Coming of Age in Popular Culture

Coming of Age in Popular Culture
Author: Donald C. Miller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2018-10-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Documenting the evolution of teens and media from the 1950s through 2010, this book examines the films, books, television shows, and musical artists that impacted American culture and shaped the "coming of age" experience for each generation. The teenage years are fraught with drama and emotional ups and downs, coinciding with bewildering new social situations and sexual tension. For these reasons, pop culture and media have repeatedly created entertainment that depicts, celebrates, or lampoons coming of age experiences, through sitcoms like The Wonder Years to the brat pack films of the 1980s to the teen-centered television series of today. Coming of Age in Popular Culture: Teenagers, Adolescence, and the Art of Growing Up covers a breadth of media presentations of the transition from childhood to adulthood from the 1950s to the year 2010. It explores the ways that adolescence is characterized in pop culture by drawing on these representations, shows how powerful media and entertainment are in establishing societal norms, and considers how American society views and values adolescence. Topics addressed include race relations, gender roles, religion, and sexual identity. Young adult readers will come away with a heightened sense of media literacy through the examination of a topic that inherently interests them.

Science Fiction, Children's Literature, and Popular Culture

Science Fiction, Children's Literature, and Popular Culture
Author: Gary Westfahl
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2000-04-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0313308470

Literature often is central to individual maturation. It typically reflects, in one way or another, the experiences of the reader and the larger strains of society. This book examines representative works of science fiction, children's literature, and popular culture as mirrors of what it means to grow up in the late 20th century world. That world is permeated by technology, and technology thus figures prominently in the process of growing up and in these literary works.

Coming of Age in Second Life

Coming of Age in Second Life
Author: Tom Boellstorff
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2015-08-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0691168342

Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. At the time of its initial publication in 2008, Coming of Age in Second Life was the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe. Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar "Tom Bukowski," and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group. Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself. Now with a new preface in which the author places his book in light of the most recent transformations in online culture, Coming of Age in Second Life remains the classic ethnography of virtual worlds.

The 2000s Made Me Gay

The 2000s Made Me Gay
Author: Grace Perry
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1250760151

From The Onion and Reductress contributor, this collection of essays is a hilarious nostalgic trip through beloved 2000s media, interweaving cultural criticism and personal narrative to examine how a very straight decade forged a very queer woman "Honest, funny, smart, and illuminating.” —Anna Drezen, co-head writer of SNL "If you came of age at the intersection of Mean Girls and The L Word: Read this book.” —Sarah Pappalardo, editor in chief and co-founder of Reductress Today’s gay youth have dozens of queer peer heroes, both fictional and real, but former gay teenager Grace Perry did not have that luxury. Instead, she had to search for queerness in the (largely straight) teen cultural phenomena the aughts had to offer: in Lindsay Lohan’s fall from grace, Gossip Girl, Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl,” country-era Taylor Swift, and Seth Cohen jumping on a coffee cart. And, for better or worse, these touch points shaped her adult identity. She came out on the other side like many millennials did: in her words, gay as hell. Throw on your Von Dutch hats and join Grace on a journey back through the pop culture moments of the aughts, before the cataclysmic shift in LGBTQ representation and acceptance—a time not so long ago, which many seem to forget.

Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture

Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture
Author: Naomi Barnes
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2021-08-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030770117

This book demonstrates how pop culture examples can be used to demystify complex social theory. It provides tangible, metaphorical examples that shows how it is possible to "do philosophy" rather than subscribe to a theorist by showing that each theorist intersects and overlaps with others. The book is embedded in the literary theory that tapping into background knowledge is a key step in helping people engage with new and difficult texts. It also acknowledges the important role of popular culture in developing comprehension. Using a choose your own adventure structure, this book not only shows students of social theory how various theories can be applied but also reveals the multitude of possible pathways theory provides for comprehending society.

