The Philosophical Attitude of Eugene Hütz, Singer of Gogol Bordello

The role of place in cultivating artistic practice, communities and audiences is well established and the economic, social and cultural benefits that flow from this are becoming better understood. By contrast, the factors impacting and influencing access to these places is poorly theorised. This paper identifies and examines these factors as they apply to live music in Australia, through a qualitative survey of live music patrons and venues. We compare the themes identified from our data with existing theories of access in the arts, with a particular focus on the ways in which place-based music scenes may encourage or exclude participation. We address the question of how access affects participation within these scenes, as well as how access might be improved.

Letter from the Editors: Contemporary Popular Culture and Social Criticism

This article will explore pro-sex, black feminist performance, and more specifically, the music videos of contemporary African-American female popular music entertainers. African-American politics of respectability continue to influence how black feminists, and more broadly, how African-American communities, delineate what constitutes hypersexuality and objectification. Contemporary black female entertainers and their sexually explicit performances provide unique sites for dissecting the interplay of contemporary black feminist standpoints, sex-positivism, and popular culture. I will address questions such as: Does the historical legacy of dehumanizing and exploitative images of black women in popular culture foreclose possibilities for African-American women artists claiming pro-sex standpoints? What are the transgressive possibilities of black women's bodies within contemporary popular music performance? Can African-American women's performances in sexually explicit music videos contribute to the reclamation of healthy, black female sexual expressivity? Using a hip hop generation feminist standpoint, I will examine emergent pro-sex, black feminist perspectives rooted in contemporary popular culture.

Since the fall of the New Order regime in 1998, music has become a site of religio-political resistance among the new Islamist generation in Indonesia. This research examines the emergence of Islamist music on the Indonesian underground music scene to show the deepening influence of the Islamist movement among urban Muslim youth and the shifting strategy of the new Islamist generation from structural politics to cultural politics. The emergence of Islamist music indicates how a new generation of Islamists negotiates an Islamist worldview with contemporary popular culture. By maintaining the aggressive character of underground music, they adopt the Western popular culture as a code of resistance against the secular cultural hegemony. They also use popular music as a cultural approach or a strategy to promote the Islamist ideology to all urban Muslim youth.

This chapter looks at the representational strategies applied to ageing femininities in popular media content. Although ageing femininities generally remain invisible in popular television fiction, the past decade we have seen a trend of increasing fictional content representing women of age. In the body of work on ageing femininities in popular culture, most research has considered representations in television content, fiction and advertising. Popular visual culture seems to have represented ageing femininities more often in recent years, but as studies have shown, the contemporary popular media space still lacks diversity and has only a limited set of stereotypes. Representations of ageing femininities in popular culture – particularly visible, embodied representations – have a limited set of articulations. As Justine Coupland pointed out, contemporary popular culture has articulated new ideologies and representations of ageing embedded in a commercialised discourse promoting a certain ‘look’ for ageing.

Fish Out of Water:Black superheroines in Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon Dr. Nedine Moonsamy (bio) She swims around the alien home that was in the water … they could not stay underwater for a long time, they could not breathe it as she could –Nnedi Okorafor, Lagoon Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon opens with a swordfish narrator who watches aliens while they populate the Nigerian waters. Unlike the narrator, who is entirely at home in the ocean, the aliens cannot breathe water with the same ease because, like the two black female protagonists in the novel, Ayodele and Adaora, the aliens are amphibian-like in nature. As the novel proceeds, Ayodele and Adaora's amphibian bodies become increasingly suggestive of the tentative navigation of spaces that they do not necessarily inhabit. My sense is that this oxymoronic habitation of an "alien home" alludes to that which is both strange and familiar, and so performs a metatextual mapping of the precarious space that black women more generally occupy in science fiction. As Mae G. Henderson observed "the complex situatedness of the black woman as not only the 'other'of the same, but also as the 'other' of the other(s)" implies "a relationship of difference and identification with the 'other(s)'." Because oppressive representations of black women in literature stem from both racialized and gendered discourse, she argues that multiple sites of othering must be interpolated and interrupted in black women's writing. This is equally true of science fiction, where race and gender discourses can often work at cross-purposes in wanting to produce alternative and affirmative narratives for black female characters. The importance of Lagoon, however, is that it is more self-conscious in this regard and plays with our expectations of science fiction superheroines by marking ideological and representative failures that arise in relation to black women. It thus follows that in wanting to [End Page 175] retain the integrity of the black female subject, Okorafor insists on the tentative abode of an "alien home" that operates both within and against the wider generic frameworks of popular science fiction. In his monograph, In Search of the Black Fantastic, scholar Richard Iton argues that popular culture is, by definition, a nonblack culture-a series of hegemonic tastes that rely heavily on the identification of the other that, in the American context, was achieved through the production of the negro. This is not to suggest that black characters do not appear in popular arts and culture, but rather that the abundant stereotypes of blackness exist only as counterfoils to the neutrality of normative whiteness. Somewhat ironically, the range of available signifiers for blackness is an excess that renders the black experience invisible. According to author Michelle Reid, this invisibility of black experience occurs in science fiction, where early space exploration stories were "narrated by the inheritors of advancement, often assumed to be white, Western, and on an adventure." Consequently, the genre became susceptible to various colonial and imperialistic fantasies that captured a troubled relationship to women, people of colour and nature by using the figure of the alien to symbolise these others. Nevertheless, in "Becoming Animal in Black Women's Science Fiction," Madhu Dubey explains that "although science fiction perhaps more than any other genre traffics in otherness, its conventions strongly discourage direct representations of that which is alien to humanity. The alien is typically encountered, comprehended, and subsumed by a human perspective; rarely (if ever) is the alien the subject of narration." Science fiction is replete with feminised or racialized robots aliens and monsters, however, they are always othered and the narrative requires that their otherhood be rendered benign through a process of masculine purging or consumption. Consequently, the question remains—what does it mean for a black artist to engage in contemporary popular culture? For Iton, the solution is to lend visibility to the black experience by engaging the fantastic that sits on the margins of popular culture. Black self-narration must then take on surreal dimensions and embrace the art of making strange. Hence, it is a search for blackness in a "minor key" where, much like the surrealists, the engagement with popular culture...

