Popular Culture Discourse Research Articles

Witchcraft

What explains the social power of music in the United States today? What allows Americans to invoke it as the cause of antisocial violence, as well as of personal expressivity? This essay contemplates the peculiar American invention of a musical culture defined by generation, which has political force without being properly political. It suggests that this music has come to play the part assigned to witchcraft in many other societies, bearing within itself the capacity to transform individualism into antisociality, alienation into destruction, desire into violence. It can do so because it opens anew the gap in language between meaning and force. Tracing the history of music in the aftermath of World War I, from the Beatles to Marilyn Manson, Frank Sinatra to santana, and following the popular cultural discourses that both invoked and strove to contain magic, the essay suggests that America remains possessed by the idea of witchcraft.

What can we say about substance use? Dominant discourses and narratives emergent from Australian media

Discourses are conceptualised as context-specific frameworks that constrain what can be presented as rational when considering psychoactive substances. Given the implications of this for Australian policy debate and development, research and health promotion, an integrative analysis explored the nature of the dominant discourses as they pertain to substance use. Newspaper articles spanning a 12-month period (April 2005–2006) were analysed with the analysis triangulated with visual media and newspapers from 5-years prior. We conclude that within Australia, psychoactive substance use is framed within the dominant discourses of medicine, morality, law, economics, politics and popular culture. The linguistic landscape circumscribed by each discourse is described and the power dynamics underpinning the maintenance of the discourses considered, with each discursive framework shown to delineate unique subject positions that define the numerous individuals concerned with substance use issues (e.g. substance users, politicians, medical experts, etc.).

Still Killing Mockingbirds: Narratives of Race and Innocence in Hollywood’s Depiction of the White Messiah Lawyer

Through a narrative analysis of movies confronting issues of race and racism in the post-civil rights era, we suggest that the movie To Kill a Mockingbird ushered in a new genre for movies about race which presented an image of a white male hero, or perhaps savior, for the black community. We suggest that this genre outlasted the era of the Civil Rights Movement and continues to impact popular cultural discourses about race in post-civil rights America. Post-civil rights films share the central elements of the anti-racist white male hero genre, but they also provide a plot twist that simultaneously highlights the racial innocence of the central characters and reinforces the ideology of liberal individualism. Reading these films within their broader historical context, we show how the innocence of these characters reflects not only the recent neo-conservative emphasis on “color blindness,” but presents a cinematic analogue to the anti-affirmative action narrative of the innocent white victim.

The Mythical Frontier, the Mexican Revolution, and the Press: An Imperial Subplot

Abstract: The frontier myth has served as America's secular creation story. As a result, it surfaces widely in popular culture and political discourse. It also resonates in news coverage. This paper explores how the American press framed the Mexican Revolution as a mythical frontier narrative by examining depictions of revolutionary Francisco “Pancho” Villa. The news story that emerges bears close resemblance to the frontier thesis, as articulated by historian Frederick Jackson Turner.

The Theatrical Politics of Chicana/Chicano Identity: from Valdez to Moraga

Critical opinion over the role of popular culture in relation to ethnic and cultural identity is deeply divided. In this essay, Elizabeth Jacobs explores the dynamics of this relationship in the works of two leading Mexican American playwrights. Luis Valdez was a founding member of El Teatro Campesino (Farmworkers' Theatre) in California during the 1960s. Originally formed as a resistance theatre, its purpose was to support the Farmworkers' Union in its unionization struggle. By the early 1970s Valdez and the Teatro Campesino were moving in a different direction, and with Zoot Suit (1974) he offered a critique of the race riots that erupted in East Los Angeles during the summer of 1943, the subsequent lack of reasonable judicial process, and the media misrepresentation of events. Valdez used setting, music, slang, and dress code among other devices to construct a sense of identity and ethnic solidarity. This provided a strong voice for the Chicano group, but at the same time a particular gendered hierarchy also distinguished his aesthetic. Cherríe Moraga's work provides a balanced opposition to that of Valdez. Giving up the Ghost (1984) helped to change the direction of Chicano theatre both in terms of its performativity and its strategies of representation. Elizabeth Jacobs explores how Moraga redefines both the culturally determined characterization of identity presented by Valdez and the media representation of women. She also utilizes theatrical space as a platform for a reassertion of ethnicity, allowing for the innovation of a split subjectivity and radical lesbian desire. Giving up the Ghost, Jacobs argues, provides a trenchant critique of communal and popular culture discourses as well as a redefinition of existing identity politics.