Adventure, Mystery, and Romance

Adventure, Mystery, and Romance
Author: John G. Cawelt
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2014-02-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 022614870X

In this first general theory for the analysis of popular literary formulas, John G. Cawelti reveals the artistry that underlies the best in formulaic literature. Cawelti discusses such seemingly diverse works as Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Dorothy Sayers's The Nine Tailors, and Owen Wister's The Virginian in the light of his hypotheses about the cultural function of formula literature. He describes the most important artistic characteristics of popular formula stories and the differences between this literature and that commonly labeled "high" or "serious" literature. He also defines the archetypal patterns of adventure, mystery, romance, melodrama, and fantasy, and offers a tentative account of their basis in human psychology.

She Memes Well

She Memes Well
Author: Quinta Brunson
Publisher: Mariner Books
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2021
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1328638987

From comedian Quinta Brunson comes a deeply personal and funny collection of essays featuring anecdotes about trying to make it when you're broke, overcoming self-doubt and depression, and how she's used humor to navigate her career in unusual directions. Quinta Brunson is a master of viral Internet content: without any traditional background in media, her humorous videos were the first to break through on Instagram's platform, receiving millions of views. From there, Brunson's wryly observant POV attracted the attention of BuzzFeed's motion picture development department, leading her to produce viral videos there about topics like interracial dating, millennial malaise, and seeing your ex in public. Now, Brunson is bringing her comedic chops to the page in She Memes Well, an earnest, laugh-out-loud collection about her weird road to Internet notoriety. In her debut essay collection, Quinta applies her trademark humor and heart to discuss what it was like to go from student loan debt-broke to "halfway recognizable--'don't I know you somewhere?'" level-of-fame. With anecdotes that range from the funny and zany--like her experience trying to find her signature hairstyle--to more grounded material about living with depression, Brunson's voice is entirely authentic and eminently readable. Perfect for fans of Phoebe Robinson's You Can't Touch My Hair, Samantha Irby's We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, and Issa Rae's The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, She Memes Well will charm and entertain a growing, engaged audience.

Pop Culture for Beginners

Pop Culture for Beginners
Author: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Publisher: Broadview Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2021-08-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1770488111

Pop Culture for Beginners promotes reflective engagement with the world around us and provides a set of tools for thinking critically about how meaning is created, reinforced, and circulated. Privileging a semiotic approach, the book’s first part, “The Pop Culture Toolbox,” outlines the development of pop culture studies; explains the semiotic framework; introduces students to a variety of critical lenses including Marxism, feminism, postcolonialism, and Critical Race Theory; and then offers an overview of several pop culture “pivot points” including authenticity, convergence culture, intersectionality, intertextuality, and subculture. The book’s second part provides a series of units, prepared in consultation with subject area experts, built around topics central to popular culture studies: television and film, music, comics, gaming, social media, and fandom. Each chapter includes “Your Turn” activities and discussion questions, as well as possible assignments and suggestions for further reading. The unit chapters in part two also include enabling questions as beginning points for thinking critically and sample readings demonstrating relevant scholarly approaches to popular culture; important vocabulary terms throughout are included in a substantive glossary at the end.

Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture

Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture
Author: Gilad Padva
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2014-01-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137266341

Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture is a fascinating study of queer nostalgia in films, animation and music videos as means of empowerment, re-evaluating and recreating lost gay youth, coming to terms with one's sexual otherness and homoerotic desires, and creatively challenging homophobia, chauvinism, ageism and racism.

Coming of Age on Film

Coming of Age on Film
Author: Anne E. Hardcastle
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Children in motion pictures
ISBN: 9781443809870

In Coming of Age on Film: Stories of Transformation in World Cinema, essays by twelve film scholars examine the theme of coming of age in the cinema of Latin America, Europe, and Africa. Through their consideration of the development that leads to transformation in individuals, nations, or even the film industry itself, these articles elucidate the connections among these diverse films. Bringing together a variety of related topics such as rites of passage, adolescence and maturity, and the literary genre of the Bildungsroman, Coming of Age on Film complements and puts into practice a variety of critical theories. Its focus on global cinema in French, Italian, and Spanish brings attention to the widely represented but minimally studied theme of coming of age. This volume will appeal to scholars in film studies and regional or national cultural studies, as well as those studying adolescence in literature and film.