Violence in American popular culture: v.1: American history and violent popular culture; v.2: Representations of violence in popular cultural genres

This timely collection provides a historical overview of violence in American popular culture from the Puritan era to the present and across a range of media. Few topics are discussed more broadly today than violence in American popular culture. Unfortunately, such discussion is often unsupported by fact and lacking in historical context. This two-volume work aims to remedy that through a series of concise, detailed essays that explore why violence has always been a fundamental part of American popular culture, the ways in which it has appeared, and how the nature and expression of interest in it have changed over time. Each volume of the collection is organized chronologically. The first focuses on violent events and phenomena in American history that have been treated across a range of popular cultural media. Topics include Native American genocide, slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and gender violence. The second volume explores the treatment of violence in popular culture as it relates to specific genres—for example, Puritan "execution sermons," dime novels, television, film, and video games. An afterword looks at the forces that influence how violence is presented, discusses what violence in pop culture tells us about American culture as a whole, and speculates about the future.

This essay is inspired both by an increasing disciplinary contention that Chaucerians engage with popular culture and by a refreshed critical interest (reflected in the burgeoning field of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) in sharing pedagogical innovations and interests with peers within a public forum.2 Notwithstanding lingering professional suspicions about the value of the popular, engagement with popular culture involves the need both to better communicate Chaucer’s aesthetic distinction to the culture at large and to embrace the popular in our teaching. This essay offers a brief meditation on the value of the popular and offers two theoretical approaches that one might use to introduce the study of Chaucer’s popular constructions into the classroom. I suggest, in short, that Chaucer’s reproduction in popular culture has both pedagogical and critical value—both as interpretations of his poetry as it is adapted to

A comprehensive resource, this book reviews current and historical examples of violence in film, television, radio, music, music videos, video games, and novels. Despite decades of attention and various attempts to enact legislation that limits violence in American popular culture, it remains ubiquitous across films, television, radio, music, music videos, video games, and popular fiction. Studies have shown that programs marketed to children are often remarkably violent and that viewing or otherwise consuming such violence has numerous negative effects on children's psychological health. This book sheds light on the scholarship related to violence in popular culture and compares historical and current examples, analyzing popular shows such as Game of Thrones, video games such as Mortal Kombat, young adult fiction including the trilogy The Hunger Games, and more. Not only does Violence in American Popular Culture provide a comprehensive review of the research about the effects of violence in media, but it also offers detailed assessments of violent content in various expressions of popular culture. In addition, it invites readers to compare violence in American popular culture with that globally via entries on violence in popular culture outside the United States. An appendix of additional resources and primary sources gives readers further tools for deepening their understanding of this complex and controversial issue.

In order to better understand the fluidity and dynamics in language created by the multiple codes, modes and resources within genres of popular culture, we argue in this chapter that it is also important to look at multiple cultural and linguistic resources—‘linguistic and cultural jamming’—that young people draw on from different popular culture genres and other generic sources. We further highlight the ways young speakers take up not only linguistic innovations with heavy borrowing from different popular culture genres, but any number of other multiple cultural genres that are pragmatically involved within their daily lives. One particular way in which this occurs is through parodic cultural mixing as these young adults produce exaggerated imitation of others’ styles for comic and humorous effect. These parodies serve not only to mock the original sources and create humour at others’ expense but also create lines of affiliation between and against different groups.

Linguistic data from popular culture has typically been overlooked in sociolinguistic literature because the data are neither ‘spontaneous’ nor ‘naturally occurring’, but instead represent a type of edited creative linguistic production. Recent attention toward sociolinguistic performance highlights the importance of linguistic data from popular culture and ways that they illustrate attitudes toward linguistic stereotypes, model iconic language behaviours, and predict linguistic innovation and changing social norms. The chapter outlines a methodological framework (and justification) for treating ‘popular culture’ as multi-modal and multilingual sites for linguistic analysis. The framework will argue in favour of two dimensions of analysis of popular culture: 1) a horizontal analysis that examines influences across different cultures, languages, nations and regions, and 2) a vertical analysis that examines influence across different popular culture genres, including, but not limited to, television/radio, cinema, music, art (e.g. comics), advertising, etc. Finally, the chapter will examine various uses of English within popular cultures of societies that are not monolingual English-speaking societies and make generalizations about the role that English in this context functions.

Linguistic data from popular culture has typically been overlooked in sociolinguistic literature because the data are neither ‘spontaneous’ nor ‘naturally occurring’, but instead represent a type of edited creative linguistic production. Recent attention toward sociolinguistic performance highlights the importance of linguistic data from popular culture and ways that they illustrate attitudes toward linguistic stereotypes, model iconic language behaviours, and predict linguistic innovation and changing social norms. The chapter outlines a methodological framework (and justification) for treating ‘popular culture’ as multi-modal and multilingual sites for linguistic analysis. The framework will argue in favour of two dimensions of analysis of popular culture: 1) a horizontal analysis that examines influences across different cultures, languages, nations and regions, and 2) a vertical analysis that examines influence across different popular culture genres, including, but not limited to, television/radio, cinema, music, art (e.g. comics), advertising, etc. Finally, the chapter will examine various uses of English within popular cultures of societies that are not monolingual English-speaking societies and make generalizations about the role that English in this context functions.

