way that would open up access or doors to different kinds of storytellers. So I think that that's one of the interesting things to me, as I kind of observe the pushback against flipped recycled text or even the sort of use of multicultural cast in regular and non recycled text, and the way audiences respond to that, to me, is really interesting. And again, it almost is, unfortunately, we're living in a moment of censorship and increased control in the hands of a few. And the erasure or the blurring which is always there, but now so obvious between the political and the cultural industries. And I think that the result is increased marginalization for those audiences who aren't part of what. What we've been talking about as the common sense notions that these executive producers and creators and writers carry in their head.
- [67:36]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Yeah, I think that also, you know, they kind of know that there's diversity out there and since they're not really, really kind of doing the legwork. So then you get something like. And just like that, right. Where you add three sidekicks, women of color. Right. And which audiences are not that excited about because they're clearly stereotyped and sidekicks and they're clearly dropped in to foreground the white protagonist. And so it's, you know, that that was one of the problems with that reboot is that they tried to add the white, the women of color. And it was just such a. It was a problematic. It was a problematic edition. It was. Yeah, I am not sure it was well thought.
- [68:23]
Angarad N. Valdivia
And the producer and executive director was the same from the original and the reboot. So surprise, because it's not like he really dealt with issues of, I think, a racial or even sexual difference that well in the original. So what did they think was going to happen when he did the reboot or the, you know, revival? Yeah, so I mean, that's the part that's, you know, really interesting is that I think, you know, it's such a, such a network and the people who get to tell the stories have to be networked in and it's, you know, that sort of all boys network in Hollywood. It's really hard to break from that and to get a foot in you, you know, usually the ones that get the foot in are. Tend to be white men and then they give the. They open the doors for other white men. And, you know, it's taken all of these programs across Paramount and Disney to try to diversify those creators and decision makers and which now they have license to totally roll back. In fact, you know, they're under. I'm assuming they know, like all universities and everybody else in this country, they could be legally sued. Right. For perceptions that they're, you know, engaging in reverse discrimination. And so, like, what it, you know, so I, I think it's gonna, like I said, it's gonna be really interesting to see the impact of what is happening right now. Politically, on the kinds of texts that we see moving forward, especially given what is becoming obvious about the politics of some of the people who own these companies and own these conglomerates.
- [70:26]
Pete Kunze
Yeah, I think that feeling of exhaustion and overwhelming that you bring us to here, Professor Molina Guzman, is, is a useful one for my next question, which is, you know, this is such a heavy topic in a way, right. And it taps into a much longer history of inequalities that are pervasive through our media and our culture and our society. I'm wondering, are you seeing in this moment, in some of these case studies, opportunity for hope, room for hope, particularly maybe thinking about, are there instances where we see creators and performers of color, women and non binary folks, LGBT folks who are able to kind of work within and against this system that's so obsessed with repetition, revisiting revival, rebooting.
- [71:20]
Angarad N. Valdivia
I mean, I think there are obviously like key figures of, you know, predominantly African American producers and who have been able to at least be able to tell their, their, their storylines, their creative storylines, their, their visions, you know, in ways that are very powerful and transformative in some cases, you know, like Ryan Cooper, obviously, you know, and, and others, you know, and you know, and then at the same time we have somebody like Shonda Rhimes who, you know, also, you know, has great, like economic and cultural capital, is able to get what she wants produced, tells stories that may be engaged different in interesting ways, but isn't really interested in that. You know, she's much more interested in just the representational, right. The having representational differences on the screen, which does matter as well, right. Activists want those representational, you know, representation. They want to see themselves on the screen. So that's not a negative thing. But she's not doing anything radical, you know, like, you know, we might say, you know, get out, you know, really, you know, was such a cultural moment and you know, and even. Why am I blanking on the movie that just won the Oscar, Thinners, Thinner or Thinners, you know, that Sinners does, you know, so it's like, I think there are moments for hope. And I do think that, I do think that with social media and with, with online platforms, you are creating access in an interesting way, like Awkward Black girl, right? And the way that she has moved through that text has been recycled. And I think that's an interesting example, right, like from non mainstream to mainstream. And, and so I think, you know, that there, that that's an interesting aspect of contemporary, you know, the contemporary media landscape that we didn't have before, like the ability for independent producers to lower the cost of production and get their stories out there, catch the attention of, of maybe some of the executive decision makers and, you know, allow them a chance to tell the story to, to wider audiences. Unfortunately. Well, not unfortunately. I guess it's true of all texts, but some of my favorite stories that have been dead, like that only lasts one season and then it's like, oh, this was such a great opportunity. Oh, and now it's gone. But yeah, I do think that that's an interesting moment of rupture is the fact that there are production companies out there designed for non mainstream storytellers, LGBTQ people of color, which enables them to at least get their stories out and enables the opportunity that they can be picked up by larger media companies. Now what happens when they get picked up is a different story, right? Do they get, do they, are they still able to tell the stories the way they want to tell them? You know, that's sometimes not the case. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, depending on who picks them up. But I think that that's a really interesting opportunity. And I, and you know, when I think about our college students, they're on those platforms, right? They know where to find those, like non mainstream text, you know, that, you know, and Hulu has been a great plot, you know, has provided a lot of good access to writers and producers and creators of color. And, you know, and so that's really playing an interesting role, I think, in today's culture. So, you know, I think that that's an opportunity. I think that's a possib. There's a good possibility there in terms of some interventions there, whether they stay in those channels or move to the mainstream. I think another. This is maybe not something that we think about or that we often think about when it comes to the creative, the cultural industries, but the fact that there are more students of color going into creative industries and into the arts and performance, and I think that's really good because you need that pool if you're really going to try to diversify, you know, if you're going to try to continue diversifying downstream. The issue, of course now is that whether or not they have those opportunities is not clear. Right. Because the mainstream media have really pulled, pulled, pulled back, at least publicly on what they say they're doing to, to continue to create more inclusive, a more inclusive media environment within their companies. So, you know, we'll just see because I know what they say publicly is different from what's happening internally.
