Popular Culture Media Research Articles

Pokémon GO as distributed imagination

The appeal of Pokémon GO is in large part due to the game’s introduction of locative augmented reality to popular media culture, as players’ mobile phones summon virtual creatures and overlay them on the immediate environment. The significance of this novel device (within popular children’s culture at least) is open to question however. The workings of imagination in children’s lives have always populated mundane experience with nonactual actions and characters, and these processes have been mechanized and monetized by commercial children’s culture over decades, not least in the transmedia system of Pokémon itself. What can critical attention to imagination and technology in pre- and postdigital play tell us about the hybrid realities of Pokémon GO today?

Allure of the Abroad: Tiffany & Co., Its Cultural Influence, and Consumers

Allure of the Abroad: Tiffany & Co., Its Cultural Influence, and Consumers

Consumer Transformation: Cosmetic Surgery as the Expression of Consumer Freedom or as a Marketing Imperative?

McCracken’s analysis of identity construction in contemporary culture sees the drive to transform oneself as the expression of consumer agency and individual freedom. Transformation is accessible through cosmetic surgery, enabling consumers with funds to purchase a ‘whole new me’. This consumer is an active participant in the transformation process, not content with observing beauty but actively engaged in the creative construction of new improved selves. In doing so, they have “mastered the codes of cultural production” making themselves “co-creators in the culture they consume” (McCracken xvi). An alternative and far less positive narrative of consumer transformation focuses on the pervasive influence of promotion on individual identity. Marketing and promotion constructs a deficiency in the lives of consumers which, marketers imply, can be remedied by the purchase of cosmetic surgery. Rather than being powerful co-creators of their own fluid identity, consumers are constructed as victims of a promotional culture which valorises external values and ‘the new’ and preys on consumer vulnerabilities (Fatah 1). In this paper I draw on consumer blogs, industry webpages and regulatory and professional publications to explore the tensions between these competing narratives of bodily transformation. In doing so, I argue that there is an inherent paradox in the discourse of consumer transformation which advocates consumer freedom and creativity yet limits these freedoms to certain forms of ideal beauty which can be marketed by the promotional industries.

Cultural Studies Methodologies and Narrative Family Therapy: Therapeutic Conversations About Pop Culture.

Therapists recognize that popular media culture is an influential force that shapes identities and relationships in contemporary society. Indeed, people have serious relationships with the commodities and practices that emerge from pop culture. However, they often lack the conceptual and conversational resources to engage meaningfully with clients about pop culture's influence in their lives. Cultural studies is introduced as an interdisciplinary approach that provides frameworks for both theory and practice that position therapists and clients to critically examine the role of pop culture in their lives. Cultural studies and narrative therapy are discussed as praxis allies that share a populist political intention and counter-hegemonic discursive practices. The integration of cultural studies methodologies into narrative therapy practice with a parent and her teenage daughter is illustrated through a case vignette.

Mediatization and the changing authority of religion

Both mass media and social network media have become important sources of information and experiences about religion. The mediatization of religion challenges the authority of existing religious organizations at the same time as various media allow for new forms of religious beliefs and practices to appear. Media provide a backdrop of 'banal religion', comprized of a bricolage of representations and practices without any necessary connection to specific, organized forms of religion. Max Weber's typology of authority may provide a partial understanding of the changing authority of religion in contemporary society, but the media also allow other forms of authority to emerge. In a mediatized environment, religious legitimacy is not only produced by means of tradition and charisma but also rests upon voluntary acceptance by the individual and references to popular media culture.

Television as Popular Culture Media and Parental Attention and Their Correlation to the Students’ Motivation to Choose Major

Television as Popular Culture Media and Parental Attention and Their Correlation to the Students’ Motivation to Choose Major

@GaddafisGhost: on the popular memoro-politics of a dead dictator

Qaddafi was widely lampooned in American popular culture before his death. This paper addresses this, together with representations after his death on Twitter and other social media sites, to explore the figure of the ‘dead dictator.’ It argues that the display of the gruesome body of a ‘dead dictator’ is enabled by the material and discursive construction of ‘dictators’ in contemporary narratives, which posit them as easily deposed with Western assistance and internal protests, thereby legitimating the triumph of democracy. It explores these constructions via a comprehensive analysis of Twitter accounts satirizing Qaddafi, which invoke a particular audience that ‘gets the joke.’ In this instance, jokes about Qaddafi’s death circulated in popular culture media enabled the display of his dead body, together constructing the figure of the dead dictator for a Western audience marked by being part of the in-group who were preconditioned to assume dictatorship as a form of political deviance. The paper seeks to contribute to literature on visual culture and visual politics by exploring the popular construction of memorial narratives, and to contribute a theorization that blends materiality and visuality by looking at the dead body and the way it is visually reproduced.

