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Slut Narratives in Popular Culture explores representations of slut shaming and the term “slut” in U.S. popular media, 2000–2020. It argues that cultural narratives of intersectional gender identities are gradually but unevenly shifting to become more progressive and sex positive.Moving beyond prior research on slut shaming, which exposes problematic conflations between women's morality and a sexual purity associated with White economic privilege, this book examines how narratives that perpetuate slut shaming are both contested and reinscribed through stories we circulate. It emphasizes effects of twenty-first century developments in digital communication and entertainment. The rapid evolution of genres combined with increased access to the consumption and production of texts stimulates more diverse storytelling. The book's analyses demonstrate twenty-first-century changes in how slut shaming is depicted and understood while encouraging consumers and producers of pop culture to attend to cultural narratives as they reify or challenge the subordination of vulnerable populations.Aimed primarily at an academic audience, this book will also engage general readers interested in intersectional feminism, pop culture, new media, digital technologies, and sociolinguistic change. Readers will become more adept at deconstructing assumptions embedded in popular media, especially narratives informing slut shaming.

The multiverse has portaled into the mainstream. Entering the Multiverse unpacks the surprising growth of the multiverse in media and popular culture today, and explores how the concept of alternate realities and parallel worlds has acted as a metaphor for centuries.Edited by leading media and popular culture scholar Paul Booth, this collection explores the many different manifestations of the multiverse across different genres, media, fan-created works, and cultural theory. Each chapter delves into different aspects of the multiverse, including its use as a metaphor, as a scientific reality, and as a media-industry strategy. Addressing the multiplicity of multiversal meanings through multiple perspectives and always with an eye toward engagement with contemporary cultural issues, the chapters also examine various distinctions and contradictions, in order to provide a strong basis for further thinking, writing, and research on the concept of the multiverse. Chapters in this collection tell the story of the multiverse in multiple realities: creative nonfiction, academic essay, screenplay, art, poetry, video, and audio essay.A compelling read for students, researchers, and scholars of media and cultural studies, film and media culture, popular culture, comics studies, game studies, literary studies, and beyond.

In this study of representations of children and childhood, a global team of authors explores the theme of undeadness as it applies to cultural constructions of the child.Moving beyond conventional depictions of the undead in popular culture as living dead monsters of horror and mad science that transgress the borders between life and death, rejuvenation, and decay, the authors present undeadness as a broader concept that explores how people, objects, customs, and ideas deemed lost or consigned to the past might endure in the present. The chapters examine nostalgic texts that explore past incarnations of childhood, mementos of childhood, zombie children, spectral children, images and artefacts of deceased children, as well as states of arrested development and the inability or refusal to embrace adulthood. Expanding undeadness beyond the realm of horror and extending its meaning conceptually, while acknowledging its roots in the genre, the book explores attempts at countering the transitory nature of childhoods.This unique and insightful volume will interest scholars and students working on popular culture and cultural studies, media studies, film and television studies, childhood studies, gender studies, and philosophy.

The Multiverse as Theory in Postmodern Speculative Fictional Narratives considers the concept of the multiverse beyond the immediacy of being merely an excuse or scenario for the development of stories, instead positioning the multiverse as a theoretical method in which speculative fiction narratives can explore diverse issues to bridge ideas across cultural, social, and philosophical analysis.Taking a cross-cultural approach, the book centres around the critical engagements that literary and media texts have with the representations of the multiverse, beyond considering this subject as a mere rhetorical flourish or a passing fad. A diverse and international team of authors engage with the multiverse from the point of view of “other worlds,” understanding it not as the appearance of another independent world, but as the collision of two or more different worlds into one of them. From this key finding, the multiverse encourages us to pay attention to the influence that fiction exerts on narratives and world-building, providing possible frameworks to rethink critical aspects of temporality, space, self, society, and culture in contemporary times.This pioneering work will interest students and scholars working in the areas of media and cultural studies, comparative literature, popular culture studies, speculative fiction, and transmedia studies.

Interest in true crime as a form of popular entertainment has sky-rocketed in recent years. Drawing on this current popularity and its significance in the context of digital culture, Gender, True Crime and Criminology challenges traditional definitions of the genre, expanding representations of victimhood and how we understand true crime audiences in gendered terms. Tackling male consumption of true crime and exploring texts which might appeal to men as consumers, Louise Wattis reveals a new opportunity to analyse representations of masculinity, class and violence, as well as how male audiences engage with cultural portrayals of these violent subjects. Embracing the breadth of the true crime genre, including features such as online engagement, sexual violence and the figure of the murdered woman, chapters critically analyse themes of gender, masculinity, race and class, as well as their representations in victim/survivor-centred documentaries. Situating wider debates within the renewed mainstream focus on violence against women, chapters also raise timely questions around ethics and the nature of victim visibility. Recognising the value of popular criminology as an academic resource, this is a much-needed text for advancing contemporaneous debates around the importance and diversity of true crime.

J.G. Ballard's Crash (1973) remains a byword for transgression in literature: declared'too disgusting for words'upon publication. The basis for David Cronenberg's equally provocative film, Crash has been regarded variously as the apotheosis of New Wave science fiction, the ur-source for postmodernism, a transhumanist manifesto, and a pornographic masterpiece in the tradition of Sade and Bataille. This revisionist account, based on previously unexplored archive material, shatters the myths that have accrued around this tantalising work whilst also revealing why it continues to inspire writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers in the 21st century. The book vividly reconstructs how Ballard came to write Crash, the cultural landscape in which it was written, the effect of its reception, and the toll it took on its author. New perspectives reveal how Crash reworks surrealist anthropology, evolutionary theory, and pornographic imagery in order to expose a society addicted to the abuse of power, the silencing of others, and its own environmental destruction. As Ballard later admitted, he'must have been mad'to write Crash.

