Forms Of Popular Culture Research Articles

‘We Must Find a Way to Remember Them Too’: British Second World War Conscientious Objectors in Post-War Culture

This article examines the ways in which British Second World War conscientious objectors (COs) have been commemorated, memorialized, and represented since 1945. Despite comprising nearly 60 000 men, the CO is strikingly absent in both the popular narrative of the Second World War and official, institutional commemorations of the conflict. This is not true of their First World War counterpart. This is unsurprising: the Second World War CO is largely at odds with popular British conceptions of the war as a ‘just’ conflict. Nevertheless, a broad and diverse set of initiatives have been established to commemorate the CO. The CO also features in numerous forms of post-war popular culture, including fiction, films, television programmes, and plays. It is these disparate remembrance practices and representations that this article brings together to help us explore both the memory of wartime conscientious objection and the broader cultural legacies of the Second World War.

Adapting the Nigerian Architectural Educational Schools Curriculum Towards Global Competitiveness

Globalization refers to the increasing connectedness of nations and peoples around the world through trade, investment, travel, popular culture and other forms of interaction. Globalization through information technology has brought so many openings that are breaking down boundaries hitherto existing in the practice of architecture. To enhance his place in the global market, the Nigerian architect needs to improve his skills on information communication technology (ICT). This paper examines how ICT enhances the global relevance of the Nigerian architect. It also examines the effectiveness and deficiencies of the curriculum in the Nigeria Schools of architecture. The paper therefore advocates a review of the curriculum in the Nigerian Schools of architecture to position the Nigerian architect for global competitiveness.

Construction of New Female Image in Early Modern China - Review of <i>Performing China: Female Stars, Performance Culture, Visual Politics, 1910-1945 </i>by Huiling Zhou

The author of the book <i>Performing China: Female Stars, Performance Culture, Visual Politics, 1910-1945</i>, Huiling Zhou, through the method of careful cross-text reading of cultural and video data and the theory of performance cultural studies, studies the tortuous course of constructing new female images of Chinses women represented by female film stars in the early 1920s and 1930s. They are not only “theater actresses” on the screen, but also “social actresses” in social practice. In face of various social opinions, gossip and party comments at that time, early Chinese female stars found ways to release themselves in their screen roles and real lives in the real society. Their performances in the process of China’s modernization revealed the society’s conception of the country, urban scene and female image at that time. Hollywood’s influence on Chinese films in the 1930s was profound and extensive, from the portrayal of urban women in China to the demonstration of film marketing strategies. From the perspective of film performance, the author analyzes the process of cross-cultural communication and interaction between China and the United States in the 1930s, involving various aspects of film, literature, politics, painting and industry. The difficulty of reading this book lies in its strong theoretical nature. Then, the film documents and image data selected by the author in the early 1920s and 1930s are relatively unknown to many people today. The author’s cultural research method with visual as core of cross-cultural interaction research can make us have some new thinking about many popular cultural forms at present, and broaden our vision and thinking.

Popular Culture

Abstract Scholarship on the creation and circulation of forms of popular culture has always been concerned with questions of audiences and reception. Initial theorizations of audiences as overly credulous, easily swayed masses have long been significantly complicated to account for more active participation. One of the key drivers of this move of framing audiences from passive to active has been the emergence of the discipline of fandom studies. Today, the field is truly multidisciplinary, encompassing popular culture and media studies, literary studies, communication studies and psychology, marketing and tourism studies, amongst others. Additionally, while fan communities have always been transnational and transcultural, the explosion of cross-cultural phenomena like the Korean Hallyu Wave (the worldwide popularity of Korean media texts and celebrities) has brought renewed attention to the interconnected nature of the contemporary global mediascape. Even as it has expanded, one of the main challenges to the discipline has been criticism that it has overemphasized aspects of fan identity, such as gender identity and sexual orientation, while neglecting the role of race. This critique challenges the structure of the field, whereby certain critical genealogies, methodologies, and even fandoms themselves, are granted a canonical and universal status while others are seen as tertiary. This review of published works in popular culture studies focuses on studies of fandom that aim to break these silos, selecting three publications that address different aspects of today’s globalized fandom mediascape to underline the necessity for fandom scholars to expand their understanding of how these spaces are interconnected. Thematically, the review considers how these publications address and extend three core interests of fandom studies: 1. Digital Platforms and Politics; 2. Identity and Community; and 3. Transcultural Flows.