Notes on Contributors

The ironic life is one of reactive naval-gazing in which the ironist never has to commit to open and honest discourse, preferring always to shroud meaning and truth in verbal-linguistic obfuscation. Much like popular culture, irony is dependent on the notion of ‘discursive communities’ for its practices; that is, like popular culture, irony is comprehended by those who are cognisant of certain exclusive discourses, those who ‘enable irony to happen’. Irony in Contemporary Popular Culture provides an altogether comprehensive, rigorous, and encompassing exploration of the role of irony within contemporary popular culture at a particular historical juncture. The collection focuses on the many uses, abuses, and misunderstandings of irony in contemporary popular culture, and explores the troubling political populism at the heart of many supposedly satirical and non-satirical texts. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.

The Grunge Effect: Music, Fashion, and the Media During the Rise of Grunge Culture In the Early 1990s

This article offers a new analytical perspective on the relation between rock clubs and gentrification to illuminate broader changes in urbanism and cultural production in New York City. Although gentrification is central to understanding how the urban condition has changed since the 1960s, the long-term implications for popular music and its evolution within new urban populations and cultural industries have received relatively little scholarly attention. Gentrification has often been dismissed as an outside threat to music scenes. This article, in contrast, argues that gentrification needs to be understood as a broader social, economic, and cultural process in which popular music cultures have changed. The argument is developed through a case study of the Bowery Presents, a now dominant concert promoter and venue operator with offices on the Lower East Side. Based on fieldwork conducted over a three-year period and on urban sociological macro-level analysis, this article develops an analytical narrative to account for the evolution of the contemporary concert culture in the mid-size venues of the Bowery Presents on the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as a particular instance of more general dynamics of culture and commerce in contemporary cities. The narrative opens up new perspectives for theorizing live music and popular culture within processes of urban social change. The article begins by reviewing conventional approaches to rock music clubs in popular music studies and urban sociology. These approaches are further clarified through the mapping of a deep structure in how music scenes have framed the relationship between clubs and gentrification discursively. The article then examines the evolution of the Bowery Presents within the expansive process of gentrification. The focus is placed here on the cultural profile of the now dominant mid-size venue culture and on three stages in the development of the company and its field-structuring impact on rock clubs on the Lower East Side in particular. The conclusion sums up the key points and suggests that gentrification might involve changing conditions of artistic creativity and performance, with implications for fundamental aspects of urban life; a point illustrated by the trajectory of Occupy Wall Street.

This article offers a new analytical perspective on the relation between rock clubs and gentrification to illuminate broader changes in urbanism and cultural production in New York City. Although gentrification is central to understanding how the urban condition has changed since the 1960s, the long-term implications for popular music and its evolution within new urban populations and cultural industries have received relatively little scholarly attention. Gentrification has often been dismissed as an outside threat to music scenes. This article, in contrast, argues that gentrification needs to be understood as a broader social, economic, and cultural process in which popular music cultures have changed. The argument is developed through a case study of the Bowery Presents, a now dominant concert promoter and venue operator with offices on the Lower East Side. Based on fieldwork conducted over a three-year period and on urban sociological macro-level analysis, this article develops an analytical narrative to account for the evolution of the contemporary concert culture in the mid-size venues of the Bowery Presents on the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as a particular instance of more general dynamics of culture and commerce in contemporary cities. The narrative opens up new perspectives for theorizing live music and popular culture within processes of urban social change. The article begins by reviewing conventional approaches to rock music clubs in popular music studies and urban sociology. These approaches are further clarified through the mapping of a deep structure in how music scenes have framed the relationship between clubs and gentrification discursively. The article then examines the evolution of the Bowery Presents within the expansive process of gentrification. The focus is placed here on the cultural profile of the now dominant mid-size venue culture and on three stages in the development of the company and its field-structuring impact on rock clubs on the Lower East Side in particular. The conclusion sums up the key points and suggests that gentrification might involve changing conditions of artistic creativity and performance, with implications for fundamental aspects of urban life; a point illustrated by the trajectory of Occupy Wall Street.

