Popular Culture Media Research Articles

On the Tracks of Musical Screenscapes: Analysing the Emerging Phenomenon of Bollywood Filmi-song Tourism in Iceland

Around the world, cities and regions are welcoming tourists after being in the spotlight of popular movies, games, novels, TV series or other forms of popular media culture. Popular Hindi cinema (Bollywood) too has long impacted destination imaginaries and the ensuing travels. What remains scarce in existing research is how its crucial component – Filmi-songs – impacts tourists’ imaginaries of a destination, and consequently how they perform their travels. This study investigates the role and significance of filmi-songs in tourism practices, by focussing on the case-study of ‘Gerua’ from the film ‘Dilwale’ (2015), after which Iceland experienced a rise in Indian tourism. Employing 18 in-depth interviews with tourists, but also various local stakeholders in the business of media-tourism, this study attempts to understand what impact Bollywood songs have on travel motivations of its audiences, how tourists experience the filmi-song location on-site, and finally how the phenomenon is perceived and evaluated by local stakeholders in Iceland. Results show that filmi-song tourists are actively engaged in reconstructing scenes from their beloved filmi-songs by indulging in shot re-creations and song re-enactments. By drawing links between Bollywoodized narratives and locations in Iceland, and by sharing these performances online, these tourist practices contribute to the imaginative heritage of Iceland in the global imagination.

The Painting that Leapt Through Time: Popularized High Art on Screen

Abstract Much high art of the twenty-first century is influenced by popular culture and, conversely, high art often finds its way into representation in popular culture media to varying levels and degrees. An example of this is the anime The Girl Who Leapt through Time, which uses a fictional artwork to significantly drive a narrative arc within the plot situating the important action within the museum environment. The artwork is both a signifier of the film’s central themes of loss, memory, and a representation of humanities creative impulse. The painting is explored via art formalist means and as metaphor to outline a speculative museology of the high art object inside and outside of the bounds of the particularity of the physical museum. This analysis and discursive treatise probes the importance of the interplay of “high” art and popular culture in a contemporary paradigm and the broader concern of art as bound to the human experience.

RECREATIONAL COMPONENT OF TRAINING AND PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES OF SPORTS INSTITUTIONS IN UKRAINE

The article considers the recreational component of training and pedagogical practices of cultural and sports institutions of Ukraine. In this context, attention is focused on the practical activities of cultural and sports institutions as discursive practices. It is noted that the basis of the practical activities of cultural and sports institutions is a popular music and dance media culture, combined with fitness and other types of sports training. It is proved that the discursive practices of Ukrainian cultural and sports institutions form the methodology of recreative choreography, it means, the system of exercises and dance movements, each of which contains recreational components. There have been identified methods and techniques of the training and pedagogical process, which have absorbed both elements of classical choreography and purely gymnastic and acrobatic exercises with the use of functional training. An important way of “dance and health” dance and movement therapy as a means of achieving rehabilitation treatment, as one of the schools of psychotherapy. The choreutic concept and methods of movement analysis by R. von Laban and J. Longstaff are analyzed. An important recreative aspect of the practices of cultural and sports institutions – cognitive regulation of the mental state of a person – has been studied.

Respectable outness: Examining the coming-out narratives of Latin American Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual YouTube celebrity vloggers

Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual YouTube celebrities have come to the limelight of popular media culture. This article explores how 10 of the most popular and influential YouTubers from three Latin American countries (Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico) have come to occupy lesbian, gay, and bisexual subject positions in their coming out vlogs. We argue that through the entwinement of YouTube’s political economy of celebrity and performances of respectability, these vloggers were able to turn their coming-outs into a form of emotional labor that positions them as exemplary models of queer success within the neoliberal economy and cultural regime.

History at the end of the world: decolonial revisionism in Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok

ABSTRACT From 19th-century novels to contemporary computer-animated adventure films, popular media culture provides no shortage of representations that subserve colonialist attitudes and perspectives. Thor: Ragnarok (2017) provides a rare decolonial fantasy, which is especially surprising given that it does so through the veneer of the big-budget superhero film. Registering a deep concern with public memory, the film spotlights and challenges the various uses of public memory in the maintenance of colonial legitimation. In doing so, Thor: Ragnarok offers an incisive and uncompromising indictment of colonization and colonialism, one that ends not with a call for reform but with the end of the world.