This edited volume provides pedagogical tools for those who teach – and would like to teach – with the most iconic of monsters: the vampire. Vampires are showing up with increasing frequency in the college classroom and there are a growing number of courses devoted solely to the Undead. This collection draws from a diverse range of teaching approaches, including the theoretical framing of vampire texts in a broad range of settings, that demonstrate the myriad of ways vampires are used to teach about marginalization, empathy, and inspire social justice. With chapters from global scholars, this essential text illustrates the burgeoning field of vampire studies and the popularity in classrooms at every level around the world, from gothic fiction to television courses.

This is a historical and anthropological study of the myth of the werewolf aimed at reflecting on the metamorphoses of evil and understanding the long evolution of a mythical structure. Legends and folklore allow us to explore the brutal bestiality of a figure loaded with sexuality, eroticism, and desire. From ancient times to the present day, the tragic narrative universe of a strange and dangerous wild world is unfolded, with elements of tenderness, that has contributed to defining the profile of civilization as its opposite. The myth was contaminated with religious fanaticism when werewolves were persecuted and burned during the times of the witch hunts.

This book will sketch the dynamics of infrastructure in video games, focusing on the relationship between game rules, fictional world, and player interaction. It will discuss a variety of commercial video games, both mainstream and somewhat niche, that use infrastructure in different ways: Control, Wolfenstein, Fallout, This War of Mine, Exocolonist, Cyberpunk, and Frostpunk. Video games offer a particularly rich field for thinking about the relationship between narrative and infrastructure. The infrastructures that exist in the fictional worlds of these games define the experience of play in a very direct way: how players are instantiated in the game, how they move around the play space, the resources that are available, and so on. And those infrastructures in turn very directly definite the nature of the fictional world. In contrast to literary fiction, were infrastructures might remain on the periphery of some stories, by virtue of the centrality of player interaction video games are inherently infrastructural.

In Food, John Coveney examines ‘food as …'identity, politics, industry, regulation, the environment, justice and gastronomy. He explores how food helps us understand what it means to be human.The centrality of food in life, and the importance of food as life, is undeniable. As a source of biological substrates, personal pleasure and political power, food is and has been an enduring requirement of human biological, social and cultural existence. In recent years, interest in food has increased across the academic, public and popular spheres, fuelled by popular media's constant play on the role of food and body size, and food and cooking, as a mass spectacle for TV audiences. Through food, we construct our social identities, our families and communities. However, Coveney also highlights the tensions between the industrialisation of food, the environment, and the iniquitous distribution of food. He also considers how the food industries, on which most of us must rely, have also had direct effects on our bodies through diet, and the development of illness and diseases.This accessible primer is for students and general readers alike, indeed, for anyone with an interest in food. It questions the idea that food is merely something inert on the plate. Instead, it shows how influential, symbolic, powerful and transformative food has come to be.

The turn of the nineteenth century in the United States saw the substantial influx of immigrants and a corresponding increase in anti-immigration and nativist tendencies among longer-settled Americans. Jewish immigrants were often the object of such animosity, being at once the object of admiration and anxiety for their perceived economic and social successes. One result was their frequent depiction in derogatory caricatures on the stage and in print. Smoothing the Jew investigates how Jewish artists of the time attempted to “smooth over” these demeaning portrayals by focusing on the first Jewish comic strip published in English, Harry Hershfield's Abie the Agent. Jeffrey Marx demonstrates how Hershfield created a Jewish protagonist who in part reassured nativists of the Jews'ability to assimilate into American society while also encouraging immigrants and their children that, over time, they would be able to adopt American customs without losing their distinctly Jewish identity.

Das US-Kino nimmt sich seit einiger Zeit wieder europäischen Märchenstoffen an und erzählt die Geschichten vermeintlich neu. Dabei sprechen die Filme nicht mehr nur Kinder und Familien an, sondern stellen Themenaspekte in den Vordergrund, die in der Jugendphase von besonderer Relevanz sind. In einer detaillierten filmanalytischen Auseinandersetzung, die qualitative und quantitative Methoden nutzt, werden in diesem Buch sechs moderne Filmmärchen auf ihren Umgang mit den Märchenstoffen Aschenputtel und Schneewittchen hin untersucht sowie die Anknüpfungspotenziale für jugendliche Rezipient•innen herausgearbeitet. Dabei wird nicht nur auf die Themen selbst eingegangen, sondern auch auf die Art und Weise, wie diese in den Filmen thematisiert werden. Zudem wird dargelegt welche Normen und Werte über sie vermittelt werden. Das Buch zeigt auf, wie aktuell Märchenstoffe bis heute im US-Kino sind, wie die Filme mit dem Ruf der Märchen als Kindermedien brechen, was über die Filme vermittelt wird und wie letztendlich bekannte Erzählinhalte reproduziert und dabei gleichzeitig neu konstruiert werden.

Serielle Dystopien sind omnipräsent; sei es in der Literatur, im Spielfilm, der Fernseh- bzw. Streamingserie oder auch im Videogame. Das Buch verbindet ein wesentliches Erzählverfahren (die Serie) mit gerade kontrovers diskutierten Themen (u.a. Diversity, Covid 19) und dem Genre ihrer medialen Verhandlung. Die Serialität dystopischer Erzählungen ist ein transmediales Phänomen. Der Band geht der Frage nach, wie sich negative Zukunftsvorstellungen, aber auch kontrafaktische Vergangenheitsentwürfe medienspezifisch darstellen, wie sie darüber hinaus im Zuge der Medienkonvergenz größere Erzähluniversen herausbilden. Im Mittelpunkt stehen dabei vor allem Überlegungen, ob sich die serielle Form in besonderer Weise dafür eignet, von dystopischen Gesellschaftsvisionen zu erzählen.

