Beautiful Things in Popular Culture

Beautiful Things in Popular Culture
Author: Alan McKee
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1405178558

This is an innovative book that addresses the question of how consumers make decisions about what is good and what is bad in popular culture. An entertaining and informative guide to the range of aesthetic criteria that goes into judging mass culture's most celebrated texts and objects - from Batman to motor bikes, and pop stars to internet pornography Brings together a series of accessible and engaging essays written by connoisseurs of various areas of popular culture Tackles the core question of how consumers make decisions about what is good popular culture and what is bad popular culture Offers an entertaining and educative read for academic readers as well as purveyors of culture; moving beyond a 'greatest hits' list of popular culture to debate broader issues.

East Asian Transwar Popular Culture

East Asian Transwar Popular Culture
Author: Pei-yin Lin
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-02-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9811332002

This collection examines literature and film studies from the late colonial and early postcolonial periods in Taiwan and Korea, and highlights the similarities and differences of Taiwanese and Korean popular culture by focusing on the representation of gender, genre, state regulation, and spectatorship. Calling for the “de-colonializing” and “de–Cold Warring” of the two ex-colonies and anticommunist allies, the book places Taiwan and Korea side by side in a “trans-war” frame. Considering Taiwan–Korea relations along a new trans-war axis, the book focuses on the continuities between the late colonial period’s Asia-Pacific War and the consequent Korean War and the ongoing conflict between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, facilitated by Cold War power struggles. The collection also invites a meaningful transcolonial reconsideration of East Asian cultural and literary flows, beyond the conventional colonizer/colonized dichotomy and ideological antagonism. ​

Burning the Box of Beautiful Things

Burning the Box of Beautiful Things
Author: Alex Seago
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1995
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780198174059

Alex Seago's book has been inspired by his desire to understand and discover the origins of postmodern culture in Britain. One of the main points of his study is that it was art and design students who were among the first to be aware of and to articulate social implications of postmodernculture. Arguing that postwar art schools provided a vital crucible for the development of a particuarly English cultural sensibility, he focuses on cultural change at the Royal College of Art, London, during the 1950s and 1960s. The students' attack on the English 'box of beautiful things' - aterm used by a former student to describe the neo-Romantic, neo-Victorian, highly decorated tastes of some RCA tutors - took several forms which eventually resulted in the Pop Art produced by the 1959-62 generation (Boshier, Phillips, Jones, Hockney et al.)Alex Seago traces the emergence of English postmodernism through the pages of ARK: The Journal of the Royal College of Art, interviewing ARK's editors, art editors, and contributors including Len Deighton, novelist and art editor of ARK 10; Clifford Hatts, student at the RCA 1946-8 and later head ofthe Design Group, BBC; Peter Blake (RCA Painting School, 1953-6); Robyn Denny (RCA Painting School, 1954-7). ARK's object of enquiry remained 'the elusive but necessary relationships between the arts and the social context' throughout its twenty-five year history, making it a valuable archive forthe cultural historian: in its most memorable issues, ARK's layouts complemented the contents to produce distillations of the energy and enthusiasm of the period under review.

Cultural Studies

Cultural Studies
Author: Chris Barker
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 1110
Release: 2016-05-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1473968348

"This book presents a magisterial overview of Cultural Studies, and of studies of culture more broadly. It synthesizes a bewildering range of writers and ideas into a comprehensible narrative. It’s respectful to the history of ideas and completely cutting edge. I learned a lot – you will too." - Professor Alan McKee, University of Technology Sydney "The role of culture in spatial, digital and political settings is a vital aspect of contemporary life. Barker and Jane provide an excellent introduction to Cultural Studies’ relationship to these core issues, both through a clear explanation of key concepts and thinkers, alongside well chosen examples and essential questions." - Dr David O′Brien, Goldsmiths, University of London With over 40,000 copies sold, Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice has been the indispensable guide to studying culture for generations of students. Here is everything students need to know, with all the key concepts, theories and thinkers in one comprehensive, authoritative yet accessible resource. Teaching students the foundations of cultural studies - from ideology, representation and discourse to audiences, subcultures and cultural policy - this revised edition: Fully explores the ubiquity of digital media culture, helping readers analyse issues surrounding social media, surveillance, cyber-activism and more Introduces students to all the key thinkers they’ll encounter, from Stuart Hall and Michel Foucault to Judith Butler and Donna Haraway Balances the classics with cutting edge theory, including case studies on e-commerce, the self-help industry, the transgender debate, and representations of race Embraces popular culture in all of its diversity, from drag kings and gaming, to anime fandom and remix cultures Is re-written throughout with a new co-author, making it a more enjoyable read than ever. Unmatched in coverage and used world-wide, this is the essential companion for all students of cultural studies, culture and society, media and cultural theory, popular culture and cultural sociology.