Girl power's last chance? Tavi Gevinson, feminism, and popular media culture

This paper focuses on Tavi Gevinson, the teenage fashion blogger-turned-editor in chief of the online magazine Rookie, as a case study with which to interrogate the production and circulation of feminist politics within a ‘post-girl power’ era. Drawing on theories of performativity, I employ a discursive and ideological textual analysis of Gevinson's self-produced media and media coverage to map how she uses the opportunities afforded by digital media to rearticulate narratives of ‘girl power’ and perform a feminist girlhood subjectivity that makes feminism accessible to her many readers. While I argue that Gevinson's ability to do so is positive and demonstrates the porous nature of postfeminist media culture, I also suggest that we must be critical of the ways in which her feminism functions as part of her self brand that reproduces feminism as white, middle-class, and ‘hip’. Thus, I conclude by questioning a larger cultural trend towards the branding of feminism and advocating the need for an intersectional approach to understanding the resurgence of feminism within contemporary popular media culture.

Indian-Styled Mascots, Masculinity, and the Manipulated Indian Body: Chief Illiniwek and the Embodiment of Tradition

In the creation and use of ethnicized sports team mascots such as those based on notions of the constructed idealized Indianness of Native Americans, white male identity is coupled to their use and presentation. From historical to contemporary contexts of such use, the body of the Indianized other as mascot becomes the contested site for these cultural appropriations. The manipulated body of the Indian mascot is presented for the public gaze in stark contrast to the reality of Native American lives and realities. The consumptive aspects of these public displays reinforce stereotypes grounded in historical experiences based on power and hierarchy by white males through popular culture media and texts. As a product of colonialized interactions, Indian mascots are presented as the preferred type of Indian allowed for public display rather than the reality of indigenous peoples such as Native Americans.

Інтерпретаційний портрет Тараса Шевченка у форматі сучасної медіа-культури

We are talking about a kind of “embodiment” of the image of a Ukrainian classic in modern media text. We are considering examples of contemporary popular media culture, transforming the image of Taras Shevchenko. Advertising is one of the genres of modern mass culture that actively reformats literature, including and Shevchenko’s canon. For the most part, Shevchenko’s image is embodied in the so-called social advertising. Its purpose and objective is to proclaim and strengthen moral, ethical, aesthetic values of the Ukrainian people through the image of Kobzar. It is symptomatic that the next input of Taras Shevchenko’s image in the socio-political context takes place at the time of the Orange Revolution and during Euromaidan. This update is based primarily on harmony of Kobzar’s value orientations with those of modern Ukrainian society: fellowship, freedom, patriotism – these are the key programs upon which the dialogue of generations is build. The image of the classic is embodied in various forms of popular media culture, actualizing a kind of dialogue with the classic via language of the recipient. The embodiment of Taras Shevchenko’s image in the new art forms actively takes place in urban literary topos. A new form of modern pop art, which is called for embodying the image of the classic, is the so-called digital painting. A whole block of modern media texts is being created under the laws of the postmodern game with program irony, parody and pastiche. Another kind of transfer of classical paradigm through the media language is the creation of literary works based on original literary works (fanfic). Members of Taras Shevchenko’s fandom diversely reassess Kobzar’s image as a personality. The examples considered here motivate the modern receptive “Shevchenko’s portrait”. Numerous examples of popular literature through the game, intertextual and intermedial techniques, parody and others involved in the creation of a new myth. This myth can be called „Our Shevchenko”, it becomes a sign and evidence of continuous dialogue between classics and the present.

From filth-ghost to Khmer-witch: Phi Krasue’s changing cinematic construction and its symbolism

Abstract Depicted as a floating woman’s head with drawn out and bloody entrails dangling beneath it, phi krasue is one of the most iconic uncanny creatures of Thai horror cinema. However, despite its position as one of Thailand’s most striking and well-known phi, there is very little research investigating this specific phenomenon. This is remarkable given the commonality of encounters with this uncanny being in ‘real life’ and the continuous presence of its ghostly images in popular cultural media. Relating empirical data gathered during anthropological fieldwork in a rural community of Thailand’s lower north-east to the analysis of two Thai ghost films that take this ghostly image as their main subject and narrative force this article argues that the knowledge of vernacular ghostlore is essential to decipher the cinematic representations’ full symbolism. Thai ghost films are produced for the ‘knowing spectator’ who has implicit knowledge of the cultural logics structuring ghostly classification in contemporary Thailand. This embodied knowledge allows Thai audiences to make sense of phi krasue’s ghostly image despite its cinematic transformation from ‘Filth Ghost’ to ‘Khmer Witch’. Based on Kristeva’s theory of abjection I will show that Thai audiences continue to see phi krasue first and foremost as uncanny ‘matter out of place’.