Laundry-on-Air: Cultural Intimacy and the Transnational Circulation of Popular Culture

Abstract TV shows and movies, as dominant forms of modern popular culture, often trigger domestic discussions, especially when dealing with sensitive and thorny issues in society. But what happens when these domestically-created cultural productions are globally circulated and consumed? In recent years, especially following the streaming revolution, there have been increasing numbers of national TV shows and films that are internationally distributed and broadcast. Focusing on the Israeli case, this article examines discursive responses to conflict-related TV shows and films that were created in Israel and are broadcast to an international audience. Situating these responses within International Relations constructivism and Social Psychology literature, we argue that the Israeli harsh and emotional response is a result of three dimensions related to these productions: (1) they deal with culturally intimate issues; (2) they expose Israeli vulnerabilities to outsiders; and (3) they are created by Israeli citizens, expected to align with group norms. In addition to bringing to the surface domestic identity debates, these internationally consumed cultural productions add another layer of ontological anxiety—the uncomfortable feeling associated with “airing the dirty laundry in public.”

Photographic Frames in the Westgate Mall Terror Attack Coverage

Literary studies have evolved over the past few decades to include popular culture fields as text. Proponents of this inclusion argue that songs, memes, tweets, local dialects, and slogans say as much about people and cultures as traditional texts – perhaps even more. The opinion is that, by over-relying on traditional text for literary fodder, scholars shut themselves off from current and relevant information about the rapidly evolving literary and cultural landscape. The disregard for popular culture also turns away a younger audience that seems to prefer a more informal approach to art and literature. Thus, the reading of popular cultures as text is forcing the literary field to re-evaluate the fundamental principles that define its work. Literary scholars have to rethink their traditional ideals of writing, reading, and teaching texts. Yet, there remains a reluctance to accept such informal forms of communication as memes and tweets as legitimate literature. Popular culture is not well regarded in literary studies and some stakeholders fear its classification as text could dilute the impact of the field. This paper investigates this trepidation by analyzing how reading popular culture fields as text impacts the identity of text in literary studies. Based on selected tenets of Literary and Cultural Studies (LCS) Research, particularly cultural literacy, this paper examines the legitimacy of different popular culture formats to determine if they hold enough value to warrant literary analysis. The author argues that many forms of popular culture deserve a closer look, especially through a literary lens, because they reveal the cultures, beliefs, and practices of their audience. He suggests that the incorporation of popular culture into literary studies offers many opportunities for growth and discovery but only if implemented diligently. Finally, this paper investigates why the literary field is reluctant to read popular cultures as text and how scholars can navigate this inclusion to create a more cohesive definition of text.

A Case Study of Digital Natives Using English Buzzword cue in Vocabulary Capacity in Second Language Acquisition in China: Challenges and Opportunities

In an age marked by rapid advancements in information technology and the widespread use of the Internet, the popularity of Internet buzzwords has become widespread and serves as one of the important forms of popular culture. However, there seems to be scant research on the relationship between popular Internet buzzwords and vocabulary capacity, especially the relationship between the use of Internet buzzwords and the vocabulary of English as a second language. To explore the relationship between the use of Internet buzzwords and English vocabulary capacity, this research will use a case study with 12 different categories of digital natives conducted through focus group interviews and semi-structured interviews to explore the use of specific Internet buzzword cue. The possible outcome is that different types of digital natives will have different views on the use of online buzzwords. Research may need to integrate the use of oral buzzwords in the context of offline to further demonstrate the relationship between the use of Internet buzzwords and the vocabulary of a second language, such as English. The research may shed light on the oral buzzword use in communication. This research focuses on how the specific English buzzword "cue" has developed into an Internet buzzword. Further, it discusses how similar Internet buzzwords have influenced the vocabulary aspects of English as a second language learning by digital natives. The study delves into the challenges faced by these learners and the opportunities presented by the use of such buzzwords in the language learning process". It is expected that this will shed light on the research aspect of internet buzzwords on language proficiency and further research on the impact of internet buzzwords in oral communication.

