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The introduction expands on the rationale, aim and layout of the book. It also the develops the core concepts of the book, such as image, art world, borderlands, and image ecology. The notion ‘art world’ emphasizes that the distinctions between art and non-art are constructed by diverse agents and institutions. Moreover the term ‘borderlands’ is used to defy the idea that there is a definite demarcation or border between what is ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the art world. The term image ecology serves as a metaphor for a desire to understand the interrelationships of things such as the nature of change, adaption and community and as a way to locate how and why images operate in certain ‘environments’ or systems of meaning. Finally the introduction posits the book in the long tradition of image studies and also in recent development within media studies, particularly studies on mediatization and media archaeology.

This chapter will offer a critical introduction to the key issues, debates and ideas within memory studies research. It is not always clear from existing literature how and why memory studies (ranging from the sociological to the cognitive science approaches) should synthesise with media studies. The connections will be made explicit in this chapter. Drawing together foundational theories of memory from for example Halbwachs (1980), Nora (1989), Lowenthal (1996), Olick (1999), Bergson (2004), Ricoeur (2006) and Connerton (2008), the chapter will consider such theorisations of history, remembering, forgetting, amnesia, flashback, archive and nostalgia with a view to making very clear the connections and disconnections between these lines of thoughts and media studies.

This chapter introduces the social, historical, and political elements of 1980s immigration debates in both policy-making and popular culture. Drawing on scholarship in American Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, Critical Legal Studies, and Media Studies, it outlines the two central tropes in 1980s immigration debates that culminated with the passing of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the “nation of immigrants” and “immigration emergency” tropes. It argues that in response to the civil rights and second-wave feminist movements, gendered Reagan-era discourse about Latin American, Asian, and white ethnic immigration was a crucial ingredient in the forming of the neoliberal idea of democracy. The history of immigration and popular culture is outlined, as is the book’s methodology, which blends feminist media studies with critical legal analysis to dialectally examine significant moments in immigration policymaking and contemporary popular culture.

This introduction offers an overview of relevant literature, a brief trajectory of the history of pornography before the video era, and an analysis of why the topic has not received much attention. Additionally, it offers one of the central arguments in the book, that the industry’s quest for respectability by foregrounding quality (both aesthetically and narratively) had critical ramifications in terms of gender and sexuality—particularly for women—that have been previously overlooked.

In this prologue, I describe my own background in relation to this topic, particularly important given my religious family upbringing describe the book’s guiding questions, and set the stage for the rest of the book.

This chapter theorizes an afterlife of Imperial Japan's biological metaphors of lifeworld and circulation in the work of Japanese architect Tange Kenzō and his associates who came to form the internationally renowned movement of Metabolism in the early 1960s. Transposing these imperial metaphors onto postwar Japan's national body politic, Tange and other Metabolist architects frequently used the biological metaphors of blood circulation and the central nervous system to articulate their vision of urban planning. Focusing on the impact of electronic communication technologies on architecture, this chapter will explore how the modern biopolitical idea of maintaining the organic life of the nation persisted into the postwar period, and how this perspective on biopolitics in turn compels us to rethink certain assumptions we make about electronic media and information technologies.

The author presents his argument in the Introduction, that talk radio has continued to maintain its prominence and distinctive significance over the past fifteen years in Hong Kong largely due to the changing social and political context of the city, which has led to the formation of a specific type of congenial and cooperative relationship between talk radio and the mainstream press. Remediation by the mainstream media occurs mainly through thematic representation and content adaptation, and different mainstream media outlets remediate talk radio in both different and similar ways. Remediation also influences how ordinary citizens evaluate and perceive the social roles and functions of talk radio.

The final chapter examines traditional forms of regulation, focusing on the community protests, anti-pornography feminist movements, national efforts by conservative groups, and other attempts to contain the efforts by the adult video industry to find widespread public acceptance and economic success. I argue that a panic, traceable to the move of sexually explicit films from public to private spaces, resulted in a major shift in the cultural understanding of sexuality, pleasure, and pornography. Part of this panic is visible in the Meese Commission’s investigation in 1986, which aligns with the period in which the adult film industry completed the transition from celluloid to magnetic tape-based production and distribution. I conclude the book with an analysis of the mainstream video rental’s decision to stop carrying adult video in the wake of the Meese Commission and gesture toward the further regulatory actions of the 1990s.

Chapter 10 discusses the theoretical implications of the book on the analysis of media interconnectedness and remediation, and the implications of the findings in relation to the broader problematic of the communication of public opinion in Hong Kong. It also comments on the most recent and possible future development of talk radio in the city.

This chapter introduces the fundamentals of memetic media. It traces the (imperfect) connections between conceptualizations of memes as cultural replicators and the mediated texts that have come to bear the name in pop cultural parlance. It then outlines five fundamental logics central to memetic participation. Memetic media are unique for their multimodality (their expression in multiple modes of communication), reappropriation (their “poaching” of existing texts), resonance (their connections to individual participants), collectivism (their social creation and transformation), and spread (their circulation through mass networks). These logics persist beyond individual texts, and are lynchpins for public conversations occurring across mediated contexts.

Chapter two explores the creation in 1983 of Adult Video News (AVN), a newsletter initially aimed at the public but gradually transformed into an industry trade journal in the vein of Variety or Hollywood Reporter. In its attempts to provide a more sophisticated, nuanced, and professional set of discourses for adult video, AVN represents a major turning point in this history, focusing on the industry as an industry, rather than merely as content made by unseen, hidden forces. Additionally, AVN repeatedly emphasized and encouraged the creation of quality material as a strategy to gain the respectability that would lead to greater acceptability and profits, a stance it also replicated within its own pages and editorial practices. Ultimately, AVN crafted something new: a space in which to promote, sell, and celebrate adult video.

Starting with a reference to the recent instances of confrontation between the Indian state and an agitated “civil society”, the Introduction draws our attention to the roles Indian television plays in representing the multiplicity of nation’s citizenry, the moral-political agency of the emergent middle classes and a market-driven broadcasting plugged into mobile phones and social media. It then goes on to statistically establish the mammothness, density and intensity of televisual cultures in India and its huge economic significance. Briefly historicizing Indian television, this chapter moves on to elaborate on the theoretical legacies of the field of Television Studies in India and abroad. Special attention has been devoted here to the methodological questions that concern the volume. It concludes by providing synopses of chapters, making relevant connections between them and raising a number of questions that may constitute the future research agenda for Indian television scholars.

This chapter reflects on the implications of this research for academic debate, education policy and media production. It stresses the importance of taking seriously young people’s cultural tastes for research that wants to understand the nuanced ways in which citizen engagement can happen. It suggests that media and cultural studies are subjects that policy makers and schools should take seriously for their potential to connect young people with issues of public concern. It argues that media producers can help boost this potential of popular culture by showing a world of politics where young people can make a positive difference.

Chapter one examines the early history of adult video from a variety of technological, cultural, and industrial perspectives beginning with the Panoram, a device invented in the 1940s and completely unintended for pornography. Following is an analysis of the adult motel landscape of Southern California, an early site of adult video distribution. The chapter concludes with a history of the early pioneers of adult video, including George Atkinson, who created the first video rental store in the United States.