Narratives of second language identity amongst young English learners in Hong Kong

This article reports on an exploratory study responding to the problem of understanding how young learners position themselves as speakers of a foreign language. A group of 24 Hong Kong primary-school children (ages 10–12) who are in the process of simultaneously learning English and developing narratives of identities as English speakers, participated in a photo-elicitation project. Two distinct narratives of identity were found. ‘Cosmopolitans’ seemed to draw on multiple resources, largely based on their access to the social and economic benefits of using a great variety of English learning opportunities and popular culture media. ‘Pragmatists’ had fewer resources and were more uncertain about their future learning opportunities. This study demonstrates the importance of considering how educational policy, cultural values, and distribution of resources may impact on young learners studying in similar contexts. Implications are explored and suggestions made for ways teachers can support and foster identity development.

‘The Great Australian Loneliness’: On Writing an Inter-Asian Biography of Ernestine Hill

The Great Australian Loneliness (1937) is a famous book of travel reportage by Ernestine Hill (1899–1972), a key figure in the mid-twentieth century shaping of popular media culture in Australia. Through her journalism she disseminated debate about the great public issues of her day: the status of Aboriginal peoples, immigration from Asia and the state’s role in national development. In this paper, I take the White Australian ‘loneliness’ her title invokes as a methodological challenge to situate both her life and the ethnically diverse sociability she actually described in an inter-Asian framework of analysis capable of unsettling those bonds between ethnicity and nationality that many twentieth-century writers worked so hard to secure. In the process, I argue for an ‘Australian Asian’ approach to cultural history.

Demotic or Demonic? Race, Class and Gender in ‘Gypsy’ Reality TV

An intriguing shift in the public interest of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller minorities has been the rise of the ‘Gypsy’ reality TV star in shows across Europe (‘Gypsy’ is the word most often used in popular media culture). The latest phenomenon to hit the UK has been the Channel 4 series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings (Firecracker Films, Channel 4, 2010–2013), a flamboyant production that has garnered both huge audience shares and fierce criticism, with commentators berating its narrow, sensationalist focus. Drawing on both specialized literature on Roma minorities and current sociological debates on reality TV formats, this article raises questions about how the politics of the ‘demotic turn’ of such formats (as noted by Turner in 2004) can lean towards the demonic through emphasizing such groups as spectacular, extraordinary and above all, negatively different. Furthermore, this article shows how the series not only reproduces old stereotypes of Gypsies and Travellers as different, ethnicized others but is also heavily embroiled in UK gender and class discourses. Whilst the series claims to be a unique insight into a marginalized community, this close analysis discusses the wider politics within which it is embedded and how such representations can both popularize and undermine marginalized or minority groups.

“Weather Girls” on the Big Screen: Stereotypes, Sex Appeal, and Science

Women currently in the broadcasting meteorology field have dealt with—and continue to deal with—restrictive stereotypes based on the public's perception of their physical appearance and intelligence, largely stemming from the “weather girl” stereotype developed in the 1950s. This sexist stereotype is best seen and often exaggerated in cinematic films and television shows; however, the public's ability to distinguish the truthful and fictitious aspects of these stereotypes is important because these stereotypes limit the level of trust established between female weathercasters and viewers while consequently impeding the public response to dangerous weather situations. This study will evaluate the origin of the weather girl stereotype associated with female broadcast meteorologists throughout history and use this information to further understand the representation of women weathercasters in several films and television episodes, in order to determine if the weather girl stereotype is further perpetrated in popular cultural media. The study found that these films and episodes actually serve to diminish the role of female weathercasters by reducing them to nothing more than a weather girl.

