Category: Popular Culture

The Exile of Britney Spears: A Tale of 21st Century by Chris Smit

By Chris Smit

What we devour issues: a end that's making extra feel as sustainability and eco-responsibility develop into a part of our daily cultural conversations. What we fail to achieve is that we devour – unconsciously, regularly, and, from time to time, violently – even more than meals. The Exile of Britney Spears: A story of Twenty-First Century intake explains that we have got fed on, digested, and eradicated Britney Spears in a approach uniquely attribute of yank pop culture. In Christopher Smit’s clarification of the sociological, aesthetic, and political results of this new mediated cannibalism; he bargains the belief of exile as a brand new metaphor for the end result of well known intake. by means of investigating the mental, own and social matrix of Britney’s upward thrust and fall (and upward thrust again?), he outlines the method of her inevitable exile from worldwide style and favour. whereas the booklet encourages the reader to work out Britney’s volition inside her narrative, it eventually works to provide an explanation for the bigger practices sure up with our intake of her lifestyles in the malleable context of latest media and electronic communication.

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Give and Go: Basketball as a Cultural Practice by Thomas Mc Laughlin

By Thomas Mc Laughlin

A pickup basketball participant seems to be on the pickup online game as a particular tradition utilizing either own adventure and cultural stories theory.

From the town courts of Harlem to the church halls of Indiana, pickup basketball tradition is very neighborhood and displays the histories and identities of its avid gamers. In supply and pass, Thomas Mc Laughlin examines how avid gamers positioned into play a unfastened set of values and moral kinds that impact how they believe, think, circulate, and relate to others in the group. A lifelong pickup ball player—one of modest talents yet severe intent—Mc Laughlin has internalized and embodied the tradition of the sport, and he writes as a player within the basketball group, placing into phrases what his physique already understands. This booklet displays the author’s own event and commentary of the sport, during the lens of up to date cultural thought, and in addition examines the illustration of basketball tradition in well known media, together with the movies Hoop desires, Hoosiers, and White males Can’t bounce. As basically an insider can, Mc Laughlin takes readers onto the courtroom and into the minds of gamers as they negotiate the tradition of the game.

Thomas Mc Laughlin is Professor of English at Appalachian kingdom college and the writer of a number of books, together with highway Smarts and significant concept: hearing the Vernacular.

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Disability and Popular Culture: Focusing Passion, Creating by Katie Ellis

By Katie Ellis

As a reaction to genuine or imagined subordination, pop culture displays the standard adventure of standard humans and has the capability to subvert the hegemonic order. Drawing on significant theoretical methods within the box of serious incapacity reports, this ebook examines incapacity throughout a few across the world acknowledged texts and items from pop culture, together with movie, tv, magazines and ads campaigns, children’s toys, track video clips, activity and on-line areas, to take care of the social and cultural building of incapacity. whereas acknowledging that incapacity positive factors in pop culture in ways in which strengthen stereotypes and stigmatise, incapacity and pop culture celebrates and complicates the expanding visibility of incapacity in pop culture, displaying how pop culture can concentration ardour, create group and exhibit defiance within the context of incapacity and social swap. masking a huge diversity of matters that lie on the intersection of incapacity and cultural reviews, together with media illustration, identification, the wonder delusion, aesthetics, ableism, new media and recreation, this booklet will entice students and scholars attracted to the severe research of pop culture, throughout disciplines akin to incapacity experiences, sociology and cultural and media studies.

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Voices from the Farm: Adventures in Community Living by Rupert Fike

By Rupert Fike

Twenty-five years in the past, on the peak of the counter-culture
movement, a number of hundred hippies drove their tuition buses into
southern Tennessee and based America's greatest, modern-day
intentional neighborhood, The Farm. In its heyday, the neighborhood was
home to over 1,200 positive teenagers and the
young-at-heart. Their goal for coming jointly used to be to experiment
with substitute existence that can aid elevate the traditional of
living for impoverished humans around the globe whereas holding the
planet's assets. the result of those experiments weren't always
predictable, yet have been continually attention-grabbing, and created lasting bonds
among neighborhood contributors which are nonetheless powerful this present day. The Farm remains
a brilliant, operating surroundings for switch. Why has it lasted so long?
Discover the solutions as participants prior and current recount a few of their
more memorable experiences.

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Popular Culture in Ancient Rome by Jerry Toner

By Jerry Toner

The mass of the Roman humans constituted good over ninety% of the inhabitants. a lot historic historical past, in spite of the fact that, has fascinated about the lives, politics and tradition of the minority elite. This e-book is helping redress the stability by means of concentrating on the non-elite within the Roman global. It builds a shiny account of the standard lives of the hundreds, together with their social and relatives existence, wellbeing and fitness, relaxation and spiritual ideals, and the ways that their pop culture resisted the domination of the ruling elite.

The ebook highlights formerly under-considered features of pop culture of the interval to offer a fuller photograph. it's the first ebook to take totally into consideration the extent of psychological healthiness: given the actual and social setting that the majority humans confronted, their total psychological well-being reflected their negative actual healthiness. It additionally finds interesting information about the ways that humans solved difficulties, turning usually to oracles for suggestion and advice while faced by means of problems. Our knowing of the non-elite global is extra enriched during the depiction of sensory dimensions: Toner illustrates how attitudes to sniff, contact, and noise all various with social prestige and created clash, and the way the emperors attempted to unravel those disputes as a part of their regeneration of city life.