Curating Community behind Barbed Wire: Canadian Prisoner of War Art from the Second World War

Though often under-represented in the official and national narratives and in Canadian military historiography more broadly, the intimate and personal lived experiences of Canadian prisoners of war (POW) during the Second World War can be found in archives, photography collections, and collections of war art. In an attempt to see past the mythologised versions of POWs that appear in Hollywood films, best-selling monographs, and other forms of popular culture, it is through bits of ephemera—including wartime log books and the drawings carefully kept and sent home to loved ones along with handwritten letters—that the stories of non-combatant men and women who spent their war as POWs, can be told. Together, Canadian POWs created and curated community and fostered unconventional family ties, sometimes called “emotional communities”, through the collection and accumulation of drawings, illustrations, paintings, and other examples of war art on the pages of their wartime log books while living behind barbed wire. This article uncovers some of these stories, buried in the thousands of boxes in the George Metcalf Archival Collection—the textual archives—at the Canadian War Museum (CWM) in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

What Next for the ‘Text’? Popular Culture and Literature Today

Literary studies have evolved over the past few decades to include popular culture fields as text. Proponents of this inclusion argue that songs, memes, tweets, local dialects, and slogans say as much about people and cultures as traditional texts – perhaps even more. The opinion is that, by over-relying on traditional text for literary fodder, scholars shut themselves off from current and relevant information about the rapidly evolving literary and cultural landscape. The disregard for popular culture also turns away a younger audience that seems to prefer a more informal approach to art and literature. Thus, the reading of popular cultures as text is forcing the literary field to re-evaluate the fundamental principles that define its work. Literary scholars have to rethink their traditional ideals of writing, reading, and teaching texts. Yet, there remains a reluctance to accept such informal forms of communication as memes and tweets as legitimate literature. Popular culture is not well regarded in literary studies and some stakeholders fear its classification as text could dilute the impact of the field. This paper investigates this trepidation by analyzing how reading popular culture fields as text impacts the identity of text in literary studies. Based on selected tenets of Literary and Cultural Studies (LCS) Research, particularly cultural literacy, this paper examines the legitimacy of different popular culture formats to determine if they hold enough value to warrant literary analysis. The author argues that many forms of popular culture deserve a closer look, especially through a literary lens, because they reveal the cultures, beliefs, and practices of their audience. He suggests that the incorporation of popular culture into literary studies offers many opportunities for growth and discovery but only if implemented diligently. Finally, this paper investigates why the literary field is reluctant to read popular cultures as text and how scholars can navigate this inclusion to create a more cohesive definition of text.

Theory-building in the social, material and postdigital worlds of play: Participatory research and multimodal discourse analysis

This article is about using participatory research and multimodal discourse analysis to scaffold theory-building, with a focus on how children draw on their lifeworlds, folkloric imagination, and media experiences to generate meanings in, and through, their play. It draws on a tradition of research which employs a multimodal semiotic lens to analyse interaction and communication between social actors in combination with sociocultural theory to generate hypotheses about a phenomenon. The focus is on how multimodal discourse analysis operates when partnered in research designs with other interpretive constructs, drawn from sociocultural, socio-material and postdigital frames. Examples are featured from two research projects centred on children’s play, and the central argument here is that play, with its reference points in media, popular culture and traditional folkloric forms is a particular location for theory-building on the postdigital nature of contemporary lived experience.

美国左翼文学中的儿童教育叙事

Tillie Olsen was one of the famous left-wing female writers in the United States in the 1930s. Her novel Yonnondio: From the Thirties focuses on the marginalized group of coal miner families, especially young girls, and examines the impact of the lower-class cultural life on their growth. This work holds significant social significance. The novel showcases the influence of cultural activities such as school education, public libraries, and movies on the development of children, revealing the negative effects of the capitalist education system on working-class girls in terms of class and gender. On the other hand, popular cultural forms like movies provide a certain liberating space. The protagonist in the novel gradually grows under the complex influence of various ideologies and begins to independently choose cultural forms that align with her own interests, reflecting the author’s affirmation of the subjectivity and agency of children from working-class families.

(Post)Yugoslavian Music Press in Transition

The development of the Internet and digital technologies has influenced the ever- greater migrations of printed content to the digital sphere (blogs, online media, Internet portals, social networks), which has also brought with itself changes in readers’ habits and in the concept and format of texts as wells. Music press is no exception in that respect. In the context of South European states, these processes coincide with the period of political, social, cultural and economic transition, giving rise to the development of numerous regional and local specific forms of popular culture. The existence of the SFRY as a shared state enabled the creation of an authentic cultural space, which continued to develop even after its disintegration. This paper endeavors to shed light on one segment of that local authenticity through an analysis of music press. The aim the authors of this paper aspire to achieve is the presentation of the development path of the printed media in the first place inthe Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, then in Serbia, as well as the reconstructions of the modality of the transformation of this media in the transition period from an anthropological perspective. The wish is to identify the perception and significance of music as a local culturalphenomenon through the qualitative analysis of the archival material and the available Internet sources as well, then to trace the cultural changes that have been going on over time as a result of global and local social and cultural turmoil. We do not refer to press only as the medium which has an informative role, but rather as the medium that reflects the local community’s attitudes, simultaneously constructing narratives on popular culture that are incorporated in our everyday life.