Zoot(y), adj. [according to jazzman Zutty Singleton, the term was New Orleans patois for 'cute' (a suggested etym. differing from the one offered in 1943 quot., q.v.); some currency c. 1925-c. 1945, obs. since except historical; see also the much more widely current DAP, SHARP] Initially: see second 1946 quote; also, since c. 1935: see 1944 quot. 1943 New Yorker, 19 June, p. 14; As for the word 'zoot,' it is simply a corrupt form of 'suit.' 1946 The New Cab Calloway Hipster's Dictionary, s. v. zoot: overexaggerated as applied to clothes. 1946 Really the Blues, p. 311. Colored kids . . . work on their dungarees, pegging the legs till they're real sharp and zooty. - p. 376. zooty: stylish, fashionable. 1961 Down Beat, 13 Apr., p. 20. After World War II, like the clothing it described, the word zoot faded from use, except in satiric content - and as the nickname of a very great tenor player [i.e., Sims]. - Robert S. Gold, Jazz Talk We [pachucos] were a minority group of a minority group. So, in a way, we were challenging cops by being with two or three friends and dressing sharp. But in those days, I was prepared for any sacrifice to be able to dress the way I wanted to dress. I thought it looked sharp and neat, and it was the style. - Cesar Chavez, Autobiography of La Causa The interrelationships between black, Hispanic, and American popular culture are evident from an examination of the so-called riot that occurred in early June 1943 in Los Angeles. Such riots also took place elsewhere that year, but the first was in Southern California, where there were neither fatalities nor destruction of property - unlike in New York and Detroit; in Los Angeles, whites not only attacked and beat Mexican-Americans and blacks, but stripped from them their fashionable zootsuits. Finally, there was little retaliatory violence by the victims of racism, which was also a different pattern from eastern cities.(1) The zoot-suit was associated with black urban youth when it appeared on the scene around 1940. Malcolm X's autobiography recounted the importance of his first zoot-suit and suggested the style had racial connotations as the preferred choice of hip black men and entertainers. Youth of Mexican and Filipino descent were the prototypical wearers of the garb in Southern California, however. In other words, consideration of this aspect of black urban culture and clothing style revealed one of numerous instances of African-American influence upon Mexican-American, Filipino, and American popular culture; the jazz music and dances adopted by black and white teenagers also shaped popular culture among Mexican-American and Filipino youth, revealing African-American influences in areas of American culture where they are not expected or are not sufficiently acknowledged as evidence of the power and dynamism of black American culture.(2) By examining the Los Angeles dimension to the zoot suit phenomenon and the so-called riot, we can appreciate the extent to which the presence and acculturation of Mexican-Americans and Filipinos altered the usual black-white scenario, producing one that was more complex. Ideas about the zoot suit usually lack a strong historical and political dimension, and research on American history often has no popular culture dimension. Analysis of the Los Angeles zoot suit riot and journalists' and politicians' interpretations, and the outfit's connections with race relations, jazz music and dance, slang, and ideology, permit an understanding of the politics and social significance of what is often seen as trivial in itself - popular culture and its attendant styles. Zoot preceded the styles of the new music known as bebop by a few years, but both were a rebellion against accepted dress and musical styles and, moreover, they sometimes went beyond fashion and entertainment statements, embodying an intellectualized political position. …

"I’m a Modern Bride": On the Relationship between Marital Hegemony, Bridal Fictions, and Postfeminism