This article offers a new analytical perspective on the relation between rock clubs and gentrification to illuminate broader changes in urbanism and cultural production in New York City. Although gentrification is central to understanding how the urban condition has changed since the 1960s, the long-term implications for popular music and its evolution within new urban populations and cultural industries have received relatively little scholarly attention. Gentrification has often been dismissed as an outside threat to music scenes. This article, in contrast, argues that gentrification needs to be understood as a broader social, economic, and cultural process in which popular music cultures have changed. The argument is developed through a case study of the Bowery Presents, a now dominant concert promoter and venue operator with offices on the Lower East Side. Based on fieldwork conducted over a three-year period and on urban sociological macro-level analysis, this article develops an analytical narrative to account for the evolution of the contemporary concert culture in the mid-size venues of the Bowery Presents on the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as a particular instance of more general dynamics of culture and commerce in contemporary cities. The narrative opens up new perspectives for theorizing live music and popular culture within processes of urban social change. The article begins by reviewing conventional approaches to rock music clubs in popular music studies and urban sociology. These approaches are further clarified through the mapping of a deep structure in how music scenes have framed the relationship between clubs and gentrification discursively. The article then examines the evolution of the Bowery Presents within the expansive process of gentrification. The focus is placed here on the cultural profile of the now dominant mid-size venue culture and on three stages in the development of the company and its field-structuring impact on rock clubs on the Lower East Side in particular. The conclusion sums up the key points and suggests that gentrification might involve changing conditions of artistic creativity and performance, with implications for fundamental aspects of urban life; a point illustrated by the trajectory of Occupy Wall Street.

This article offers a comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis of contemporary popular culture in the United States, with a focus on its development over the past two decades. The research encompasses various theoretical approaches, including philosophical, economic, sociological, psychological, historical, and anthropological perspectives, aiming to provide a nuanced understanding of the complex and multifaceted phenomenon of popular culture within the context of globalization and digital transformation. Attention is given to the impact of recommendation algorithms on popular culture, particularly their role in fostering cultural homogenization, personalizing cultural experiences, and shaping new cultural trends. The issues of cultural hybridization, the ritualization of social practices, and the significance of collective memory in the context of popular culture are also explored. Historical analysis reveals the periodization and evolution of cultural institutions, while the socio-anthropological approach highlights the importance of symbolic structures in the formation of cultural narratives. The philosophical lens emphasizes the postmodern characteristics of contemporary popular culture, including the deconstruction of traditional cultural patterns, and analyzes the dynamics of metaphysical concepts, particularly the idea of presence within the conditions of hyperreality. Sociological methodologies assist in addressing the structuration of cultural practices and adaptive processes of socialization through social networks and other digital platforms, which are emerging as new spaces for the construction of social identities. The psychological analysis focuses on the cognitive and emotional effects induced by popular culture, including cognitive disintegration caused by excessive media consumption, and the impact of social comparison on self-esteem and the psychological well-being of individuals. It is emphasized that popular culture products can be designed to appeal to unconscious desires and internalized norms, shaping motivational structures and social behavior patterns. The economic perspective highlights the processes of commodification of cultural products and the monetization of cultural industries. The article underscores the necessity of integrating these approaches to gain a deeper understanding of how contemporary popular culture in the United States influences global cultural processes and shapes the future directions of cultural practices and social structures. The conclusions emphasize the importance of an interdisciplinary approach that allows for a comprehensive consideration of the impact of popular culture on society, its cultural norms, identities, and social dynamics.

Writing Superheroes: Contemporary Childhood, Popular Culture, and Classroom Literacy. Anne Haas Dyson. New York: Teachers College Press, 1997. 250 pp.

This chapter examines apocalypticism in popular culture, based on a new understanding of apocalypticism as a historical and global worldview. The first sections describe apocalypticism, define popular culture, and discuss the role of fiction as the primary conduit through which the worldview is expressed today. The next section explores how apocalypticism can be identified and assessed in popular culture. The chapter then presents nine cases that illustrate the wide range of apocalyptic expression in contemporary popular culture: Neon Genesis Evangelion; The Matrix; Neuromancer; Promethea; The Stand; A Canticle for Leibowitz; the Left Behind series; new religious movements; and, finally, the 2012 “Mayan Apocalypse,” the Internet, and “superflat” apocalypticism. The chapter concludes with a section on the ever-increasing appeal of apocalyptic speculation in popular culture today.