The Ambiguities of European Comic-book Bikers

The Ambiguities of European Comic-book Bikers
Author: David Walton
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2024-08-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1666965375

In this book, David Walton explores European comic-book biker publications as a subgenre of popular culture. Using a multidisciplinary approach, he reveals an intricate amalgam of ingenuity, irony, and highly ambiguous humor. The creative resourcefulness of the comic-book biker authors is seen to dramatize and celebrate the material existence of motorcycles and lifestyles while laughing at the foibles, inconsistencies, manias, fantasies, and practices of those characterised as motorized flâneurs. At the core of Walton’s analysis is the exploration of identity formation, marked by tensions between individualism and collective affinities, undermined by egoism and competitiveness. At the same time, Walton argues that the storylines (despite much comic invention, caricature, and exaggeration) create resonances which hold up a distorted but highly revealing mirror to the multiple subgroups of people who ride motorcycles for pleasure. The author also demonstrates how the implied biker-readers of this subgenre confront comic representations of themselves which repeatedly undermine any positive self-image they may possess. Yet the comics are also seen to offer valuable insights into much broader cultural concerns ranging from subculture, consumption habits, (in)authenticity, taste, freedom, risk, and delinquency – without forgetting other key aspects of cultural studies like class, race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and ecocriticism.

The Cinema of Discomfort

The Cinema of Discomfort
Author: Geoff King
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2021-10-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1501359290

How do we understand types of cinema that offer experiences of discomfort, awkwardness or disquieting uncertainty? This book examines a number of examples of such work at the heart of contemporary art and indie film. While the commercial mainstream tends to offer comforting viewing experiences – or moments of discomfort that exist largely to be overcome – The Cinema of Discomfort analyses films in which discomfort is offered in a sustained manner. Cinema of this kind confronts us with material such as distinctly uncomfortable sexual encounters. It invites us into uncertain relationships with awkward and sometimes unlikable characters. It presents us with challenging behaviour or what are presented as uncomfortable realities. It often refuses information on which to base judgments. More discomfortingly, cinema of this kind tends to provoke uncertainty at the level of what emotional responses we are encouraged to have towards difficult, sometimes controversial, characters or events. The Cinema of Discomfort examines a number of case-studies, including Palindromes by Todd Solondz (US) and Dogtooth from Yorgos Lanthimos (Greece), along with other examples from Austria, Sweden, the UK, the US and Germany. Offering close textual analysis of the manner in which discomfort is generated, it also asks how we should understand the appeal of such work to certain viewers and how the existence of films of this kind can be explained, as products of both their socio-cultural context and the more particular institutional realms of art and indie film.

The Routledge Companion to Global Popular Culture

The Routledge Companion to Global Popular Culture
Author: Toby Miller
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136175954

Research on popular culture is a dynamic, fast-growing domain. In scholarly terms, it cuts across many areas, including communication studies, sociology, history, American studies, anthropology, literature, journalism, folklore, economics, and media and cultural studies. The Routledge Companion to Global Popular Culture provides an authoritative, up-to-date, intellectually broad, internationally-aware, and conceptually agile guide to the most important aspects of popular culture scholarship. Specifically, this Companion includes: interdisciplinary models and approaches for analyzing popular culture; wide-ranging case studies; discussions of economic and policy underpinnings; analysis of textual manifestations of popular culture; examinations of political, social, and cultural dynamics; and discussions of emerging issues such as ecological sustainability and labor. Featuring scholarly voices from across six continents, The Routledge Companion to Global Popular Culture presents a nuanced and wide-ranging survey of popular culture research.