Popular tradition in old Rome deals a wealthy and available advent to the usefulness of the inspiration of pop culture in learning the traditional global and may be loved via scholars and normal readers alike.

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Die Kritik der Kulturindustrie von Adorno und Horkheimer: by Anna-Lisa Esser

By Anna-Lisa Esser

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2006 im Fachbereich Soziologie - Medien, Kunst, Musik, observe: 1,0, Universität Bielefeld (Fakultät für Soziologie), Veranstaltung: Seminar: Einführung in die Medienwissenschaften, eleven Quellen im Literaturverzeichnis, Sprache: Deutsch, summary: „Die Heroisierung des Durchschnittlichen gehört zum Kultus des Billigen.“ 1 Diese Zeile bestimmt die Kritik der Kulturindustrie von Max Horkheimer und Theodor W. Adorno, einer der zentralen Passagen ihrer Schrift „Die Dialektik der Aufklärung“. Das Ziel der beiden Soziologen und Philosophen der Frankfurter Schule 2 ist, eine Theorie zu entwickeln, die den Zusammenhang zwischen den Freiheitsansprüchen der Gesellschaft und ihrer politischen Handlungsmöglichkeiten und den tatsächlichen Verhältnissen aufzeigen soll. Sie kritisieren den Wandel der Kultur von der autonomen Kunst hin zu einer standardisierten Massenkulturware. Die vorliegende Arbeit setzt sich zum Ziel, die Kritik der Kulturindustrie hinsichtlich ihrer Aktualität und ihrer „Wahrheit“ am Beispiel der Populärliteratur zu analysieren. Sie gliedert sich in zwei Schwerpunkte: Zum einen soll die Kritische Medientheorie (bzw. die Kritik der Kulturindustrie) im Allgemeinen skizziert werden, in einem ersten Teil sollen hierbei die Produktionsweise sowie die kennzeichnenden Aufgaben der Kulturindustrie nach Horkheimer und Adorno dargestellt werden. Anschliessend soll die Rezeption der Kulturgüter der Kulturindustrie untersucht werden. Zum anderen soll die Anwendungsmöglichkeit der Kritik auf die Populärliteratur herausgearbeitet werden. was once ist hierbei genau unter Populärliteratur zu verstehen und wie wird diese konsumiert bzw. rezipiert? used to be sind die Absichten und Mittel des Populären und wie werden die Inhalte aufgenommen? Haben die Konsumenten bei der Nutzung der Populärliteratur eigene Handlungsoptionen oder sind sie, wie Adorno und Horkheimer kritisieren, machtlos? [...]

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Fan Phenomena: The Big Lebowski by Zachary Ingle

By Zachary Ingle

From field workplace flop to 1 of the main winning cult motion pictures of all time, the massive Lebowski has spawned a multicity competition, college-level classes, and its personal faith. lovers of the Coen brothers’ masterfuldark comedy (collectively calling themselves "Achievers"—and proud we're of them all) assemble in motion picture theatres and bowling alleys around the county to cite besides the movie, imbibe white russians, and recognize the Dude’s rug (which rather tied the room together).Fan Phenomena: the large Lebowski examineshow this quirky motion picture developed from its underwhelming debut to draw a mass following on par with that of The Rocky Horror photograph express. participants take an in depth examine the film’s extraordinary influence on pop culture and language and consider the script’s wealthy philosophical implications, if it is the nihilism in the movie itself or the Dudeism that Jeff Bridges’ God-like personality has bred (the "Church of the Latter-Day Dude" has attracted greater than 70,000 reputable adherents via its on-line ordination process). overlaying concerns touching on gender and sexuality in the movie, reminiscent of Maude’s feminist paintings and Jackie Treehorn’s Malibu backyard get together, the essays right here additionally discover the gender divides the movie has created in today’s society, similar to male as opposed to girl fandom contention at fairs. those gatherings—part dress contest, half bowling event, half trivialities contest, half fan meet-up—have, on account that their debut in Louisville, ok Y, in 2002, sprung up throughout the US and feature even increased globally, and the e-book takes an inside of examine those occasions and comprises interviews with Lebowski pageant organizers and authors of different fan books and educational treatises.

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All That Remains: A Life in Death by Sue Black

By Sue Black

Professor Dame Sue Black discusses the topic she grapples with each day - dying - bringing her specified point of view to the multitudinous situations within which existence is misplaced. From the painful grieving approach after wasting a family member, to violence, homicide, felony dismemberment, lacking individuals, warfare (such as Kosovo), common failures (such as a tsunami), unidentified our bodies, ancient continues to be -- related to investigative companies, attorneys, justice, legal sentences, and continuously unhappiness and soreness, she takes us on a systematic and reflective trip explaining the genetic DNA features that strengthen earlier than our beginning, and people characteristics and contours we assemble within the twists and turns via existence, all of which upload as much as an id that unearths itself in dying.
Riveting because the most sensible crime novel, and leavened with humour, this is often an enriching and reassuring learn and a parallel party of life.

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