Popular Culture

An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture is widely recognized as an immensely useful textbook for students taking courses in the major theories of popular culture. Strinati provides a critical assessment of the ways in which these theories have tried to understand and evaluate popular culture in modern societies.Among the theories and ideas the book introduces are: mann culture, the Frankfurt School and the culture industry, semiology and structuralism, Marxism, feminism, postmodernism and cultural populism.This new edition provides fresh material on Marxism and feminism, while a new final chapter assesses the significance of the theories explained in the book.

In this companion volume to Reading the Popular, Fiske presents a radical theory of what it means for culture to be popular.

Postmodernism and Popular Culture brings together eleven recent essays by Angela McRobbie in a collection which deals with the issues which have dominated cultural studies over the last ten years.A key theme is the notion of postmodernity as a space for social change and political potential. McRobbie explores everyday life as a site of immense social and psychic complexity to which she argues that cultural studies scholars must return through ethnic and empirical work; the sound of living voices and spoken language. She also argues for feminists working in the field to continue to question the place and meaning of feminist theory in a postmodern society. In addition, she examines the new youth cultures as images of social change and signs of profound social transformation.Bringing together complex ideas about cultural studies today in a lively and accessible format, Angela McRobbie's new collection will be of immense value to all teachers and students of the subject.

Is NYPD Blue a less valid form of artistic expression than a Shakespearean drama? Who is to judge and by what standards?

In this new edition of Herbert Gans's brilliantly conceived and clearly argued landmark work, he builds on his critique of the universality of high cultural standards. While conceding that popular and high culture have converged to some extent over the twenty-five years since he wrote the book, Gans holds that the choices of typical Ivy League graduates, not to mention Ph.D.s in literature, are still very different from those of high school graduates, as are the movie houses, television channels, museums, and other cultural institutions they frequent.

This new edition benefits greatly from Gans's discussion of the "politicization" of culture over the last quarter-century. Popular Culture and High Culture is a must read for anyone interested in the vicissitudes of taste in American society.

David A. Schultz is Professor of Public Administration and Management at Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota.

In Dancing in Spite of Myself, Lawrence Grossber well known as a pioneering figure in cultural studies has collected essays written over the past twenty years that have also established him as one of the leading theorists of popular culture and, specifically, of rock music. Grossberg offers an original and sophisticated view of the growing power of popular culture and its increasing inseparability from contemporary structures of economic and political power and from our everyday lives.In the course of conducting this exploration into the meaning of 'popularity,' he investigates the nature of fandom, the social effects of rock music and youth culture, and the possibilities for understanding the history of popular texts and practices. Describing what he calls 'the postmodernity of everyday life,' Grossberg offers important insights into the relation of pop music to issues of postmodernity and into the growing power of the new cultural conservatism and its relationship to 'the popular.' Exploring the limits of existing theories of hegemony in cultural studies, Grossberg reveals the ways in which popular culture is being mobilised in the service of economic and political struggles. In articulating his own critical practice, Grossberg surveys and challenges some of the major assumptions of popular culture studies, including notions of domination and resistance, mainstream and marginality, and authenticity and incorporation.Dancing in Spite of Myself provides both an introduction to contemporary theories of popular culture and a clear statement of relationships among theories of the nature of rock music, postmodernity, and conservative hegemony. Elegantly written, these essays will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in rock and popular music, politics and popular culture, postmodern theory and cultural studies.

Figures Preface Part I. Preliminaries The Nature of Popular Culture The Elements of Rhetoric Part II. Rhetoric and Advertising The Rhetoric of Direct Mail: The Verbal Pitch The Rhetoric of Print Advertising: The Visual Pitch The Rhetoric of Television Commercials: The Video Pitch Part III. Rhetoric and Advocacy The Rhetoric of Reviewing: Advocacy, Art, and Judgment The Rhetoric of Speculation: Science and Pseudo-Science, Advocacy and Evidence The Rhetoric of Opinion: Advocacy, Public Affairs, and Logic Part IV. Rhetoric and Entertainment A Listener's Guide to the Rhetoric of Popular Music A Viewer's Guide to the Rhetoric of Television A Reader's Guide to the Rhetoric of Popular Fiction Notes Appendix: Suggestions for Study Select Bibliography on Popular Culture Select Bibliography on Rhetoric Index

Although much scholarly and critical attention has been paid to the relationship between rhetoric and environmental issues, media and environmental issues, and politics and environmental issues, no book has yet focused on the relationship between popular culture and environmental issues. This collection of essays provides a rigorous and multifaceted rhetorical and critical perspective on the ways in which the language and imagery of nature is incorporated strategically into various popular culture texts--ranging from greeting cards to advertisements to supermarket tabloids. As a distinguished group of scholars reveals, our notions about the environment and environmentalism are both reflected in and shaped by our popular culture in fascinating ways never previously examined in an academic context.

The place of childhood in popular culture is one that invites new readings both on childhood itself, but also on approaches to studying childhood. Discussing different methods of researching children's popular culture, they argue that the interplay of the age of the players, the status of their popular culture, the transience of the objects, and indeed the ephemerality - and long lastingness - of childhood, all contribute to what could be regarded as a particularized space for childhood studies - and one that challenges many of the conventions of "doing research" involving children.

Enduring Values offers a critical examination of 20th century treatments of women in several mass media areas including music, film, and television. This volume is unique in its wide coverage of various media forms and of the corresponding images of women within the respective areas. from the Preface

It's here and it's queer - popular culture inhabits all our lives, whether it comes in the form of movies or magazines, TV or shopping. A Queer Romance brings together critics, writers and artists to debate the possibilites of popular culture for lesbians and gay men.In a collection that is in-yer-face but never out-to-lunch, the contributors variously revisit debates about the gaze to provide a new theory of Queer viewing; discuss texts coded as queer - from lesbian vampires to Hollywood's use of gay codes in mainstream films such as Top Gun and Black Widow ; consider the sexual and cultural narratives at play in the world of home shopping catalogues; explore the pleasures and perils of gay cultural production, from the radically queer film-making of Monika Treut to the wild world of homocore fanzines, and address the possibilities of texts claiming to be for the gay spectator - from pornography 'by women, for women and about women' to 'Out' TV.The contributors to A Queer Romance don't all agree but, taken together, the collection argues strongly that everyone can have their queer moments.