American Popular Culture

A Transnational Tale of Teenage Terror: The Blackboard Jungle in Global Perspective

by Adam Golub

Published in Red Feather: An International Journal of Children’s Visual Culture 3:1 (March 2012): 1-10.

Napalm en América. Intentando narrar América tras Vietnam

by Marc Delcan Albors

Versión corta para la conferencia del Encuentro Telecápita. Arte, Pensamiento y Nuevos Relatos Octubre 2011, Unam, México DF

El presente trabajo intenta analizar las variaciones en el canon literario estadounidense tras la experiencia bélica... more El presente trabajo intenta analizar las variaciones en el canon literario estadounidense tras la experiencia bélica de Vietnam. El punto de arranque son las llamadas nuevas representaciones de la literatura posmoderna, especialmente las vinculadas al nuevo periodismo de Norman Mailer o Michael Herr, así como la traducción en las obras de ficción representada por Robert Stone. Todos los autores, y algunas de sus obras se enmarcan en lo que Frederic Jameson llamó la narracón del primer conflicto posmoderno. Al mismo tiempo son parte de las representaciones culturales que se nos han legado de la guerra en Vietnam. Mucho después de la experiencia, la memoria y la historia pública son las que nos explican y representan que fue Vietnam para los estadounidenses. La cantidad de productos culturales en torno a este tema lo han convertido en uno de los referentes básicos de la cultura de los Estados Unidos. Desde mi punto de vista, hubo una reconstitución de Vietnam como fenómeno histórico que tiene que ver -en lo político- con la emergencia del capitalismo tardío; y en lo socio-cultural, con la re-emergencia del sujeto y el paradigma posmoderno. Las bases que sientan las formas de representación cultural de esta guerra son la velocidad, la tecnología, la locura, la individualidad y el enfrentamiento al otro sin un metadiscurso ideológico como capa de protección. Me aproximo al mismo tiempo al papel higienizador de la “locura” de Vietnam para la digestión moral americana del desastre. Así como al concepto de Simulacro usado por Baudrillard para ver como estos productos culturales han servido de base para nuevas concepciones simbólicas a través de las pantallas que no refieren ya a la experiencia sino a otros artefactos culturales; convirtiéndose en hiper-representaciones que pierden su contacto con la realidad porque ya no les es necesario para significarse ni para ser estéticamente realistas. El ejemplo de esto último lo analizo en películas como Jarhead.

Americanasana (review essay on history of yoga in America)

by Jared Farmer

Special attention given to Mark Singleton's YOGA BODY, Stefanie Syman's THE SUBTLE BODY, and Robert Love's THE GREAT OOM.

‘Dressing the Part(y): 1950s Domestic Advice Books and the Studied Performance of Informal Domesticity in the UK and the US’

by Grace Lees-Maffei

In Performance, Fashion and the Modern Interior, ed. Fiona Fisher and Patricia Lara-Betancourt (Oxford: Berg, 2011): 183-196

Behaviour is subject to fashion as much as clothing, furniture and other designed goods. As a discourse of ideals,... more Behaviour is subject to fashion as much as clothing, furniture and other designed goods. As a discourse of ideals, domestic advice literature - and by that I mean advice literature pertaining to the social and material composition of the home, namely etiquette, homemaking and home decoration books - can be read retrospectively to trace fashionable changes in both design and manners and is therefore a useful resource in uncovering the history of intersections between fashion, performance and the modern interior. This chapter examines three domestic advice books from the UK and the US: American industrial designers Russel and Mary Wright’s Guide to Easier Living, revised edition 1954 (1950), British journalist Julia Cairns’s Home Making, also 1954 and British author Daphne Barraclough’s How to Run a Good Party of 1956 to examine a historical moment in which a shift in fashionable behaviour produced new advice about domestic interactions, or performances, within the home. With reference to Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphor developed in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, here advice books are presented as scripts for domestic performances within the home as a stage.

Small Change? Emily Post’s Etiquette

by Grace Lees-Maffei

In Must Read: Rediscovering American Bestsellers, ed. Sarah Churchwell and Thomas Ruys-Smith (London: Continuum, 2012): pp. TBC.

In the contemporary book market, non-fiction genres such as biography and self-help command considerable sales, ... more In the contemporary book market, non-fiction genres such as biography and self-help command considerable sales,  yet ‘bestseller’ is still a term primarily associated with fiction (the nature of that fiction is explored in this book).  This chapter examines a non-fiction text which has been a bestseller for nine decades, and the pre-eminent example of American advice literature, Emily Post’s Etiquette. In catering to the social needs and aspirations of its readers, Etiquette has described as well as prescribed US social interaction and is therefore a useful tool in calibrating the changing nature of the American dream. Succeeding members of the Post family have renewed the book’s content and thereby ensured its continued popularity. By examining these processes of change – of authorship and content – this chapter shows how non-fiction bestsellers maintain and rejuvenate their markets in a manner quite distinct from the majority of bestsellers which are relatively unchanging works of fiction, bound up with their original authors.

“White and ‘Black’ versus Yellow: The Politics of Racial Metaphor in Blade Runner.” Arizona Quarterly. 65.4 (Winter 2009): 113-38.

by Brian Locke

Sympathy for the Devil? Reconsidering the Legend of Raoul Duke on the 40th Anniversary of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

by Rory Feehan

published in Beatdom #9 - available to purchase on Amazon

The Naked Hero and Model Man: Costumed Identity in Comic Book Narratives

by David Coughlan

Published in "Heroes of Film, Comics and American Culture: Essays on Real and Fictional Defenders of Home." Ed. Lisa DeTora. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. 234-52.