Representing public service and post-militariness in Bodyguard (BBC, 2018)

ABSTRACT The opening episodes of BBC1ʹs Bodyguard (2018) broke records for a drama debut, the highest launch figure for any new drama across all channels in the United Kingdom since 2006. This article examines the hit series with a particular focus on notions of public service and post-military identity. The paper explores how the drama conveys ‘public service’ in the UK context at this specific historic moment, adding to writer Jed Mercurio’s oeuvre of dramas that explore the professional ethics of public servants. More specifically, I argue that the analytical lens of ‘post-militariness’ offers a nuanced way to better understand the complex cultural and political work of the traumatized war veteran from the 9/11 wars, as portrayed in popular media culture. Bodyguard is only one of many dramas representing contemporary war veterans who are often depicted as struggling to transition to civilian life. ‘Post-militariness’ accounts for both the persistence of military identity as a source of pride and as a source for feelings of betrayal.

To be Seen, Not Just Read: Script Use on the Votive Prayer Tablets of Anime, Manga, and Game Fans

ABSTRACT This article proposes one social explanation for the occurrence of graphic variation in contemporary written Japanese by examining a heretofore unexamined context of writing. Embracing the material culture approach, I explore the ema (votive prayer tablets) dedicated at Shinto shrines by fans of popular culture media productions. Fans pen text on the ema that follows aesthetics of manga as well as online communication, incorporating features that are usually limited to print and online writing. Analyzing upwards of 2,000 ema from three shrines, this article proceeds to dissect a writing style composed of a mix of syllabaries and symbols using ‘thick description’ to evince the emotion behind fans’ calculated efforts to construct text that is not simply to be read, but to be seen. Seeking to answer the question of what fans attempt to achieve by writing on the ema in the way that they do, I will reference folklorist Elliott Oring’s ‘appropriate incongruity’ to put forth an argument that fans, harnessing a sense of play and endeavoring to animate the text on the ema, intimate by means of the visual presentation of writing-restricted variation a questioning of the perceived division between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds.

Exploring the Irony in Japanese Popular Culture. A Cross-Cultural and Linguistic Analysis.

The present study addresses the status and use of irony in Japanese popular culture by closely examining its’ cultural variations on a corpus consisting of ironic utterances and situations from three popular culture media: Japanese drama, anime, and manga. While it is likely that Western popular culture abounds in ironic aesthetics and standpoints, the concept of “irony” faces cultural reconstruction within Japanese culture and society, a fact easily reflected in national media and cinematographic productions. In such cases, the cultural and linguistic distance between Japanese and English, and the striking difference, which exists between these two geographical and cultural contexts, increase the challenge interposed by the understanding and interpreting of irony. Moreover, on a conversational level, ironizing one’s communication partner is considered socially unacceptable and penalised accordingly. It stands against the much-expected politeness and traditional Japanese concepts such as “honne” and “tatemae,” which, if preserved, can create harmony in communication. In conclusion, the ambiguous definition of irony, together with the negative perception and reluctance of Japanese people towards its usage, has contributed to frequently branding irony strictly as a Western phenomenon. However, as the present research attempts to demonstrate, the usage of irony in Japanese popular culture embraces multifarious approaches, and it extends to reach the borders of semantics.

Invective Form in Popular Media Culture: Genre – Mode – Affordance

Abstract The following article outlines a way to conceptualize invective form in popular culture that is particularly interested in accommodating the range, fluidity, and slipperiness that define pop-cultural invectivity. It is an approach that draws on one very well-established concept of formal criticism – that of mode – and one concept that has recently been brought to the fold of formalist inquiry – that of affordance. I will argue that conceiving of invective form in popular culture as a mode and as an affordance allows to address the diversity and range of external forms by which pop-cultural invectivity operates. In addition, it brings into focus the fluidity that marks the repertoire of invective popular culture, its paradoxical tendency to gravitate toward routinization in more set conventions, only to conspicuously push against these conventions’ boundaries. Finally, to conceive of the invective valence of the mode’s repertoire not as a fixed property but as an affordance helps talk about the volatility and dynamism of invective performances in popular culture, the way in which their invective effects are contingent on the social positionality from and for which they realized, and the way in which their invective valence is open for resignification.

Feminism and the Politics of Resilience: Spectacular girls and the place of psychoanalytic approaches in feminist media and cultural studies during the Coronavirus crisis

In this review of Feminism and the Politics of Resilience, Angela McRobbie’s conceptualisation of the ‘perfect-imperfect-resilience dispositif’ is praised as offering a clear demarcation from McRobbie and others’ previous work on the earlier de-politicised and individualist era of postfeminism. It calls for more work in the field of feminist media and cultural studies to consider psychoanalytic approaches to questions around pleasure, affect and compulsion in girls’ and women’s popular media culture. In light of the Coronavirus crisis and with a reflection on the spectacular visibility of girls and former young female celebrities in recent mainstream media, this short essay explores two lines of inquiry in response to Feminism and the Politics of Resilience: first, what has the period of the pandemic done to the potent power of the p-i-r? And second, how might we be both careful to recognise the binaristic ways in which the girl subject is culturally constructed, while being sure not to reproduce such ‘ontologised dualisms’ of girlhood in our writing?