The Rise of a “Fudan Goddess”: Cultural Entrepreneurship in China Between Moral Education and Popular Culture

This article investigates the trajectory of Chen Guo, a successful moral educator who became an internet celebrity and bestselling author of self-help books thanks to the originality of her teaching methods. The article reveals that Chen Guo's contributions as a state teacher and as a popular cultural producer, rather than being at odds with each other, are to a very large extent unified, as she has managed to create a moralising but depoliticised approach to teaching which encourages personal self-improvement and social awareness by drawing from the principles and practices of self-help literature. Chen Guo's career and work thus offer a unique case to investigate the interactions and the intersections between official and popular culture in contemporary China, in particular, by observing how the current party-state's ideological apparatuses incorporate the creative use of popular cultural forms in their message with the aim of enhancing the efficacy of the official ideological education.

Analysis on the Influence of Fandom Culture on Contemporary Young People and Countermeasures

This study aims to explore the influence of star-chasing culture on young people and corresponding strategies. To achieve this goal, a discussion on fan culture was carried out, and the comprehensive impact of popular culture on people's daily social life was studied as economic globalization, social informatization, and cultural diversification deepened. The star effect and the worship of star idols, as important forms of popular culture and carriers of dissemination, popularize popular culture and become an essential force. The worship of star idols, as a part of popular culture, promotes the connection and development between idols and fans, fans and fan culture, gradually entering the public's view. With the rapid development of new media, supported by capital and traffic, the youth lacks discernment, and the traditional fan culture has upgraded to a fan circle culture, which has caused many negative effects on teenagers, such as wasting time and energy, influencing personal cognition, leading to deviation in consumer attitudes, and hindering the formation of correct moral concepts. Fan circle culture not only brings negative influences but also brings psychological comfort to fans. Idols create a perfect image that fans love and transmit positive energy to them. Some fans take idols as examples and motivate themselves to become better people.

Contemporary Media Art Performance under the Visual Threshold of Interpretation

Purpose - Introduce contemporary media art, study the virtual representation forms of contemporary media art, and deeply explore the artistic meanings expressed by their forms of expression.
 Design/Methodology/Approach - Based on the characteristics of artistic expression such as innovation and interactivity, this article applies the three elements of understanding, interpretation, and application in hermeneutics theory to interpret multimedia art works.
 Findings - This article analyzes contemporary media art works from three dimensions of hermeneutics: understanding, interpretation, and application. The conclusion is that artists express their desire for balance and wisdom, their perception of the world's spiritual state through multimedia forms, and also enable readers to associate and make independent judgments about the works, thereby exploring their own spiritual world and perceptual experience. At the same time, participants themselves are also creating meaning, interpreting value, completing perception, determining intention, and jointly explaining the humanistic value and responsibility of the work with the artist.
 Research Implications - The study of cultural communication at the visual level plays an important role in the development of social information. Multimedia image visual art has been integrated into daily aesthetic life in the form of popular culture, becoming the most important carrier for exploring artistic life. This article combines theory and practice, using typical art cases for specific analysis, in order to better apply contemporary multimedia art theory to artistic creation, and provide fresh materials and beneficial attempts for the research of digital media art application theory.

Young people and gambling in sub-Saharan Africa: towards a critical research agenda

Recent decades have seen gambling become a highly lucrative industry across sub-Saharan Africa. Fuelled by the democratisation of access to digital finance and internet technologies, this gambling boom has been concentrated in Africa’s urban economies, where expanding youth populations are increasingly connected to global circuits of sport, popular culture and speculative forms of consumption. This has engendered growing interest in gambling as a distinct and emerging field of academic enquiry across sub-Saharan Africa. To date, psychiatric, epidemiological and behavioural sciences have provided the dominant frame for measuring the extent of ‘problem gambling’ and addiction, but there remains the need to expand and diversify the field to encompass more critical and interdisciplinary approaches that recognise gambling as a densely significant social and cultural phenomenon. This article aims to provide a point of departure for a critical research agenda on the differentiated impacts of gambling on young people and their communities across the continent.