Contributions by GerShun Avilez, Lola Boorman, Thomas Britt, John Brooks, Phillip James Martinez Cortes, Derek DiMatteo, Tikenya Foster-Singletary, Alexandra Glavanakova, Erica-Brittany Horhn, Matthias Klestil, Abigail Jinju Lee, Derek C. Maus, Danielle Fuentes Morgan, Derek Conrad Murray, Kinohi Nishikawa, Sarah O'Brien, Keyana Parks, and Emily Ruth RutterThe seventeen essays in Greater Atlanta: Black Satire after Obama collectively argue that in the years after the widespread hopefulness surrounding Barack Obama's election as president waned, Black satire began to reveal a profound shift in US culture. Using the four seasons of the FX television show Atlanta (2016–22) as a springboard, the collection examines more than a dozen novels, films, and television shows that together reveal the ways in which Black satire has developed in response to contemporary cultural dynamics. Contributors reveal increased scorn toward self-proclaimed allies in the existential struggle still facing African Americans today.Having started its production within a few weeks of Donald Trump's (in)famous escalator ride in 2015, Atlanta in many ways is the perfect commentary on the absurdities of the contemporary cultural moment. The series exemplifies a significant development in contemporary Black satire, which largely eschews expectations of reform and instead offers an exasperated self-affirmation that echoes the declaration that Black Lives Matter.Given anti-Black racism's lengthy history, overt stimuli for outrage have predictably commanded African American satirists'attention through the years. However, more recent works emphasize the willful ignorance underlying that history. As the volume shows, this has led to the exposure of performative allyship, virtue signaling, slacktivism, and other duplicitous forms of purported support as empty, oblivious gestures that ultimately harm African Americans as grievously as unconcealed bigotry.

The concept of'subculture'is an invaluable tool to frame the study of non-normative and marginal cultures for social and cultural scholars. This international collection uncovers the significance of meaning-making in the processes of defining, studying and analyzing subcultural phenomena. Examining various dimensions of interpretivism, the book focuses on overarching concerns related to interpretation as well as day-to-day considerations that affect researchers'and members'interpretations of subcultural phenomena. It reveals how and why people use specific conceptual frames or methods and how those shape their interpretations of everyday realities. This is an unprecedented contribution to the field, explaining the interpretive processes through which people make sense of subcultural phenomena.

The rollicking saga of reality television, a “sweeping” (The Washington Post) cultural history of America's most influential, most divisive artistic phenomenon, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker writer—“a must-read for anyone interested in television or popular culture” (NPR) “Passionate, exquisitely told... With muscular prose and an exacting eye for detail... [Nussbaum] knits her talents for sharp analysis and telling reportage well.”—The New York Times (Editors'Choice)In development as a docuseries from the studio behind Spencer and SpotlightONE OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Boston GlobeFINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTIONWho invented reality television, the world's most dangerous pop-culture genre? And why can't we look away? In this revelatory, deeply reported account of the rise of “dirty documentary”—from its contentious roots in radio to the ascent of Donald Trump—Emily Nussbaum unearths the origin story of the genre that ate the world, as told through the lively voices of the people who built it. At once gimlet-eyed and empathetic, Cue the Sun! explores the morally charged, funny, and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake.In sharp, absorbing prose, Nussbaum traces the jagged fuses of experimentation that exploded with Survivor at the turn of the millennium. She introduces the genre's trickster pioneers, from the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris; Cops auteur John Langley; cynical Bachelor ringmaster Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray and Mary-Ellis Bunim, the visionaries behind The Real World—along with dozens of stars from An American Family, The Real World, Big Brother, Survivor, and The Bachelor. We learn about the tools of the trade—like the Frankenbite, a deceptive editor's best friend—and ugly tales of exploitation. But Cue the Sun! also celebrates reality's peculiar power: a jolt of emotion that could never have come from a script.What happened to the first reality stars, the Louds—and why won't they speak to the couple who filmed them? Which serial killer won on The Dating Game? Nussbaum explores reality TV as a strike-breaker, the queer roots of Bravo, the dark truth behind The Apprentice, and more. A shrewd observer who adores television, Nussbaum is the ideal voice for the first substantive history of the genre that, for better or worse, made America what it is today.

This book analyzes the culture wars as those struggles for the monopoly of the legitimate representation of the world in the normative elucidation of controversial issues linked to values. Public culture in this context would consist of a set of complex classificatory systems of symbols and meanings that constitute a semantic field in permanent dynamic tension. In this work we analyze a whole series of lines of cultural conflict such as the social and semantic genesis of the different forms of “culture war” from the thesis of “modern polytheism” pointed out by Max Weber at the beginning of the 20th century to the national culture wars and the current global culture wars; the social production of truth and the clash with the epistemological tribalisms; the struggles between the new warrior gods, daimons and demons that emerge in modern societies; the struggles of fusion and fission on the symbolic battlefield of “Europe”; the struggles between “pioneers” and “gatekeepers” to define the limits of human nature; the struggles between utopias and dystopias that colonize the present future. This book will be of great help to anybody looking for key interpretations on the nature and structure of modern conflicts in contemporary societies.