Comic book superheroes often display dual identities, which they dress in contrasting ways. Wearing an identifying... more Comic book superheroes often display dual identities, which they dress in contrasting ways. Wearing an identifying costume, they are superheroes, fighting evil and saving the world; out of costume, and wearing instead their civilian identity, they try to live a normal life. Clothes, then, make them a ‘man’ (and it is male superheroes who are the focus of this paper), but it is only in costume that the man can be ‘super’. The comic book hero, colourfully costumed, but to all intents and purposes visually naked, displays his power and sense of invulnerability, while at the same time hiding the secret identity which is his greatest weakness, because it means a world where the hero is as powerless as his innocent family and friends. For the sake of those he loves, therefore, the comic book hero ironically removes himself from the familial, communal, and even legal worlds he has sworn to protect. The effect of this is to preserve for the, predominantly male, reader the stereotypical and simplified power fantasies so often fostered by superhero stories, where any failings or shortcomings in the domestic sphere are compensated for in a secret world of heroic achievement, despite the fact that the defining qualities of the hero’s costumed world, the secrecy, subterfuge, violence, and intimidation, are at odds with, if not a betrayal of, the values of his home-life. This raises the question of how the superhero relates to the domestic, and what it means to be a superhero at home. This essay argues that the costumed form of the comic book superhero embodies a dominant masculinity which is identified in opposition to all things feminine, including the domestic. However, it will be argued that this apparent exclusion of the domestic can be reinterpreted as an exclusion from the domestic. The hero ultimately removes himself from the home because he cannot trust himself not to harm his family, given the violence that defines him as a man.

An Illustrated Guide to the History of the Western (2009)

by Laurence Raw

Originally published in SOUTHWEST JOURNAL OF CULTURES (February 11, 2009)

This is a true aficionado’s book—the product of an author who grew up in New England but developed a liking for the... more This is a true aficionado’s book—the product of an author who grew up in New England but developed a liking for the West as represented on television and in the movie theatre. Barson recalls how he experienced firsthand the craze for Davy Crockett that swept America during the mid-1950s; like millions of other American kids, he bought one of Crockett’s coonskin caps. Other role models included Rowdy Yates (Rawhide), Sugarfoot, and Mark McCain (The Riflemen).

America in Contemporary Pop Culture (2009)

by Laurence Raw

Originally published in SOUTHWEST JOURNAL OF CULTURES (October 19, 2009)

Fabricating the Absolute Fake offers an incisive look at how American culture – as represented by Hollywood cinema,... more Fabricating the Absolute Fake offers an incisive look at how American culture – as represented by Hollywood cinema, television and popular music – has penetrated the world. Kooijman argues that “Americanization” has less to do with politics and more with “an imagined America, an imagined community that goes far beyond the boundaries of the nation-state USA” (143). Drawing on Umberto Eco’s concept of the absolute fake, Kooijman shows how American pop culture consists of fakes that succeed as “the real thing”—in other words, improved copies of the “real” originals.

Book review: Bernice M. Murphy, The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

by Cara Rodway

Published in 'Journal of American Studies' 45:1 (2011)

"Evil Children in Film and Literature: Notes Toward a Genealogy"

by Karen J. Renner

Introduction to Special Issue of LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 22.2 (Spring 2011).

Dude Ranch Tourism, Hollywood, and the Production of Regional Identity in the American West 1922-1950

by Amanda Rees

Forthcoming 2011 in Aether.

Tourism and popular culture have long been mainstays of the American West.  Combining dude ranching and Hollywood... more Tourism and popular culture have long been mainstays of the American West.  Combining dude ranching and Hollywood dude ranch movies, this project explores how the tourism industry and its pop cultural representation produced a sometimes contested sense of the American West between 1922 and 1950.  The Dude Ranchers’ Association (DRA) and the Hollywood studio system were two primary regionalizing institutions both located in the West that produced discourses that bound the West, articulated the symbols that represent the West, and in doing so they become institutions whose practices normalized, policed, and questioned the West (Paasi 2002).  Discourse analysis of dude ranch archival materials and fifty-nine dude ranch movies produced between 1922 and 1950 reveals a battle over the production of regional identity between the DRA (the industry’s largest representative organization) and Hollywood.  Interweaving class, gender, violence and vigilantism that shaped a sense of region, the DRA’s efforts to maintain control of the region’s meaning was eroded by the increasing discursive power of Hollywood.  However, ultimately both institutions worked to shape a sense of the West for their own needs as well as to meet the expectations of their patrons.
Key Words: dude ranch, film, Hollywood, regional identity, tourism, West, Westerns B-movies.

"Der Crooner, das unbekannte Wesen", in: Musik und Popularität. Aspekte zu einer Kulturgeschichte zwischen 1500 und heute, hg. v. Nina Noeske und Sabine Meine, Hannover 2011 (=Populäre Kultur und Musik, hg. v. Michael Fischer und Nils Grosch, Bd. 2), S. 145-165. ISBN 9783830922636

by Knut Holtstraeter

" Men Ain't All": A Reworking of Masculinity In Tales From the Hood, or, Grandma Meets the Zombie

by Jacqueline Fulmer

For the complete essay, please use the link included here: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jaf/summary/v115/115.457fulmer01.html

Violence and Vinyl: Car Crashes in 1960s Pop

by jack sargeant

chapter in Car Crash Culture, ed. Mikita Brottman, New York: Palgrove / St Martins Press, 2001.