Degrees of Separation

This autoethnographic text invites readers into identity work at the interstices of growing up working class and becoming an academic. Influenced by mystory scholarship, the author has crafted a performance-oriented “ourstory” that blends academic, personal, biographical, and popular culture discourses. Following an introduction, the author presents four scenes chronicling her own and one research participant's moments from precollege through present day. The text uses a wideangle lens to view the social dimensions of being a first-generation college student and academic. In proximate existential moments, readers also move inward, being exposed to two vulnerable, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory “selves-in-process.” A critical text reflecting the belief that the ethnographic, aesthetic, and political can never be neatly separated, it seeks to provoke us to deconstruct the degrees of separation between private troubles and public issues.

Prison Decayed: Cinematic Penal Discourse and Populism 1995–2005

The increased populist and punitive turn in criminal justice policy in the United Kingdom over recent years has led to punishment becoming politicised, harsher and more ostentatious. The role of media and popular culture discourses of prison is rarely examined in this account. Adopting a Foucauldian discourse analysis of prison films released over the past 10 years, this article explores the prison film as one important element of the discursive regime. It seeks to investigate what representational practices are at work, how they limit the meaning of prison and prisoners, and how this may contribute to debates about the nature and aim of prison in contemporary society. It argues that several discursive practices exist in cinematic representations of the incarceration that strengthen support for the use of prison. The explicit and recurring depiction of violence in most prison films over the past 10 years, while appearing to offer evidence for prison reform, does the opposite. This paper suggests that discourses around the futility and inhumanity of incarceration are scant, replaced by scenes of prison violence; rape and death appear, which appear to exist purely for the pleasure of the spectator: a generic feature of the prison film. Secondly, prisoners are largely constructed as an inhuman other: a danger to society and deserving of harsh punishment. Consequently, the discursive regime of prison in cinema over the past decade constructs prison as not only necessary, but as the only process for crime control and reduction.

“Teena Goes to Market”: Seventeen Magazine and the Early Construction of the Teen Girl (As) Consumer

And this was really a time, it was like discovering a whole new country. Because there was no awareness -not only of teenagers -but there was no awareness of girls, there was no awareness of how they dressed, or clothes they needed. There wasn't even anyone producing clothes for this age group. There was no cosmetics being created for this age group. So it's hard to believe it, but at that time, it was totally ... new terrain. New territory, new country to be discovered. (Estelle Ellis, Promotion Director at Seventeen, 9/44-3/50; Personal Interview, 6/19/03) As hard as it is to imagine today when it can be argued that youth rules culture, teenagers are really-at least as a social category-a rather recent cultural phenomenon. Psychologist G. Stanley Hall is most often credited with introducing idea of adolescence as a specific (and troublesome) stage of life through his widely read 1904 text, Adolescence (Cook 127; Hine 4; Kett 6; Palladino 5). It was not until several decades later, around 1940s, that moniker teenager moved into wide circulation in popular culture discourse (Palladino 93; Schrum 138). This was also decade that saw teenagers become a distinct consumer category, with their own clothing and product lines being marketed to them (Cook 127). Not coincidentally, 1940s were and developmental years for Seventeen, magazine that has since grown up to become queen of teen magazine genre. The economics of magazine industry necessitated one of Seventeen's initial tasks: to introduce and then sell teen girl to business community. Its first promotional campaign, Meet Teena, would prove instrumental in constructing teen girls as consumers -a legacy that remains with our culture today. The Birth of a Teen Queen As with most human births, two people -a man and a woman-were present at conception and birth of Seventeen: publishing magnate Walter Annenberg and Seventeen's first editor, Helen Valentine. Early in 1944, Annenberg approached Valentine, a grandmother who had spent her entire adult life in magazine industry and who was then working as promotion director of Mademoiselle, with a business proposition. He offered her editorship of his failing movie magazine, Stardom, with mandate to revitalize it as a women's fashion magazine. Replying that she was not the least bit interested in such an endeavor, Valentine responded with an alternative: she would like to edit a service magazine directed at high school age young women (Cooney 183; Ogden 285; Reynolds 231; Valentine 5-6). She told Annenberg: There's room today for a publication aimed at teen-agers. They have been neglected by established fashion publications. Everyone treats them as though they were silly, swooning bobby soxers. I think they are young adults and should be treated accordingly (Reynolds 231). Valentine quickly convinced Annenberg that women needed a magazine of their own - and that they had potential to become an important new consumer market segment. Upon magazine's launch into marketplace, Seventeen and its staffers treaded boldly into cultural wilderness of teen culture, constructing concept of teenage girl in diverse venues and to different constituencies. In actual magazine issues, they advised high school reader on how to be an ideal teen. But Seventeen was also instrumental in constructing teen girl as a consumer through its education and instruction of adults, particularly those in advertising and retail industries. Because economic foundation of magazine industry is built upon financial resources of advertising, successful magazines must garner support of business (Croteau and Hoynes 66; Kilbourne 34; McCracken 4; Zuckerman 26). Seventeen's young promotion director, Estelle Ellis, was charged with job of liaison between magazine and business community, and she produced an extremely innovative promotion campaign that served as formal introduction of teen girl to business(men) -a match that would lead to a lucrative long-term relationship. …

:Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s‐1920s

Similar to recent works on U.S. orientalism, Krystyn R. Moon's book argues for the centrality of popular cultural discourses on Asians and Asian Americans in shaping American culture and national identity. Moon's monograph examines how white, Chinese American, and African American songwriters, musicians, and performers have constructed and contested racial differences and hierarchies through the practice of “yellowface,” a set of racially coded modes of musical production and theatrical practices that conveyed notions of “Chineseness” as inherently foreign and inferior to American or European culture and society. While previous scholars have discussed yellowface as part of their inquiry into the formation of American orientalism, Moon is the first to provide a broad survey of yellowface performance and music in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By placing the history of yellowface alongside more familiar forms of racial performance such as blackface minstrelsy, Moon points out that yellowface's emergence was part of the broader formation of a national racial vernacular on the American stage that delineated the boundaries of American identity, marking certain racial groups such as blacks as American and others such as the Chinese as perpetually foreign and incapable of national incorporation. Even as yellowface performances became more totalizing and codified with specific practices ranging from costume, makeup, orchestrated gestures, dialect, props, and musical sounds, Moon argues that yellowface constructions of racial difference and hierarchies remained unstable and ambivalent, with Chinese simultaneously taking on the polar extremes of “aversion and fascination.” She proposes viewing the history of yellowface performance in dialectical terms as a contestation between white musical composers and performers and Chinese and Chinese American performers. Even as white performers and songwriters highlighted the exoticism or cultural and physical inferiority of the Chinese in their racial performances, Chinese and Chinese American performers through their physical presence and performance on stage challenged white hegemony over the constructions of Chineseness.

Unquestionable Freedom in a Psychotic West

Freedom is not something to be thought about since September 11 and since freedom can be both given to the Iraqis as a gift from the ‘coalition of the willing,’ and purchased in the form of ‘freedom jeans,’ ‘freedom cars,’ and ‘freedom perfume.’ Freedom, in its unthinkable presence as gift, product and foundational premise of Western democracy, has assumed a psychotic structure in the psyche of the Western subject. The status of freedom as a product to be chosenand purchased, and as a gift given to the Iraqis via military intervention, offers an ontological status to the psychotic subject of the West as a being in a state of being unquestionably, unthinkingly free. The questionable ontological status of the Western subject–who I refer to in this paper as West–as a free subject, is collapsed into a signifier without paternity; a signifier whichdisables questions about whetherone is or isn'tfree in the free West. This article discusses the signification of freedom represented in political and popular culture discourse as product and gift in the West and, using Maurice Sendak's protagonist, Max, in Where the Wild Things Are, Renata Salecl's discussion of forced choice for the subject of and in democracy and Jacques Derrida's discussion of the ‘madness’ of ‘the gift,’ considers the situation of West before the originary violence of democracy. Lacanian psychoanalysis is utilised specifically to extrapolate West's position and to diagnose his condition as psychotic. Psychoanalysis as socio-analysis–that is, the analysis of the social, as if there is only one West–is explored for its representation of a monolithic subjectivity as the subjectivity. Socio-psychoanalysis and the contemporary extrapolations of democracy in the West are discussed for their similarity in representing a particular and limited type of ‘speaking back’ of the monolithic subject, and thus, their active participation in the subjugation of resistance; in their subjugation of the question of what this freedom is that the West supposedly has to give?