We're accustomed to seeing humour as a diversion from the serious side of life, but humour also permeates some of the most troubling political developments in recent years. From the resurgence of white nationalism to the erosion of democratic norms, jokes force-feed us objectionable ideologies while we gasp and splutter at all the side-splitting shenanigans. This book explores the relationship between humour and offensiveness in contemporary society. Drawing on examples from philosophical thinkers and popular culture, it invites readers to consider the dark side of humour. Weaving together cultural analysis, political discussion and philosophical reflection, the book provides an antidote to positive thinking about laughter and a roadmap for navigating different types of offensive humour.

This “inventive, poetic, vulnerable, and sincere” book from an acclaimed author and poet weaves two wrenching personal narratives of recovery and reclamation, spliced with a dazzle of pop-culture (Kirkus).The Dead Don't Need Reminding is a braided story of Julian Randall's return from the cliff edge of a harrowing depression and his determination to retrace the hustle of a white-passing grandfather to the Mississippi town from which he was driven amid threats of tar and feather. Alternatively wry, lyrical, and heartfelt, Randall transforms pop culture moments into deeply personal explorations of grief, family, and the American way. He envisions his fight to stay alive through a striking medley of media ranging from Into the Spiderverse and Jordan Peele movies to BoJack Horseman and the music of Odd Future. Pulsing with life, sharp, and wickedly funny, The Dead Don't Need Reminding is Randall's journey to get his ghost story back.

This book will reconstruct and analyze the logic and frameworks surrounding positive evaluations of popular art in articles and books predominantly published in the United States and western Europe. It will also examine negative evaluations of the popular, especially those that have successfully prevented the popular from being perceived as (good) art and still provide partially effective counterarguments today. This book will examine both relevant judgments on individual works and groups of works as well as general judgments and assessments.

This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the different ways in which the past remains present in Western popular culture in the twenty-first century. It combines theoretical analyses with case study-based chapters focusing on examples from Britain, the US, and Germany, among other countries. In doing so, it pushes beyond a simplistic and monolithic conception of what ‘nostalgia'is to allow for a more nuanced and varied conceptualisation of this phenomenon, and to also incorporate other ways of understanding the invoking or inclusion of different histories within cultural objects, formats, and practices.

In contemporary popular culture, armed women take center stage - but how can they be read from a feminist perspective? How do films, comics, and TV series depict the newly fashionable gunwomen between objectification and feminist empowerment? The contributions to this volume ask this question from different vantage points in cultural and literary studies, film and visual culture studies, history, and art history. They examine military and civic gun cultures, the rediscovery of historical armed women and revolutionaries, cultural phenomena such as gangsta rap, narcocultura and US politics, Bollywood and French cinema, and distinct genres such as the graphic novel, the romance novel, or the German police procedural Tatort.

This edited collection assembles international perspectives from artists, academics, and curators in the field to bring the insights of screendance theory and practice back into conversations with critical methods, at the intersections of popular culture, low-tech media practices, dance, and movement studies, and the minoritarian perspectives of feminism, queer theory, critical race studies and more.This book represents new vectors in screendance studies, featuring contributions by both artists and theoreticians, some of the most established voices in the field as well as the next generation of emerging scholars, artists, and curators. It builds on the foundational cartographies of screendance studies that attempted to sketch out what was particular to this practice. Sampling and reworking established forms of inquiry, artistic practice and spectatorial habits, and suspending and reorienting gestures into minoritarian forms, these conversations consider the affordances of screendance for reimaging the relations of bodies, technologies, and media today.This collection will be of great interest to students and scholars in dance studies, performance studies, cinema and media studies, feminist studies, and cultural studies.

Populären Werken wird seit Jahrhunderten der Status des Kunstwerks aberkannt, unter Verweis auf deren vermeintliche Oberflächlichkeit, Eindimensionalität, Effekthascherei und Standardisierung werden sie streng von ‚echter‘ Kunst geschieden. Schiller, Nietzsche, Adorno, Greenberg, unzählige Kritiker und Feuilletonisten in Westeuropa und den USA – sie alle eint ein starker Vorbehalt gegenüber dem, was von den Vielen anerkannt, geschätzt und gekauft wird. Seit Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts und besonders seit den 1950er Jahren gibt es aber auch eine Reihe von Argumenten gegen die Auffassung, dass nichts Kunst sei, was auf große Zustimmung trifft. Die Fülle an unterschiedlichen Positionen, Aussagen und Argumentationsmöglichkeiten aufzuzeigen, zu bündeln, zu systematisieren und zu überprüfen, die dem Populären zu künstlerischer Anerkennung verhelfen wollen, ist Zweck dieses Buches. Das Resultat ist eine umfassende Darstellung von Gründen, auch populäre Werke aus Literatur, Musik, Film,Fotografie, bildender Kunst und Design als genuine Kunstwerke betrachten zu können.

Faut-il interdire le yoga? Doit-on censurer Autant en emporte le vent? Peut-on aimer Harry Potter sans être transphobe? Ces questions, dans le sillage de la « pensée woke », s'invitent aussi bien dans les repas de famille que dans les entreprises et offrent rarement lieu à des débats constructifs. Alors, comment décrypter ces grandes tendances afin de mieux les comprendre et s'y adapter? Cet ouvrage, qui illustre des enjeux de société complexes à travers des exemples issus de la « pop culture », a vocation à aider les lecteurs à former un jugement éclairé sur l'un des sujets les plus emblématiques de notre époque.

Race, Representation, and Satire examines the role of humor, sarcasm, and parody in providing audiences with insight into race and racism in contemporary media through an analysis of representations of race and ethnicity in texts, online content, television shows, and comedy routines. Contributors argue that while many minoritized groups continue to be targeted by stereotypes and myths that have lingered for centuries, satire and comedy can be powerful tools for reversing harmful narratives and generating accurate, authentic, and inclusive representations. Scholars of media studies, popular culture, rhetoric, and race will find this book particularly useful.

