Bewitched
Walter Metz
TV Milestones Series
“Among the many gaps in television history is the lack of detailed analysis of individual television series. Here Walter Metz carefully places Bewitched in a range of contexts—personal, industrial, aesthetic, gendered, historical. In doing so he demonstrates how a single popular program distills, intensifies, and somehow ‘magically’ examines our most significant cultural questions.”
—Horace Newcomb, director, the George Foster Peabody Awards and editor of The Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Television and Television: The Critical View, 7th edition
“Classic TV meets contemporary theory in this readable, engaging, and consistently thought-provoking study of Bewitched.”
—Diane Negra, reader in film and television studies, University of East Anglia and author of Off-White Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom
“An appropriately inspired analysis of one of TV’s most inspired and undervalued sitcoms. From his opening proposition of a ‘queer reading’ of Bewitched to his savvy analysis of its portrayal of ideology, class, and especially gender, Walter Metz builds a convincing case that this slice of 1960s ‘everyday television’ was among that era’s most progressive depictions of marriage and family, and a key precursor to the burgeoning feminist movement.”
—Thomas Schatz, executive director, University of Texas Film Institute and author of The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era