Ecocide and Khattam-Shud

Abstract In the spirit of green cultural criminology, which considers the way(s) in which environmental crime, harm, and disaster are constructed, represented, and envisioned by the news media and in popular cultural forms, and narrative criminology, which explores how stories can influence (promote, curb, prevent, or resist) action, including harmful action, this provisional article seeks to intercede (although, perhaps, “intervene,” in the McGregorian sense, is more accurate) in the debate, of sorts, between the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh and the British critic, editor, and theorist Mark Bould. Whereas Ghosh, in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), laments the failure of contemporary literature to engage with climate change, Bould, in The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture (2021), considers whether all stories might be stories about climate change. Taking Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) as an example, this article argues that this phantasmagorical tale about the problems of censorship could be applied to and analyzed in the context of climate change. The article considers how we might tell (more, better) stories of climate change and concludes by calling for a marshalling of diverse stories to reflect the most pressing issue of our time.

Грани образа Ганнибала Лектора (на примере сериала «Ганнибал»). Часть 1

In the article, the author explores the history of creation and development of the media franchise which revolves around the life of a fictional extravagant and in his own way genius serial killer and cannibal, Hannibal Lecter. The author of the study attempts to systematize the movies and series of the Hannibal universe, with a particular focus on the Hannibal TV series (2013–2015). The focus specifically on a TV series is due to the fact that such works have become a significant form of popular culture. The popular images that are formed within the context of a TV series are based on topical and meaningful categories of culture. This makes contemporary TV series, such as Hannibal, an influential tool for forcing the viewer to reflect on important issues. In this way, TV series today are able to influence cultural dynamics. On the other hand, as the author of the article shows on the example of Hannibal, the material of such media products is also a promising source for researching the processes and transformations taking place in society and identifying topical problems and challenges. The present study aims to identify various aspects of the complex and controversial personality of Hannibal in the context of contemporary culture. To achieve this purpose, the author, on the one hand, compares the image of the main character with the real and fictional characters of popular culture, and on the other hand, analyses several key categories of culture, including power, art and others, which all together allows defining the features of Hannibal’s personality within the coordinate system of culture.

Are cinema, TV and football recommended for Muslims? The Millî Görüş movement’s view on popular culture

This article charts changes in the views towards popular culture of the most prominent Turkish-Islamist movement that operated in the late twentieth century, the Millî Görüş (‘The National Outlook’), a movement that altered Turkey’s history and brought up its current Islamist leader – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Through a unique and intensive analysis of Millî Görüş texts and documents, the article follows significant changes in Millî Görüş discourse regarding three forms of popular culture – cinema, television, and spectator sports – from the 1970s – when these forms of popular culture were warned against – to the 1990s – when the movement recommended engaging with such culture. This article argues that these changes reflect a greater change in the movement’s views on how Muslims should live their lives. Lastly, the paper suggests these changes may have occurred due to three main reasons: (1) deciding strategically to not resist the growing availability and appeal of popular culture; (2) the movement’s wish to win the Turkish elections, which required them to appeal also to less pious Turks, and (3) the gradual appearance of alternative, ‘Islamic’ popular culture in Turkey – one which the Millî Görüş felt comfortable to promote.

Sport in a Populist Age

Abstract Sport, like all popular cultural forms, is a contested terrain. However, and largely due to its peculiar emotive resonance, sport is perhaps more susceptible to appropriation by political entities, of whatever inflection. During the last twenty years, and in various national settings, populist forms of leadership and governance have come to the fore, most notably among parties and people on the right of the political spectrum. Sport has thus become a vehicle through which such right-leaning populist rhetorics, discourses, and performances have served explicit political ends. Our current populist age, synonymous with—but not singularly reducible to—the inflammatory Trump presidency, is marked by distinctive articulations of political populism within, and through, the realm of sport. This special issue explores the socio-historic forces responsible for the contemporaneous generative relations linking sport, physical culture, and populist politics. This introductory essay offers a conceptual grounding of populism, explicates the important distinction between left and right iterations of populism, and provides a brief overview of the articles in this issue. The articles explore issues of ethnonationalism, race and racism, homonationalism, Trump and football, fascism and sport, and regional iterations of sport and populism (e.g., Europe and Latin America). As a collection, the special issue provides a touchstone for the contemporary and historical study of sport and populism.