This book examines the intersection between Indian cinema (across geographic regions, languages and formats) and human rights. It analyzes Indian cinema from multiple human rights perspectives, such as freedom of expression and censorship, socio-economic rights, caste rights, women's and children's rights and LGBTQIA+ equality. The book bridges human rights law and cinema studies, and opens up new research areas within sociocultural and socio-legal academic contexts. It also contributes to academic disicplines beyond Law and Cinema, including Media, Cultural, Gender, Socio-economic and Sociology studies and is relevant for Liberal Arts curricula, Law Schools and as a reference book in university libraries in India and internationally, especially in film institutes. Finally, the book offers practical implications for human rights activists and policymakers by exploring how rights can be advanced through cinema and pop culture.

Mother Trouble traces white maternal angst in popular culture across a span of more than fifty years, from the iconic Rosemary's Baby to anti-vaxx mom memes and HGTV shows. The book narrows in on popular media to think about white maternal angst as a manifestation of feminism's unrealized possibilities and continued omissions since the second wave. It interrogates intersecting systems of power which make mothers and their children the most impoverished people in the world and urges a greater appreciation in academic and popular thinking of the work that mothers do. The book calls for an analytical expansion beyond gender to better address the erasure of reproductive labour, and especially that performed by migrants and people of colour. It illustrates the continued marginalization of racialized mothers and the disproportionate amount of labour performed by all mothers in a society where their work is devalued. Ultimately, Mother Trouble reveals how the unease around white motherhood in the media has become a proxy for the troubles faced by all mothers.

'A book for the modern woman, laced with unflinching, glorious honesty.'Zara McDonald and Michelle Andrews, co-founders of Shameless Media'A funny, real interrogation of Australia's body image problem, and a call to arms to dismantle diet culture.'Chantelle Otten, author and sexologist'A feminist manifesto, a younger millennial gospel, with unparalleled candour and self awareness. I inhaled this book - it's going to be big.'Jessie Stephens'I have always known that to be hot is to be powerful. For most of my life, I just took it as the way things are, a fact not worth interrogating since it's so obviously true.'Up until her twenty-fifth birthday, the number one priority in Lucinda Price's life was to look good. She nipped, tucked, cut, plucked, shaved, tanned, crunched, squatted and starved. Then, she broke down. All I Ever Wanted Was To Be Hot is a funny, provocative retrospective on the last thirty years of Western beauty standards. From the Pussycat Dolls to Victoria's Secret, The Girls of the Playboy Mansion to Lara Bingle, the media of the 2000s was littered with high profile examples of hotness as the highest form of social currency. Is it any wonder a girl growing up in that era might believe'good looks'were as integral to womanhood as having a pulse? With her offbeat humour and incisive cultural commentary, Lucinda tells the unfiltered story of a young woman overcoming an eating disorder, illuminating our enduring obsession with appearance by holding a mirror up to herself, and in turn, all of us. A hilarious, insightful deep dive into self image, desirability, pop-culture and power. A sparkling debut by one of Australia's most beloved creators and comedians, Lucinda Price aka Froomes.'Brilliant, funny and brutally honest, this is a must-read for anyone trying to navigate through this incredibly complex, image-obsessed age.'Myf Warhurst'If Tina Fey and David Sedaris had a child, it would be a book… this book.'Ryan Shelton'My book of the year. Whip-smart. Hilarious. Honest... Lucinda is a genius who captures and melds the deeply serious and deeply funny in a way few writers can.'Hannah Ferguson

Fear of cancel culture has gripped the world, and it turns out to be an old fear in a new get-up. In this incisive new work, Adrian Daub analyzes the global spread of cancel culture discourse as a moral panic, showing that, though its object is fuzzy, talk of cancel culture in global media has become a preoccupation of an embattled liberalism. There are plenty of conservative voices who gin up worries about cancel culture to advance their agendas. But more remarkable perhaps is that it is centrist, even left-leaning, media that have taken up the rallying cry and really defined the outlines of what cancel culture is supposed to be. Media in Western Europe, South America, Russia, and Australia have devoted as much—in some cases more—attention to this supposedly American phenomenon than most US outlets. From French crusades against'le wokisme'via British fables of the'loony left'to a German obsession with campus anecdotes to a global revolt against'gender studies': countries the world over have developed culture war narratives in conflict with the US, and, above all, its universities—narratives that they themselves borrowed from the US. Who exactly is afraid of cancel culture? To trace how various global publics have been so quickly convinced that cancel culture exists and that it poses an existential problem, Daub compares the cancel culture panic to moral panics past, investigating the powerful hold that the idea of'being cancelled'has on readers around the world. A book for anyone wondering how institutions of higher learning in the US have become objects of immense interest and political lightning rods; not just for audiences and voters in the US, but worldwide.

​William Gibson's Neuromancer: A Critical Companion presents Gibson's rise as an influential figure within and beyond the science fiction field. Gibson's success with Neuromancer, the first novel to win the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and Philip K. Dick Award, is in part a direct result of the rising popularity of cyberpunk in the early- to mid-1980s, although it could just as easily be said cyberpunk's success was in no small part a direct result of Neuromancer's explosion onto the science fiction scene.Neuromancer's ongoing relevance remains undiminished because we are effectively living in a technocultural age that is increasingly difficult to distinguish from Gibson's novel. As Graham J. Murphy demonstrates in this companion, the novel remains instrumental in thinking through the ongoing explorations of the posthuman:transhumanism, the Utopia/Anti-Utopia dynamic, and capitalist realism, to name a few of themore significant critical vehicles with which to better understand and contextualize our technocultural age and Neuromancer's role in both shaping it and responding to it. This book provides a critical introduction to Neuromancer and cyberpunk culture.