A Communist Takeover in the Dream Factory — Appropriation of Popular Genres by the East German Film Industry

During the 1960s the East German state-controlled film studio DEFA drastically increased their production of popular genre films. This development was propelled by the competition from an unrelenting flow of western radio- and television signals transgressing the Berlin Wall. These East German genre films took their iconographical cues from the commercial genres of Western Europe and Hollywood, but filled the forms with appropriate socialist content.In this article I investigate this appropriation of internationally established film genres in the GDR as a point of convergence between the transsystemic discourse of popular culture and the strong isolationist efforts of the GDR state. Through empirically informed close analysis of the musical Heißer Sommer and the western Spur des Falken, I aim to show how these very awkward negotiations between isolation and integration led to a reinvention of the genres in question, and how this process can be traced in the films' narratives.

Towards a rhetoric of everyday life: new directions in research on writing, text, and discourse

Rhetoric has traditionally studied acts of persuasion in the affairs of government and men, but this book investigates the language of other, nontraditional rhetors, including immigrants, women, urban children, and others who have long been on the margins of civic life and political forums. Rhetoric here refers not to the classical arts of persuasion or the verbal ornamentation of elite discourse, but rather to the ways that individuals and groups use language and writing to constitute their identities and their social worlds. The contributors, including some of the most productive scholars in research on rhetoric and composition studies, collectively explore the rhetorical character of popular culture and institutional discourse. This volume will appeal to researchers and teachers of writing, rhetoric, literacy, and education.

Sex, lies and love letters: rethinking condoms and female agency in Uganda

abstract Through an analysis of youth love letters, this focus re-considers the commonly held notion among feminists and sexual health specialists that females lack power to negotiate condom use. While not ignoring historic female subordination, this focus highlights the subtle process through which females appropriate, subvert, and are co-opted into wider patriarchal ideologies in their romantic strategies. Youth romantic relationships are conceptualised as operating as a ‘counterpublic’ to dominant (adult) public health discourses on sexual risk and popular culture discourses of sexual pleasure. This youth counterpublic operates out of the direct view of authoritarian adults while simultaneously borrowing from conflicting public discourses in ways that might have detrimental consequences. The focus shows that Uganda's internationally lauded ABC (abstinence, be faithful, and condom use) campaign is often interpreted by youth in unintended ways, as they translate the message in ways that position monogamy and condoms as two mutually exclusive options for safer sex. Specifically, romantic love based on the modernist idea of selecting your own partner (as opposed to marriage based on family obligations) decreases the perceived need for condoms. If a young couple is modern and monogamous, there is no need for condom use. In the process of negotiating romantic relationships, many young females view condomless sex as both an indication of their ability to make wise and independent choices, and as an affirmation of monogamy and commitment to their male suitors.

Representations of Substitute Teachers and the Paradoxes of Professionalism

This article explores both dominant and counternarratives about the work of teachers (and teaching) articulated through representations of substitute teachers. Using the notion of deviant historiography, the author uses the representation of substitute teachers to render visible the assumptions that govern the boundaries of professionalism. The author's exploration begins with a brief discussion of the professional teacher as constructed in educational reform. The author then presents three images of substitute teachers—the incompetent, unqualified teacher; the deviant outsider; and the guerilla superhero—that proliferate in popular cultural and educational practitioner discourses on teaching. Finally, the author discusses the significance of these images through an analysis of how other teachers function in the context of teacher shortage, educational reform, and school practice.

