Showing papers in "Popular Communication in 2007"
TL;DR: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as mentioned in this paper parodying the news media's unproblematic dissemination of the dominant brand, broadcasting dissident political messages that can open up space for questioning and critique.
Abstract: Contemporary politicians have wholeheartedly embraced commercial branding techniques, saturating the public sphere with market tested, emotional messages designed to cultivate trust in their political “brand,” thus working against the ideal of a democratic public sphere. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart “jams” the seamless transmission of the dominant brand messages by parodying the news media’s unproblematic dissemination of the dominant brand, broadcasting dissident political messages that can open up space for questioning and critique. The Daily Show works, not by rational argumentation buttressed by facts and logic but by using an aestheticized (and very funny) parodic discourse to combat the aestheticized (and very serious) political branding techniques. Consequently, it is uniquely positioned to make its rebellious voice heard.
86 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the cultural ideology that permeates our society surrounding female body image by focusing specifically on socially constructed ideals of beauty and identity as they are represented in media texts such as A Makeover Story, What Not to Wear, and Extreme Makeover.
Abstract: This article discusses the cultural ideology that permeates our society surrounding female body image by focusing specifically on socially constructed ideals of beauty and identity as they are represented in media texts—those of the makeover programs, A Makeover Story, What Not to Wear, and Extreme Makeover. For this study, we conducted textual analyses of selected episodes of each of these programs to examine the ideological impact of patriarchy, particularly as it relates to female body image.
50 citations
44 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the multiplicities of Latinidad and feminism as portrayed in contemporary cinema, using the films Selena (1997), Girlfight (2000), and Real Women Have Curves (2002) as case studies.
Abstract: This essay examines the multiplicities of Latinidad and feminism as portrayed in contemporary cinema. Using the films Selena (1997), Girlfight (2000), and Real Women Have Curves (2002) as case studies, the author argues that these films mark a moment in U.S. cinematic history in which diverse and complex Latinidades feministas are represented. This representational analysis offers insight into how these films demonstrate the dynamics and intersectionality of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class while challenging gendered and racialized notions of authenticity. Ultimately, the author contends that despite their status as popular commodified forms, these films embody a Latinidad feminista that transgresses historical representations of Latinas in U.S. cinema in offering Latina subjectivities that are hybrid, fluid, and complex.
25 citations
TL;DR: The authors used narrative analysis to consider the use of the language of sin and redemption in American journalistic eulogy for 4 recently deceased male celebrities in leading entertainment and news magazines including People, TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Time, and Newsweek.
Abstract: This article uses narrative analysis to consider the use of the language of sin and redemption in American journalistic eulogy for 4 recently deceased male celebrities— Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Marlon Brando, and Richard Pryor—in leading entertainment and news magazines including People, TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Time, and Newsweek. Thematically united by their well-known misbehavior, these men were the kinds of public figures whose stories had to undergo some sort of narrative repair to have a happy ending; furthermore, these celebrities were eulogized within a broader popular culture increasingly characterized by memorial, therapeutic confession, and faith-based political conservatism. Coverage of these 4 deaths was remarkable in the extent to which temptation, sin, and the possibility of redemption were openly discussed in journalism, and each celebrity’s struggle with his demons was understood as representative of modern American life.
23 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the semiotics and reception of notions of America in the global hit television program, The Simpsons, showing how, contrary to many of its televisual colleagues, one of America's most globally successful television products may actually be circulating a parodic-satiric suspicion of America and American capitalist values.
Abstract: This article interrogates the Americanization/cultural imperialism thesis’ presumptions about the textual encoding of “America” by examining the semiotics and reception of notions of America in the global hit television program, The Simpsons. While in recent years, the cultural imperialism thesis has been both questioned and revised from a variety of angles, often the key assumption remains that all American cultural products are encoded with a uniform and chauvinistic attitude that promotes America as a nation and culture, and that champions contemporary American capitalist values. This article examines both the text of The Simpsons and its reception by a group of international viewers, showing how, contrary to many of its televisual colleagues, one of America's most globally successful television products may actually be circulating a parodic-satiric suspicion of America and American capitalist values.
19 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a case study of two families over a seven-month period as they move from fan to applicant to cast of the home improvement reality TV program Trading Spaces: Family is presented.
Abstract: This article presents a case study of two families over a seven-month period as they move from fan to applicant to cast of the home improvement reality TV program Trading Spaces: Family. Specifically, we detail the discrepancies between the actuality of participation and the preferred “reality” of dramatic and collaborative interior design. We explore how program format, contracts, and selective editing are employed to control unscripted events and how these strategies shape the participants' experiences and expectations of their home makeovers.