Mr. Lipton's book is the first complete and unbiased survey of the beat generation and its role in our society. Here are the intimate facts about these people and their attitudes toward sex, dope, jazz, art, religion, parents, landlords, employers, politicians, draft boards, the law and, most important, toward the “square”. The author presents a picture of their way of life, their individual backgrounds, the language they have appropriated, in terms made clear for the first time to those of us who have been confused and puzzled about them. He also provides a balanced discussion of their literature, art and music, of what they produce and fail to produce in the arts they practice.

Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence'Blending beautiful family history with her own personal memories, LaPointe's writing is a ballad against amnesia, and a call to action for healing, for decolonization, for hope.'—ElleThe author of the award-winning memoir Red Paint returns with a razor-sharp, clear-eyed collection of essays on what it means to be a proudly queer indigenous woman in the United States todayDrawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and conscientious honesty.Unapologetically punk, the essays in Thunder Song segue from the miraculous to the mundane, from the spiritual to the physical, as they examine the role of art—in particular music—and community in helping a new generation of indigenous people claim the strength of their heritage while defining their own path in the contemporary world.

This second of two volumes explores broader cultural, economic, and socio-political dynamics exchanged between Asian popular media and the world. The authors analyze how the said media navigate complex global markets and technological advancements. They discuss how dissemination and consumption of Asian popular culture, such as early Chinese-language movie theaters, Netflix, subtitling of Asian content, impact the popularity of cultural contents. They also examine the portrayal of ajummas (middle-aged women) in Korean TV and film, along with the varying representations of utopia and dystopia embedded in Asian science fiction. This volume illustrates the soft power of media in transnational exchanges.

Theorien des Populären setzen bisher oftmals bei sozialen Verhältnissen an (z.B. populäre Kultur als Kultur der machtlosen ‚niederen‘ Schichten) oder bestimmen das Populäre über die Merkmale der so bezeichneten Artefakte (etwa als Gegenteil der autonomen, komplexen ‚high art‘). Gemäß dem Diktum „Populär ist, was bei vielen Beachtung findet“ geht dieser Band einen anderen Weg – im Mittelpunkt stehen Dimensionen des Quantitativen. Populär ist demnach, was in relativ großer Zahl angeklickt, gekauft, rezipiert und dessen Häufigkeit in Top-Ten-Listen oder anderen Rankings behauptet wird. Im Lichte dieser Bestimmung werden bisherige Theorien des Populären diskutiert und neue Forschungsansätze erprobt.

This book examines how the persistent and deepening casualization and precarity of acting work, coupled with market pressures, has affected the ways in which actors are trained in the US and UK. It reviews the existing state of training, looking at various theories of what the actor does, debates about casting, and the impact of reality television and social media. In the increasing effort to find ways to overcome the precarious labour market for actors and other performers, the traditional emphasis on theatrical character has been replaced by the celebration of the persona – a public image of the performer as a personal brand. As a result, a physiocratic elite, that literally incorporates the collective labour of cultural workers into the star or celebrity body, has formed. This book explores how the star or celebrity's appearance and comportment are positioned as the rule of nature, formed and abiding outside capitalism as a mode of production. This book will be of interest to those studying theatre studies and performance, contemporary stardom and celebrity and the impact of technology on the formation of identity.

Unlocking the technosocial implications of global geek cultures Why has anime, a “low-tech” medium from last century, suddenly become the cultural “new cool” in the information age? Through the lens of anime and its transnational fandom, Jinying Li explores the meanings and logics of “geekdom” as one of the most significant sociocultural groups of our time. In Anime's Knowledge Cultures, Li shifts the center of global geography in knowledge culture from the computer boys in Silicon Valley to the anime fandom in East Asia. Drawing from film studies, animation studies, media theories, fan studies, and area studies, she provides broad cultural and theoretical explanations of anime's appeal to a new body of tech-savvy knowledge workers and consumers commonly known as geeks, otaku, or zhai. Examining the forms, techniques, and aesthetics of anime, as well as the organization, practices, and sensibilities of its fandom, Anime's Knowledge Cultures is at once a theorization of anime as a media environment as well as a historical and cultural study of transnational geekdom as a knowledge culture. Li analyzes anime culture beyond the national and subcultural frameworks of Japan or Japanese otaku, instead theorizing anime's transnational, transmedial network as the epitome of the postindustrial knowledge culture of global geekdom. By interrogating the connection between the anime boom and global geekdom, Li reshapes how we understand the meanings and significance of anime culture in relation to changing social and technological environments.

This edited collection investigates topics related to environmental humanities through their inclusion, exploration, or critique in contemporary video games. It focuses on how video games are a site for creating and interacting within environments, with analysis that showcases how environments are shaped within video games as well as serve as a reflection of our real world. This crossroad between the virtual and the real allows us to consider the ways in which the concepts, theories, and issues facing our real-world environment can be understood and studied through video games, particularly via the power of interactive play to teach. This book looks into how video games might empower their players to make real-world change through their immersive environments. Finally, the volume offers a consideration of ecological crises through an exploration of post-apocalyptic narratives in a wide variety of video games. This close textual analysis of video game narratives and play structures allows insight into how and why such stories were crafted and explores the various intersections between these fictional play environments and the conditions of our real world.

