game shows and the scholarly perspective

[CarbonCpy]

in digging through some old boxes, i came across my hardcover copy of dr anne cooper-chen's eight-year comparative popular culture study into the genre; a project to contribute towards what cooper-chen describes as "anthropology's deepest theoretical dilemma: how is such variation [of cultural forms] to be squared with the biological unity of the human species?"

to this end she conducted a survey to contacts across 50 nations (split into regions: canada, caribbean/latin america, europe, near- and middle east, africa, asia/pacific, and "various countries") with respondents mailing back questionnaires (and tapes -- dr cooper-chen's collection was available for viewing at the bowling green state university library at the time of publication).

i remembered someone asked for a couple of pages transcribed into text. i got a little way's into it before i figured it might be a good idea to see if anyone already did it (and possibly better than my adhd-addled brain managed). well, turns out it's on loan on archive.org through the boston public library system.

for those who would rather not register, i still intend to transcribe it -- currently completed the forward, preface and first chapter, about thirty pages or so. it goes over a rough history of the genre in american television, including some of the more colorful critics of the genre and their particular snits and quarrels (to save everybody time, it's nothing game show fans or indeed anybody who follows media criticism would find new-- upheld as the capstone of american greed, the glorification of materialism, the demonstration of the faulty logic of meritocratic liberalism that overlooks intersectionalist perspectives on the roles played by gender, class, and even downright luck in determining a person's station in life. the kind of stuff people who don't actually watch game shows like to assume about them).

i'm liking what i'm reading so far, but it got me to thinking -- this book is now 30 years old and certainly of an era before the internet. would anyone have any scholarly type works out there that they found interesting or worth discussion?

[SuperMatch93]

I remember reading Cooper-Chen's book when I was in college (DePaul had a copy in their media studies collection) and finding it a good read.

When it comes to more academic perspectives on the genre, two that come to mind (both available on Archive.org) are Quiz Craze by Thomas DeLong and Daytime Television Game Shows and the Celebration of Merchandise by Morris Holbrook. They're both somewhat outdated now but with interesting perspectives nonetheless.

[MSTieScott]

When I went to college way back around the turn of the century, I remember searching the library's scholarly journals for anything game show–related. The only article I still remember was one in which the author analyzed the way contestants played the Money Cards on Card Sharks. The only conclusion from that paper that I remember was that contestants were more likely to be cautious with a 5 than with a jack, even though functionally, they're the same card (presumably, contestants see the face card and think it's safer).

[CeleTheRef]

Nice to note that Italy's most prominent show was... Colpo Grosso        

It also shows how hard was research before the Internet. For example, I can tell that almost half of the data in the Italian section of the "1990 daily schedule" is incorrect.  (Family Feud started in 1992  )