The Rupaul Paradox: Freedom and Stricture in a Competition Reality TV Show

Drag culture in the 1990s seemed to signify emancipation and liberation of enduring and stifling definitions of gender and sexuality. The uptake of drag and camp in mainstream culture were felt to usher in an era of gender freedom coinciding with new appreciation for popular cultural forms. A quarter century on, popular culture no longer connotes bad taste. The realignment of taste and cultural capital has not coincided with decreased social inequality however, and popular media culture appears to have remained the training ground for what Miller (1993. The Well-Tempered Self. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) called “the daily organisation of fealty to the cultural-capitalist state.” This paper will inquire into how today’s neo-liberal governmentality and its defining form of offering freedom and stricture at the same time is exemplified by the show hosted by drag queen, singer and television presenter RuPaul (RuPaul’s Drag Race Logo, VH1 2009-today and available on Netflix). Taking as our point of departure our own double-edged sentiments about the show and its host, and the ways queens are divided into role models versus underperformers, we will discuss how race, gender and English proficiency are policed.

Violent acts ((Online)Games)

The depiction of violence is the focus of many content analyses of video games. Typically, the occurrence and nature of acts of violence or aggression are coded to quantify the amount of violent content in a particular game. Field of application/theoretical foundation: Quantifying the amount of violence in video games can inform media effects research that looks at the relationship between the exposure to violent video game content and aggression. This allows for more precise measures and hypotheses than simply coding a game as violent or nonviolent which is often done in experimental research in this area. What is commonly coded in content analyses of violent content in video games is the number and nature of aggressive or violent actions. Specific attributes of these acts, such as their realism, graphicness or (narrative) justification (Tamborini et al., 2013) are only considered in a few studies (e.g., Lachlan et al., 2005). While the focus in most studies is on acts of physical aggression/violence in interactions with/between game characters, there are also studies that have investigated verbal aggression between players (Holz Ivory et al., 2017). References/combination with other methods of data collection: Content analysis of violence in video games can be complemented by survey data asking players about the games they play and their rating of the degree of violence they contain and/or age rating from institutions like ESRB or PEGI (see Busching et al., 2015). Example studies Coding material Measure Operationalization Unit(s) of analysis Source(s) (reported reliability of coding) Video recording of playing session Number and duration of violent interactions (attacking and being attacked) (a) combat: “periods of playing time in which a player [i.e., the character controlled by the player] fires his gun” (p. 1021) (b) “under attack–the player is attacked by an opponent before or after using his own weapon” (p. 1022) Distinct phases/events in up to 12 minutes of solo play of the first-person shooter game Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror Weber et al., 2009 (Cohen’s kappa = 0.81) Video recording of the whole game Depictions of injury (present/not present) “An injured or dead character lying on the ground or remnants of blood from a known violent act” (p. 403) 1-second intervals of the game recordings Thompson et al., 2006 (Cohen’s kappa = 0.93) Video recording of the whole game Depictions of violent acts (present/not present) “Intentional acts in which the aggressor causes or attempts to cause physical injury or death to another character” (p. 403) 1-second intervals of the game recordings Thompson et al., 2006 (Cohen’s kappa = 0.93) Video recording of the first 10 minutes of gameplay Depicted harm/pain (none, mild, moderate, extreme) in aggressive exchanges between in-game characters “physical injury or incapacitation of the victim” (p. 64) “an aggressive exchange that occurs between a perpetrator (P) engaging in a particular type of act (A) against a target (T)” (p. 63) Smith et al., 2003 (coefficient according to “Potter and Levine-Donnerstein's (1999) reliability formula for multiple coders”, p. 65: 0.87)

Beyond Tomb and Relic

The representation of archaeology and archaeologists in video games is notoriously flawed, having been deeply influenced by other popular cultural media. This representation is perpetuated by both video game designers who create artificial environments in which players “do” archaeology, and the players who occupy these digital environments. Rather than turn away from video games as lowbrow culture, video game cultures, both digital and real, are fertile fields for exploring anthropological and archaeological method and theory, cultural heritage, and historical realism. This article explores the intersection of video games, anthropological theory, and popular and academic pedagogy.