The incomprehensible notion of a very large chunk of ice or rock from outer space smashing into the Earth has only become mainstream within the past two centuries. Though early writers imagined the utterly fantastic consequences of comet collisions and speculated on the devastation they might wreak, it was not until the 1980s when scientists finally resolved that dinosaurs were extinguished by an asteroid 66 million years ago. This startling announcement captivated the media and tilted the science fiction world but in reality, history may have been punctuated repeatedly by such events. This book collects and analyzes ideas of asteroid, comet, and planetary impacts with Earth spanning two centuries, from the first realization of extinctions in fossil records to the new millennium, reflected in scores of sci-fi stories, films, and televised science documentaries. The author examines social and geopolitical fears tied to the prospect of a cosmic-borne catastrophe. Science, fiction, and speculation are artfully melded.

How do digital media technologies affect society and our lives? Through the cultural theory hypotheses of hyper-modernism, hyperreality, and posthumanism, Alan N. Shapiro investigates the social impact of Virtual/Augmented Reality, AI, social media platforms, robots, and the Brain-Computer Interface. His examination of concepts of Jean Baudrillard and Katherine Hayles, as well as films such as Blade Runner 2049, Ghost in the Shell, Ex Machina, and the TV series Black Mirror, suggests that the boundary between science fiction narratives and the »real world« has become indistinct. Science-fictional thinking should be advanced as a principal mode of knowledge for grasping the world and digitalization.

Following on from the highly acclaimed Parts 1 to 3, this book provides detailed insights into how space and popular culture intersect across a broad spectrum of examples, including cinema, music, art, arcade games, cartoons, comics, and advertisements. This is a pertinent topic since the use of space themes differs in different cultural contexts, and these themes can be used to explore various aspects of the human condition and provide a context for social commentary on politically sensitive issues. With the use of space imagery evolving over the past sixty years of the space age, this is a topic ripe for in-depth exploration. The book also discusses the contrasting visions of space from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the reality of today and analyzes space vehicles and habitats in popular depictions of space from an engineering perspective, exploring how many of those ideas have actually been implemented in practice and why or why not (a case of life imitating art and vice versa). As such, it covers a wide array of relevant and timely topics examining intersections between space and popular culture and offering accounts of space and its effect on culture, language, and storytelling from the southern regions of the world.

Der Sammelband befasst sich mit der gegenwärtigen Darstellung von Sport in audiovisuellen Medien und erörtert verschiedene Bedingungen und Verfahren in Bezug auf sportliche Wettkämpfe wie auch Akteur_innen in Fernsehen und Internet. Die Beiträge widmen sich aus mehreren medien- und kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Perspektiven unter anderem Live-Übertragungen von Sport, 360-Grad-Videos, dem eSport, der Tätigkeit von TV-Expert_innen, der Darstellung von Fußballtrainer_innen, Instagram-Videos und dem Personal Branding von Sportler_innen.

Contemporary art must get inspiration from somewhere. In Tea, Automatons, and Time Machines, the subculture of Steampunk art is studied in relation to art history. Addressing three main topics within social and environmental justice, a comparison of art styles and creativity stems from an artist's passion within popular culture. Using arts-based research methods and personal introspection viewed through the lens of nostalgia, a unique perspective of art history studies comes to life. Nostalgia, being primarily a psychological study, is used as a lens to view art, culture, and memoir into a complete research project. We live in a world in need of change. Historically, artists have provided a means for change through their work and the lives they choose to live. The vastness of art history provides plenty of room for inspiration and interpretation. In this study, the contemporary sub-culture of Steampunk looks nostalgically at Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco eras in a way that paves the way for social change and environmental preservation using fantasy, cos-play, and art to demonstrate needed changes. Through the art and culture of Steampunk, we explore areas that could use improvement in our modern world, and yet, they do tie in with similar occurrences of the past. We find that we're not that different but with art and demonstration, we too, can make positive changes for our future.

Some (web) television texts achieve immense commercial success. Certain commercially successful texts boast dedicated, creative, and exponentially growing fandoms. These fan communities engage in specific fan practices that are significantly influenced by the textualities of the texts and their contexts of production, distribution, and consumption. Increased fan engagement resulting in the acceleration of the text's popularity leads to the following inquiries: · How is the series influenced by the interactions among and the relationships between the producers, consumers, distributors, and content? · What are the sites of these interactions? · What are the social, cultural, economic, and political factors that impact the series? · How do the text's contexts of production, distribution, and consumption lead to the text's popularity in mainstream media? In pursuit of an answer to these questions, the analytical lens of the ‘mediaverse'is developed. An inductive study, this book explores four television series'that fall within the scope of speculative fiction to characterise the mediaverse and highlight the interconnectedness among the networked nodes of new media. These wield a significant influence on the production and consumption of media and its presence in our everyday lives, thus outlining the mediaverse as a tool for the analysis of a media texts and practices that shape contemporary media culture.

Seit 2015 wird die arabischsprachige YouTube-Sphäre von saudischen Influencer•innen dominiert. Sie orientieren sich an globalen Standards, die Sabrina Zahren als „globalen Konsens“ bezeichnet. Die Akteur•innen sind zudem in regionale Mediensysteme eingebettet, über die sie in Werbe- und Marketingstrukturen und, auf lokaler Ebene, in Nation-Branding-Strategien eingebunden werden. Diese Schlüsselaspekte, die „soziale Medien“ als Teil des digitalen Kapitalismus verorten, haben in den Studien zu arabischen Medien aus methodologischen und theoretischen Gründen bisher eher wenig Aufmerksamkeit bekommen. Das vorliegende Buch entwickelt daher eine hybride Perspektive, die die politische Ökonomie der digitalen Plattformen im Golf genauso mit einbezieht wie den Blick auf Influencer•innen und Creator Culture. Dazu wurden unter anderem fast 400 Videos kommerziell erfolgreicher saudischer YouTube-Kanäle qualitativ und quantitativ ausgewertet. Zudem zeichnet das Buch die Geschichte der Plattform YouTube in der Region nach und nimmt die Zusammenarbeit regionaler digitaler Industrien mit Tech-Konzernen des globalen Nordens (z.B. Google) genauer unter die Lupe.

