"An Introduction to Studying Popular Culture presents a critical assessment of the major ways in which popular culture has been interpreted, and suggests how it may be more usefully studied." "Dominic Strinati uses the examples of cinema and television to show how we can understand popular culture from sociological and historical perspectives. He traces the development of popular Hollywood cinema, addressing key topics such as production, distribution and exhibition, narrative, and genre, with case studies of gangster and horror films, and film noir." "Strinati presents a similar account of popular television, but focuses as much on consumption as production. He thus also looks at how the television audience has been studied and evaluated. Returning to the idea of genre, he uses the example of soap opera to show how genre can be used to study popular television. Finally, he assesses whether or not popular television has become a 'postmodern' medium."--Jacket.