Living Alone in Old Age: Institutionalized Discourse and Women's Knowledge

We examine the social organization of living alone using both the narratives of elderly women and the academic, professional, and popular cultural textual discourses in which ideological practices are organized about this manner of living and housing. Using institutional ethnography, we examine the organizing practices of living alone through an analysis of the gender and class relations in the institution of housing. We argue that housing regimes are the work of those involved: ordinary people, builders, developers, bankers, psychologists, gerontologists, social workers, foundations, federal employees, demographers, and magazine publishers. The work activities are ordered, successfully or not, by culturally standard idealizations of old age relevant to the ideologies of the various participants in the housing regime. Such practices make women's own knowledge invisible and authorize the housing regime to define and ameliorate the situation of living alone, especially with respect to the maintenance of independence under contemporary capitalism

Living Alone in Old Age: Institutionalized Discourse and Women's Knowledge

We examine the social organization of “living alone” using both the narratives of elderly women and the academic, professional, and popular cultural textual discourses in which ideological practices are organized about this manner of living and housing. Using institutional ethnography, we examine the organizing practices of living alone through an analysis of the gender and class relations in the institution of housing. We argue that housing regimes are the work of those involved: ordinary people, builders, developers, bankers, psychologists, gerontologists, social workers, foundations, federal employees, demographers, and magazine publishers. The work activities are ordered, successfully or not, by culturally standard idealizations of old age relevant to the ideologies of the various participants in the housing regime. Such practices make women's own knowledge invisible and authorize the housing regime to define and ameliorate the situation of living alone, especially with respect to the maintenance of “independence” under contemporary capitalism.

Deciphering Pocahontas: Unpackaging the commodification of a native American woman

This essay examines the commodification of Pocahontas surrounding the 1995 Disney film. Pocahontas. Through an examination of Pocahontas products and popular cultural discourses about Pocahontas, the essay develops a theory of the “cipher”; as a late‐capitalist commodity form. Theorization of the cipher helps explain how companies market a field of goods in relationship to a single product, such as a film. Marketing campaigns draw on generic forms and figures that can be easily reproduced and identified. Furthermore, through the marketing of Pocahontas goods and popular discourses, Disney and the general mainstream commodity culture construct a market for children versus parents. And while the commodity world of Pocahontas uses utopic appeals to sell products, through their appropriation of feminism and Native American culture and history, Pocahontas products and discourses contribute to the material oppression of women and Native Americans, generally, and Native American women in particular.

Gender, Technology, and the Reinvention of Extraterrestrial Nature

This cultural studies article examines some trends in the Euro-American reinvention of the sea and the cosmos in the period following the Second World War. It argues that since, for a number of reasons, both extraterrestrial regions were being discursively prepared for conquest and colonial invasion, technoscientific discoveries intertwined with, and at times, reinforced age-old imageries on gender and ethnicity associated with the two areas. Ancient images of Mother Sea and Father Sky re-emerged in a brand new setting.The study draws on analyses of popular cultural discourses such as film and literature in order to outline the similarities and, above all, the gendered and ethnicized differences constructed between inner and outer space. Whilst the former engendered images of the wild, yet noble 'others,'the latter connected with highly advanced supercivilizations.1

Sexuality, Fertility, and Danger: Twentieth-Century Images of Women with Cognitive Disabilities

Historically, women with cognitive disabilities in the United States have been portrayed as sexually and socially threatening, and in need of professional management and control. Expressions of concern over the “sexual nature” of this group are still present in medical, legal, and popular cultural discourse. This presentation considers five examples (four nonfiction and one fictional) where the sexual identities of women with cognitive disabilities received national scrutiny: the sterilization of Carrie Buck; the institutionalization of “Deborah Kallikak” the Glen Ridge sexual assault case; the sterilization of Cindy Wasiek; and the movie “The Other Sister.” These examples reveal that implicit cultural assumptions (modern fairy tales) about the sexuality and fertility of women with cognitive disabilities are embedded in United States history, and still very much in evidence today.

Gender, Technology, and the Reinvention of Extraterrestrial Nature

This cultural studies article examines some trends in the Euro-American reinvention of the sea and the cosmos in the period following the Second World War. It argues that since, for a number of reasons, both extraterrestrial regions were being discursively prepared for conquest and colonial invasion, technoscientific discoveries intertwined with, and at times, reinforced age-old imageries on gender and ethnicity associated with the two areas. Ancient images of Mother Sea and Father Sky re-emerged in a brand new setting.The study draws on analyses of popular cultural discourses such as film and literature in order to outline the similarities and, above all, the gendered and ethnicized differences constructed between inner and outer space. Whilst the former engendered images of the wild, yet noble ’others,’the latter connected with highly advanced supercivilizations.1