Möbius Media explores the interplay of popular and traditional cultures, reminding readers that expressive cultural forms are never mutually exclusive but exist in a state of creative tension and interconnection, merging and (re)defining one another. With this insightful volume, editors Jeffrey Tolbert and Michael Dylan Foster build on their earlier work, The Folkloresque, by considering how folklore is understood and mobilized within a variety of popular discourses and commercial marketplaces. The collection challenges readers to consider the stakes of labeling something as folklore or folk. It demonstrates the rhetorical and political potency of ideas such as traditionality, heritage, and community in storytelling venues (including films, games, and even podcasts), in the construction and policing of genres, and in the selling of commodities. By interrogating popular media and expressions that make use of ideas such as folklore, tradition, authenticity, and heritage, Möbius Media further develops the theoretical applicability of the folkloresque concept and encourages productive interdisciplinary dialogue. Through the lens of the folkloresque, scholars can better see the hidden ideologies that inform the marketplace and influence contemporary modes of communication. This interdisciplinary work will appeal to scholars and students of cultural studies, media studies, popular culture, literature, anthropology, and related areas.

Much philosophical work on pop culture apologises for its use; using popular culture is a necessary evil, something merely useful for reaching the masses with important philosophical arguments. But works of pop culture are important in their own right--they shape worldviews, inspire ideas, change minds. We wouldn't baulk at a book dedicated to examining the philosophy of The Great Gatsby or 1984--why aren't Star Trek and Superman fair game as well? After all, when produced, the former were considered pop culture just as much as the latter. This will be the first major reference work to right that wrong, gathering together entries on film, television, games, graphic novels and comedy, and officially recognizing the importance of the field. It will be the go-to resource for students and researchers in philosophy, culture, media and communications, English and history and will act as a springboard to introduce the reader to the other key literature inthe field.

Has a global queer popular culture emerged at the expense of local queer artists? In this book, Helton Levy argues that global queer culture is indebted to specific, local references that artists carry from their early experiences in life, which then become homogenized by contemporary media markets. The assumption that queer publics live and consume only through a global set of references, including gay parades and rainbow flags, for example, erases many personal complexities.Levy revisits media characters that have caught the attention of the broader public – such as Calamity Jane (1953), the Daffyd Thomas character from the BBC comedy Little Britain (2003-2007), Brazilian drag queen Pabblo Vittar, French singer Christine and the Queens, and the Italian-Egyptian rapper Mahmood – and argues that they have gradually blended in the public's perception. This has often obscured the individual struggles faced by these characters, such as immigration, homophobia, poverty and societal exclusion. Levy also questions what happens when global media flows take queer culture to regions wherein the notion of LGBTQ+ rights are not entirely acceptable. Utilizing insights from media reports published across the world's ten biggest media markets, Levy argues that there are a series of conditions which artists and cultural actors negotiate once they achieve any kind of success in mainstream media, while local queer references remain unseen in the wider media world. For that reason, he argues for stronger incentives for communities to accept and acknowledge the work of queer people before and after commoditization.

Highlights the importance of considering contemporary public culture through the lens of fan studiesThe Gamergate harassment campaign of women in video games, the “Unite the Right” rally where hundreds of Confederate monument supporters cried out racist and antisemitic slurs in Charlottesville, and the targeted racist and sexist harassment of Star Wars'Asian American actress Kelly Marie Tran all have one thing in common: they demonstrate the collective power and underlying ugliness of fandoms. These fans might feel victimized or betrayed by the content they've intertwined with their own identities, or they may simply feel that they're speaking truth to power. Regardless, by connecting via social media, they can unleash enormous amounts of hate, which often results in severe real-world consequences.Fandom Is Ugly argues that reactionary politics and media fandoms go hand in hand, and to understand one, we need to understand the other. Mel Stanfill pushes back on two mainstream assumptions: that media and the pleasure of consumption are frivolous and unworthy of study, and that fandoms are inherently progressive. Drawing on a corpus of angry social media posts, Fandom Is Ugly finds that ugly moments happen when deep emotional attachments collide with social structures and situations that have been misunderstood. By holistically examining the forms of ugly fandom in cases that touch upon race, gender, and sexuality, Fandom Is Ugly produces a comprehensive theory of the negative sides of fan attachments.

Richard Dyer is a foundational figure for the critical study of cinema and popular culture. Across a career spanning five decades, he has made path breaking contributions to our understanding of stardom and celebrity, gay and queer politics and cultural history, film music, race and whiteness and the pleasures of popular entertainment. The Richard Dyer Reader brings together for the first time key writings by this vital and influential figure, many of which are not otherwise available. The anthology guides readers through Dyer's prolific and rich output through six thematic selections of essays and extracts, each centred on a key theme in Dyer's work: stardom and the image; entertainment and ideology; gay politics and representation; whiteness; the pleasures of popular entertainment, and textual analysis. A seventh section comprises a selection of interviews conducted across the span of his career, as well as a new interview with editors Glyn Davis and Jaap Kooijman. The book will provide an introduction for those new to Dyer's writings, as well as offering a fresh perspective for readers with a more comprehensive knowledge of his work. The collection includes archival and recent pieces of writing never previously anthologised, newly commissioned essays, a substantial introduction to Dyer's life and work and framing introduction to each section.