- [77:06]
Isabel Molina Guzman
So Yeah, I mean, I. I am always hoping for something better. Right. And. And I tell people I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't have hope that there will be. In the time that I've been watching, that I've been consuming media, things have changed a little bit. And I think that, of course, we always want to keep going because there was so much ground to cover, but things have changed a little bit. One of the elements that gives me hope is the students. Again, like Professor Molina Guzman just said, you know, at the end of every semester, I tell students, okay, you go out there and make better stuff, because I know you're smart enough, I know you're creative enough, I know you can make better stuff than what's there. And I tell them every time I watch a movie in the theaters or whenever I can, because nowadays you can't even get to see the credits. But I stay there for the very last one. Drives my family crazy. Can we go now? I'm like, no, we're not done with the credits, because I'm like, I'm going to start seeing my students there. I'm going to start seeing new names. And, yes, we are launching students who are more holistically educated, not just the nuts and bolts of production, but also the history, the classes that we teach. And I'm hoping that that will have kind of a cumulative effect. It's very hard, very hard to move the needle with these industries. And I've had students and colleagues who, for example, have worked in Disney because the tropes are almost like a cement structure with so little flexibility that they're working in, and yet things are a little bit different than they used to be in 1945 and saludos amigos. So. So. So I'm. And then I see, you know, the whole range of producers, like, you can go from Oprah and Shonda Rimes to somebody like Issa Rae. And, you know, and you can see A.J. christian, who has a chapter on Will and Grace in our book, but really his major work is on Open tv, which is. And. And, you know, in Chicago area, where he kind of. It's like a incubator for producers of color, for LGBTQ producers to get their stuff done and to hopefully launch it and for them to have a sustainable career, because we're talking about people having. About our youth having a sustainable career. And so that. That's something that we're investing in for the long term. So I do. I do have hope in. In the long term, but I also know that in the mainstream. That needle will move slowly and sometimes it'll move back as we're watching right now, you know, with literal government incentive to make it move back. And so we are at a moment when that is happening. But I have to believe that will not last forever. I have to, because otherwise, you know, it would be too depressing. I have to.
- [80:18]
Angarad N. Valdivia
Yeah, I, it's hard for me to feel like that. But yes, you, you, yeah, it, it, you do have to. You definitely, you know, otherwise, you know, you'll be immobilized by, by what's happening. It's sometimes hard.
- [80:38]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Yeah. It's not easy.
- [80:41]
Angarad N. Valdivia
See the end of the rainbow?
- [80:42]
Isabel Molina Guzman
No, the.
- [80:43]
Pete Kunze
No, not at all.
- [80:43]
Isabel Molina Guzman
It takes a lot of condensed milk consumption, which is my, it's my go to when I. Condensed milk.
- [80:50]
Angarad N. Valdivia
A lot of tablet. A lot of ice cream. Yeah, a lot of ice cream. A lot of ice cream. It helps to have young people, it helps to watch these texts with young people because, you know, they really, I think they have such an interesting, as I'm sure you know, you know, have such interesting engagements with these texts and where they get their media from that it's, you know, like, you, you gotta like have some sense of hope in, in that, you know, like eventually, eventually these conglomerates and the people in charge will want to have them watch their text. And so, you know, so, you know, have them think of them as the common sense audience. I mean, they like, if not like, who are they going to be producing text for? You know, like, who's going to watch what they produce if they're not even trying to engage like the current, you know, last, you know, two or three generations, which have very different sense of cultural politics than the generations before.
- [82:00]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Before.
- [82:01]
Angarad N. Valdivia
So.
- [82:02]
Pete Kunze
And are also looking for that media in very different spaces than our generations did. Right. It's very hard finding a common legacy media produced text that we're all watching in class. Right. Like, but, you know, you talk about TikTok and they're like, oh yeah, I was looking at it before I came into class. I think some of them are looking at it in class. As we, as we wrap up our conversation, I'm, I have a big question for you, but hopefully a hopeful one, which is who are you hoping will read the book and what kinds of work do you think might come out of it?