Things That Liberate

Things That Liberate
Author: Alison Bartlett
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2014-09-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1443867403

This collection of essays explores objects that changed Australian women’s lives through their association with women’s liberation, the women’s movement, and feminism since 1970. The volume combines personal narrative, historical analysis, and memoir, creating a highly readable collection and a novel way of documenting, historicising, remembering and writing the Australian women’s movement, its affects, and its material culture. The contributors include high profile women and grass roots activists, academics and writers, and everyday women living the ideas of liberation and feminism from a range of locations. They are funny and serious, raw and sophisticated, analytical and emotional. Some are factual, while others delight in gossip. Each essay hinges on a particular object that is remembered for its symbolic value and practical use as an object of liberation, ranging from overalls and Gestetners, to seasponges and kombis. The editors’ introduction canvasses the current fascination with ‘things’, ‘stuff’, ‘objects’ and other material culture that comprises and shapes our lives; with ideas around memory and emotion as increasingly important components of social histories, and about the ways in which the Australian women’s movement is remembered. Combined, this volume of essays presents a fascinating collection of objects, writing, remembrance and the affects of one of the major social movements of the twentieth century. Things that Liberate is an experiment in thinking about the ways in which social movements can be documented and studied through material culture and memory.

Cultural Science

Cultural Science
Author: John Hartley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2014-09-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1849666040

Cultural Science introduces a new way of thinking about culture. Adopting an evolutionary and systems approach, the authors argue that culture is the population-wide source of newness and innovation; it faces the future, not the past. Its chief characteristic is the formation of groups or 'demes' (organised and productive subpopulation; 'demos'). Demes are the means for creating, distributing and growing knowledge. However, such groups are competitive and knowledge-systems are adversarial. Starting from a rereading of Darwinian evolutionary theory, the book utilises multidisciplinary resources: Raymond Williams's 'culture is ordinary' approach; evolutionary science (e.g. Mark Pagel and Herbert Gintis); semiotics (Yuri Lotman); and economic theory (from Schumpeter to McCloskey). Successive chapters argue that: -Culture and knowledge need to be understood from an externalist ('linked brains') perspective, rather than through the lens of individual behaviour; -Demes are created by culture, especially storytelling, which in turn constitutes both politics and economics; -The clash of systems - including demes - is productive of newness, meaningfulness and successful reproduction of culture; -Contemporary urban culture and citizenship can best be explained by investigating how culture is used, and how newness and innovation emerge from unstable and contested boundaries between different meaning systems; -The evolution of culture is a process of technologically enabled 'demic concentration' of knowledge, across overlapping meaning-systems or semiospheres; a process where the number of demes accessible to any individual has increased at an accelerating rate, resulting in new problems of scale and coordination for cultural science to address. The book argues for interdisciplinary 'consilience', linking evolutionary and complexity theory in the natural sciences, economics and anthropology in the social sciences, and cultural, communication and media studies in the humanities and creative arts. It describes what is needed for a new 'modern synthesis' for the cultural sciences. It combines analytical and historical methods, to provide a framework for a general reconceptualisation of the theory of culture – one that is focused not on its political or customary aspects but rather its evolutionary significance as a generator of newness and innovation.

Popular Culture as Everyday Life

Popular Culture as Everyday Life
Author: Dennis D. Waskul
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2015-11-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317564103

In Popular Culture and Everyday Life Phillip Vannini and Dennis Waskul have brought together a variety of short essays that illustrate the many ways that popular culture intersects with mundane experiences of everyday life. Most essays are written in a reflexive ethnographic style, primarily through observation and personal narrative, to convey insights at an intimate level that will resonate with most readers. Some of the topics are so mundane they are legitimately universal (sleeping, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, etc.), others are common enough that most readers will directly identify in some way (watching television, using mobile phones, playing video games, etc.), while some topics will appeal more-or-less depending on a reader’s gender, interests, and recreational pastimes (putting on makeup, watching the Super Bowl, homemaking, etc.). This book will remind readers of their own similar experiences, provide opportunities to reflect upon them in new ways, as well as compare and contrast how experiences relayed in these pages relate to lived experiences. The essays will easily translate into rich and lively classroom discussions that shed new light on a familiar, taken-for-granted everyday life—both individually and collectively. At the beginning of the book, the authors have provided a grid that shows the topics and themes that each article touches on. This book is for popular culture classes, and will also be an asset in courses on the sociology of everyday life, ethnography, and social psychology.