Profiting from a tainted trade: private investigators’ views on the popular culture glamorisation of their trade

Purpose The public fascination for private investigators has led to an abundance of imagery in popular culture media. This study aims to examine the views of practising private investigators regarding their professional images of dirty work. Design/methodology/approach To fill the gap in the literature, this study used data collected from semi-structured interviews with 33 industry practitioners from 3 Australian states. The paper investigates private investigator’s perceptions about themselves/job roles and the public perceptions of private investigators in Australia. Interviews were recorded and transcripts created. A thematic analysis of the interview transcripts was undertaken. Findings Private investigators were drawn from a range of professions, including public policing and government regulation. The findings indicate that the reality differs from the images typically portrayed in popular culture. Interviewees discussed the contrasts between media images and reality, providing a more complex portrayal of private investigation and what private investigators find satisfying and challenging about their work. Practical implications This study is helpful for improving the understanding of private policing, the media views of policing, those who conduct work within an environment considered to be tainted and their views of self. Originality/value Using a qualitative research design, this paper offers insights into the challenges facing private investigators and how they reconcile being in a tainted occupation with providing a necessary service to the community.

Advertisements: The Tapestry of Culture

Advertising occupies a central place in popular media culture. Advertisements are inseparable part of media streams that people encounter everyday across a wide variety of contexts. This article explores the topic, locating advertisements as texts in theoretical framework of cultural studies. I first provide a summary and overview of key theoretical approach. Secondly, I dwell on the image-making process of discourse and text of advertisements. Thirdly, I take some advertisements from local and global arena and analyse them through the theoretical lens of cultural studies. Finally, I conclude with a brief discussion of some key challenges associated with these texts, their discourse, power structures in these texts for social change. The scope of exploration stretches wide and deep as advertising not only reflects but also shapes culture while culture is living and perpetually evolving. At the same time, my perspective is of course coloured by my own specifications and gender in other words by my own culture.

NARASI PERCINTAAN DAN KESETARAAN GENDER DALAM LIRIK LAGU-LAGU TULUS

Besides rhythm, song lyrics are an important part of a song. As a medium for the expression of the author, song lyrics can be a means of socialization and preservation of certain values, so that they are often regarded as literary works as well as poetry. Song lyrics were written and sung by Tulus for example, are considered to contain their perspectives on love relations and gender equality. The songs Teman Hidup, Sepatu, Jangan Cintai Aku Apa Adanya, and Tuan Nona Kesepian are the objects of this study which was studied with descriptive-qualitative analysis methods, through the approach of feminist studies and popular culture. The results showed that in these songs, it was revealed that women tend to be positioned parallel to men. Like men, women are seen to be able to make decisions, are brave, and strong in solving problems. Research on gender equality [or inequality] in various popular culture media such as songs does need to be carried out continuously to build insight and awareness of the audience.

The Self-Driving Car: A Media Machine for Posthumans?

This article discusses the self-driving car as a media machine, thinking about its character and broader implications from media archaeological and posthumanist perspectives. Self-driving or autonomous vehicles challenge traditional ideas about agency. Car culture has usually been considered human-centered. While there have been concerns about the “human factor” and the consequences of poor and distracted driving, the human behind the steering wheel has also been considered a guarantee of safety. The introduction of the self-driving car displaces the human from an active role as an agent and introduces forms of material agency as a replacement. This shift has huge consequences, which will be explored from various perspectives. The study will also situate the self-driving car historically within plans about automated highways, also discussing their discursive manifestations within popular media culture. The study introduces the idea of “traffic dispositive”, which it applies on multiple levels. One of the basic points underlying the discussion is that the autonomous car can never be fully autonomous. It is linked with data networks and other frameworks of factors that affect its uses and also its potential passengers. We must ask: How will the potential adoption of self-driving cars affect the human/posthuman relationship?

Honoring Student Cultural Capital: Social Media and Popular Culture as Tools for Teaching Theory

To a growing student population for whom smartphone and Internet use started in their early childhood, social media and popular culture can be effective tools to mitigate potential anxiety and alienation students may feel when taking a theory course. This paper offers strategies and insight on the endeavor of utilizing both popular and social media cultures to teach social theories. I discuss assignments and activities used to generate student engagement, as well as share examples of successful student submissions that demonstrate application of course materials to their everyday life. Informed by Paulo Freire's (2011 [1968]) pedagogy of “students-as-teachers,” the strategy of asking students to contribute what they know about social media and popular culture helps students be more critical participants in society and communicates to students that instructors value their experiential knowledge.

Historical formation of the originality of an American choral tradition of the second half of the XX century

Historical formation of the originality of an American choral tradition of the second half of the XX century

Study: Racial stereotypes exist regarding violence, video games

People tend to be more likely to pinpoint violent video games as the culprit behind school shootings by white perpetrators than by black perpetrators, possibly due to racial stereotypes that associate minorities with violent crimes, say researchers of a new study published in Psychology of Popular Media Culture.