- [82:37]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Well, I'm kind of hoping that it'll be, of course scholars, students, but not, you know, obviously it will be assigned and in television and race classes, but I really want it to be assigned in television studies I don't want it to be kind of niched into something that's only about difference. But this is really about the television industry writ large. It's about media studies. Right. It's about media studies. I hope it'll be used also in ethnic studies courses. Right. A lot of times I go to, there's a conference. I will not mention that they never. They do have all these media panels, but none of them have ever read any media studies. So I'm like, why? It's a field. It's a field. You can't just talk about television and not read the work. Because we would never talk about history without reading the historical work. Right. But that's done. So I'm hoping that it'll be read broadly. I used to say I hope my mom will read it, but I think that ship has sailed. I don't think my mom's treating stuff like this anymore. But, yeah, definitely our field undergrad graduates, fellow scholars, and for it to be used in a generalist sense, not just in an ethnic study sense.
- [83:53]
Angarad N. Valdivia
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it definitely lends itself so well for media studies, television studies in particular, you know, but absolutely, we're really thinking about it in this interdisciplinary way. Like, what other fields would really benefit from seeing this text that does really engage? Um, I mean, there are some chapters that are more classic media studies, but a lot of the chapters are bringing in authors and scholarship from all kinds of other disciplines. And. And that's what we really wanted from this book. Um, for, you know, I. I also hope that. I mean, it's a. I hope it's a teachable book. I hope that, you know, that we. We try to really structure it that way with the reading questions and the reading note at the beginning to try to make it easy for it to be taught, but also for people to engage it who maybe aren't academics. And so I think that's one of the ways, one of the things that we hope people. My parents have already said, I offered them some free copies. They said they are going to buy it. But I was having dinner with a computer scientist who saw the. The books and was like, oh, my gosh, I thought the same thing about the Sex in the City.
- [85:26]
Isabel Molina Guzman
And just like that, just like that, just like that.
- [85:28]
Angarad N. Valdivia
I had the same response to him just like that, you know, And I was like, is this. Is this a book I can buy? And I'm like, yes, I'm happy to give you, like, one of my copies. He's like, no, no, no, I will Buy it? Is it, Can I buy it on Amazon? I'm like, yes, you can. She's like, I'll buy my own copy. But, you know, like, so I, I, I, I don't know. Like, I think it's, you know, really, I mean, who doesn't like to talk about television and film reboots? Apparently people love to talk about reboots because they do have some memory of the original at this point, or maybe they've only watched the reboot and, and it have had some engagement with that. So, yeah. So I think, you know, we really worked hard with the authors to try to make it as accessible as possible to define terms so that, you know, we weren't, you know, there's, it's always very hard to get rid of everything, but really try to, like, you know, move away from jargon or if we were going to use a very academic term, at least define it. Define. So that, yeah, so as many people as possible could, could enjoy it and read it. And, and I do think, I don't know, I hope it makes people think about the moment that we're living in and the important role that these cultural messages that we're seeing on our film and television screens play.
- [86:55]
Pete Kunze
Yeah, absolutely. Having read it, I can vouch that it is both accessible and timely, and I think that it'll inspire a lot of great conversations among readers and between teachers and students.
- [87:06]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Thank you.
- [87:07]
Pete Kunze
Thank you. And thank you both for your time. It's been a pleasure chatting with you today about this exciting new collection.
- [87:13]
Angarad N. Valdivia
Thank you so much for featuring us and talking to us. It's been super fun.
- [87:18]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Yeah, Great questions, too. I mean, really, really generated a thoughtful discussion.
- [87:24]
Pete Kunze
Yeah, I think it's, it's, Yeah. I hope you folks agree.
- [87:27]
Angarad N. Valdivia
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This, yeah, You've obviously done this once or twice. I'm going to have to subscribe to your podcast.
- [87:35]
Pete Kunze
Yeah, everyone should. If you're listening to it, listen to more of us. We're here.
- [87:39]
Angarad N. Valdivia
Yeah, definitely. And you have a very good podcast voice.
- [87:43]
Pete Kunze
Oh, thank you. It's my NPR voice, folks.
- [87:47]
Angarad N. Valdivia
When you mention to your NPR voice, I'm like, oh, I need an NPR voice. That's good.
- [87:52]
Pete Kunze
Yeah.
- [87:53]
Angarad N. Valdivia
Thank you so much, Peter.
- [87:55]
Pete Kunze
Thank you. The book is rebooting Critical Takes on Film and Television, available now from New York University Press and other online booksellers, including Amazon, as Professor Molina reminded us. This is Pete Kunze, and this has been New Books Network. Thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us again next time.
- [88:14]
Angarad N. Valdivia
Thank you. Thank you for listening. To this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website newbooksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and BlueSky with the handle ewbooksnetwork, and subscribe to our weekly Substack newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.
- [88:50]
Isabel Molina Guzman
Sam.