Reviewed by: Mystery, Violence, and Popular Culture James Deutsch Mystery, Violence, and Popular Culture. By John G. Cawelti. (Madison: University of Wisconsin/Popular Press, 2004. Pp. xiv + 410, acknowledgments, works cited, index.) John G. Cawelti, professor emeritus of English and humanities at the University of Kentucky, is no folklorist, but his pioneering work on genre and formula in popular culture should be of great interest to anyone who has ever looked for tale types or narrative motifs in folk literature. For instance, The Six-Gun Mystique (Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1970), Cawelti's structural and psychological study of the Western film and novel, was one of the first scholarly studies to analyze the popularity of this vital genre. Similarly, his book Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture (University of Chicago Press, 1976) is one of the best for understanding and interpreting the universal story types that are commonly found in popular film and fiction. Cawelti's latest contribution, Mystery, Violence, and Popular Culture, is a collection of twenty-five of his essays written between 1968 and 2003—most of them previously published in journals and anthologies. The volume is divided into four sections: "Evolving Views of Popular Culture," "The Role of Violence in Popular Culture," "Multiculturalism and Popular Culture," and "The Mystery of Mystery." The result is a very handy introduction—almost a "best of " Cawelti—that covers the author's wide-ranging scholarship on fiction, film, music, and television. Like other members of his generation, Cawelti (born in 1930) came to the study of popular culture and genres indirectly. His 1960 dissertation, "The Ideal of the Self-Made Man in Nineteenth Century America" (University of Iowa), included an analysis of Henry James; when a colleague at the University of Chicago suggested the application of Bakhtin to a particular text, Cawelti was perplexed. "Since the only Bactine I had ever heard of at that time was an over-the-counter antiseptic it struck me that this was a very strange comment, indeed" (p. 378). Fortunately, Cawelti quickly assimilated some of the new critical theories into his own work, most notably in The Six-Gun Mystique. One of the highlights of this volume for me is Cawelti's essay "Formulas and Genre Reconsidered Once Again," published here for the first time. Seeking to expand upon his previous work, particularly "The Concept of Formula in the Study of Popular Literature" (Journal of Popular Culture 3:381–90, 1969), Cawelti cooks up an intriguing analogy for the interrelationship of formula, convention, genre, and experience. He bases the analogy on the logic of recipes, ingredients, and culinary styles. Equally rewarding is Cawelti's essay "Generic Transformation in Recent American Films" (1979), in which the inversion of traditional genres in many 1970s films—such as Chinatown and Young Frankenstein—is explained by his idea of "a life cycle of genres" (p. 208). According to Cawelti, popular genres often "move from an initial period of articulation and discovery, through a phase of conscious self-awareness on the part of both creators and audiences, to a time when the generic patterns have become so well-known that people become tired of their predictability" (p. 208). Whether folk genres ever encounter this same process of "generic exhaustion" is a topic that might be profitably explored (p. 208), particularly with regard to some of the cycles of narrative jokes and riddle jokes collected by folklore scholars over the past half-century. Cawelti observes that formulas are important in popular culture because "they can serve as a [End Page 235] sort of shorthand for speeding up the communication between writer and reader" (p. 134). Similarly, folklorists who study epics, ballads, sermons, and other narrative texts may benefit from Cawelti's ideas in understanding how the formulaic helps to facilitate the artistic and dynamic process of communication among members of small groups. James Deutsch Smithsonian Institution Copyright © 2010 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

This paper proposes a methodology through which to examine the history of generic novels. It is an attempt to reconstruct publishing history using the internal evidence of the books themselves. A key assumption is that popular literature genres are constructed in and through the writings of individual authors who use the codes and conventions of the genre and perpetuate the genre, but who also contribute to modifying and changing the genre. The methodology is based on the view that in the area of popular culture producers of generic cultural products are themselves, at some level, already consumers of the generic cultural products. This means that in popular culture consumption is always a prerequisite of popular culture production. Northern Ireland Troubles thrillers will be used to illustrate the method. The Troubles thriller has been chosen as a generic formation through which to actualize the methodology because, based as it is on a material historical conflict, it is rich in ideological content and contested representational signs. To map out material instances of intertextuality, the method will employ analytical concepts drawn from semiotics, specifically, paradigms and syntagms, which have their origins in Saussurean linguistics.

<i>Dancing Revolution: Bodies, Space and Sound in American Cultural History</i>, by Christopher J. Smith

Although sociolinguists traditionally rejected data from popular culture, sociolinguists working within the world Englishes perspective have embraced the analysis of language from popular culture because it shows an interplay between endonorms and exonorms within speech communities. Theories of sociolinguistic performance (and especially stage performance) have justified the study of language in popular culture genres. These studies examine cultural and linguistic flows in the medium of English, and when linguistic forms flow from one Inner Circle pop culture to another Inner Circle culture, the authenticity of English is prioritised. In the Outer Circle there is divided attention to both the authority and the authenticity of English. When English flows to Expanding Circle pop cultures, the authority of the standard is maintained and studies of pop culture in the Expanding Circle usually emphasise bilingual creativity.

Popular culture presents new dimensions for cultural and social studies through several artistic products. Different themes and symbols in literature and movie studies provide fresh materials for cultural studies and literary criticism. The issue of violence in American popular culture, in particular, is depicted in many artistic works of fiction. This article focuses on the depiction of violence in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club (1996) and Sam Ismail’s television series Mr. Robot (2015). More specifically, it analyzes the depiction of violence in these two narratives through the myth of the vigilante, a theory developed by the American critic John Cawelti. To reach its final results, this article attempts first to investigate the reasons and origins of violence as caused by postmodern conditions. Second, it draws a conclusion on the development of violence in American popular culture by studying the evolution of the myth of the vigilante from Fight Club to Mr. Robot.

Violence in American Popular Culture: The Myth of the Vigilante in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club and Sam Ismail’s Mr. Robot

From Screen to Screen: Students’ Use of Popular Culture Genres in Multimodal Writing Assignments