Reading self‐help literature inRussia: governmentality, psychology and subjectivity

Self-help has become a booming business over the past decades and an increasingly visible part of popular media culture worldwide. The paper analyzes the arrival and effects of this cultural technology in post-Soviet Russia after more than seventy years of socialism. It examines how Russians are engaging with popular psychology self-help as a technology of the self and how they are making it meaningful in their lives. Drawing on a set of one-to-one and focus group interviews conducted with self-help readers, it examines how these individuals negotiate the new ethics and the normative models of personhood put forward by the self-help genre. It argues that popular psychology has offered a new language for making sense of the self and the social world, and highlights how the readers critically engage with the normalizing power of popular psychology by drawing on a number of local historically sedimented discourses.

New Heroines of Labour: Domesticating Post-feminism and Neoliberal Capitalism in Russia.

In recent years, post-feminism has become an important element of popular media culture and the object of feminist cultural critique. This article explores how post-feminism is domesticated in Russia through popular self-help literature aimed at a female audience. Drawing on a close reading of self-help texts by three best-selling Russian authors, the article examines how post-feminism is made intelligible to the Russian audience and how it articulates with other symbolic frameworks. It identifies labour as a key trope through which post-feminism is domesticated and argues that the texts invite women to invest time and energy in the labour of personality, the labour of femininity and the labour of sexuality in order to become ‘valuable subjects’. The article demonstrates that the domestication of post-feminism also involves the domestication of neoliberal capitalism in Russia, and highlights how popular psychology, neoliberal capitalism and post-feminism are symbiotically related.

Does Doing Media Violence Research Make One Aggressive?

Does Doing Media Violence Research Make One Aggressive?

Digital Seriality: On the Serial Aesthetics and Practice of Digital Games

In this paper we are concerned to outline a set of perspectives, methods, and theories with which to approach the seriality of digital games and game cultures – i.e. the aesthetic forms and cultural practices of game-related serialization, which we see unfolding against (and, in fact, as a privileged mediator of) the broader background of medial and socio-cultural transformations taking place in the wake of popular media culture’s digitalization. Seriality, we contend, is a central and multifaceted but largely neglected dimension of popular computer and video games. Seriality is a factor not only in explicitly marked game series (with their sequels, prequels, remakes, and other types of continuation), but also within games themselves (e.g. in their formal-structural constitution as an iterative series of “levels” or “worlds”) as well as on the level of transmedial relations between games and other media (e.g. expansive serializations of narrative worlds across the media of comics, film, television, and games, etc.). Particularly with respect to processes of temporal “collapse” or “synchronization” that, in the current age of digitization and media convergence, are challenging the temporal dimensions and developmental logics of pre-digital seriality (e.g. because once successively appearing series installments are increasingly available now for immediate, repeated, and non-linear consumption), computer games are eminently suited for an exemplary investigation of a specifically digital type of seriality. In the following, we look at serialization processes in digital games and game series and seek to understand how they relate to digital-era transformations of temporally-serially structured experiences and identifications on the part of historically situated actors. These transformations range from the microtemporal scale of individual players’ encounters with algorithmic computation processes (the speed of which escapes direct human perception and is measurable only by technological means) all the way up to the macrotemporal (more properly “historical”) level of collective brokerings of political, cultural, and social identities in the digital age. To account for this multi-layered complexity, we argue for a decidedly interdisciplinary approach, combining media-aesthetic and media-philosophical perspectives with the resources of discourse analysis and cultural history. We approach the seriality of digital games both in terms of textual and aesthetic forms as well as in the broader context of serialized game cultures and popular culture at large.

›WALLPAPER ART‹

This paper attempts an aesthetic positioning of the superficial medium ›wallpaper‹. The first part argues that the design of wallpapers in 1960’s Pop Art is no marginal phenomenon, this medium indeed accomplishes the demands and standards of art pop prior to all other mediums. This includes the question why the design of wallpapers has been a provocation and even still is, if a genuine aesthetic aspiration is pronounced. The mechanisms of exclusion are therefore, in the second part, located in the late eighteenth century, exactly the time when both aesthetics and wallpapers went into serial production. An examination of the aesthetic of pure form and Kant’s remarks on the artistic qualities of wall decoration makes clear that the exclusion of wallpaper from the sphere of art in the narrow sense (and thus the establishing of the dichotomy between auratic art and popular design) get caused by the following discursive guidelines: substance, originality, and invisibilisation of production. They prevent that mechanically reproduced forms on wallpapers can come into focus of aesthetic reflection even after the » Critique of Judgement«. Conversely, they are the reason for the fact that wallpapers become a (too often undervalued) leading medium of popular culture. This exclusion or rather the separation between pure form with aesthetic dignity and popular ornament will be exemplarily illustrated by Schiller’s letters and works. ---------- URN: urn:nbn:de:hbz:6:3-20140314183