19 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that Caushun might experience failure because his music, and more importantly his music videos, will offer his target audience "no way of seeing" authenticity in his intersecting identities.
Abstract: This essay examines the attempt to market to a mainstream audience a gay, Black rapper—Caushun—who embodies competing claims of “thug” masculinity and “queen” femininity. We argue that Caushun might experience failure because his music, and more importantly his music videos, will offer his target audience “no way of seeing” authenticity in his intersecting identities. That is the viewing experience, theorized as the gaze (Mulvey, 1975), when applied to Caushun, demonstrates “gaze gone wrong.” He offers himself up as a “homo-thug” in a homophobic genre, even as the thug identity in hip-hop is marked by its hyper-masculine, violent, and homophobic rhetoric. Caushun lays bare a host of social and marketing challenges that demand exploration.
18 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a qualitative analysis using 489 Israeli advertisements as the stage performing of "banal nationalism" was performed to find a new real estate discourse in which Americanicity is an integral part of the neo-liberal discourse in Israeli society.
Abstract: This article aims to broaden the discourse on national identity as a social and cultural construct by revealing the fluidity of its most fundamental symbol—the land. This discussion is extremely relevant in the cases of small countries living under the custody of globalization, primarily Americanization. While most noticeable scholars who write about national identity focus on “high” and “official” culture, we suggest looking at one of the most prominent products of popular culture—advertisement. This study utilizes qualitative analysis, based on a semiotic interpretation using 489 Israeli advertisements as the stage performing of “banal nationalism.” Looking at two broad categories, national symbols and spatial identity, we found a new real estate discourse in which Americanicity is an integral part of the neo-liberal discourse in Israeli society. In other words, the motherland turns into real estate.
16 citations
TL;DR: This article examined the most mainstream popular songs and music videos through a preliminary investigation of two concurrent hits from the Adult Contemporary (AC) format: Martina McBride's "This One's for the Girls" and Five for Fighting's "100 Years".
Abstract: The study of popular music developed in part to correct the elitist dismissal of the popular and to validate popular music as a legitimate object of inquiry. Despite this, there is little popular music research that focuses on the most mainstream popular music. In this study we call for a return to the examination of the most mainstream popular songs and music videos through a preliminary investigation of two concurrent hits from the Adult Contemporary (AC) format: Martina McBride's “This One's for the Girls” and Five for Fighting's “100 Years.” Although both similarly focus on images and issues of life for American women and men during a century of living, they present dramatically different images of women's and men's lives in the lyrics and videos. Through examination of these songs and their accompanying videos, we call attention to the neglect of the most mainstream popular music and reiterate the importance of examining important aspects of U.S. culture, in this case gender, through its most mainstr...
12 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines My Life as a Teenage Robot's discourse on girl power and the construction of identity, focusing on a key theme that contradicts other texts about girl heroes: that strength, agency, and normative femininity cannot be embodied in the same individual.
Abstract: In recent years, depictions of strong but feminine girl heroes have become common in children's television programming. These girl power icons reflect changing cultural ideas about girlhood. Nickelodeon's My Life as a Teenage Robot is a cartoon popular among preadolescents, which follows the exploits of Jenny, a powerful, female-gendered robot who must save the world while also surviving the trials of high school. This article examines My Life as a Teenage Robot's discourse on girl power and the construction of identity. It focuses on a key theme that contradicts other texts about girl heroes: that strength, agency, and normative femininity cannot be embodied in the same individual. This article interrogates the ways in which the show's messages are simultaneously progressive and regressive, and it calls for further research on girls' reception of media texts.
TL;DR: This paper examined the role of cultural capital in the reading of alternative media texts and found that cultural capital played an important role in the type of resistance that a participant had learned and read.
Abstract: The following research examines the role of cultural capital in the reading of alternative media texts. I interviewed leaders of small social justice organizations in the midwestern United States in order to discover the ways in which they developed cultural capital and read resistance within alternative media texts. From the interviews I found that the participants learned cultural capital from Timeless Elders and/or Contemporary Crusaders of activism. I also found that two types of resistance were read within the alternative media texts: a hegemonic form of resistance based on militant rejection of materials and an emanciapatory form of resistance based on adjustive rejection of materials. Through my analysis I found that the type of cultural capital that a participant had learned played an important role in the type of resistance that they read. The themes and concepts which emerged through the interviews hold significant implications for the conceptualization of modern social justice movements.
TL;DR: Sandvoss as discussed by the authors described the Mirror of Consumption as a "mirror of consumption" for media audiences and identity, and used it to define media audience and identity in his book "Media Audiences and Identity".
Abstract: Fans: The Mirror of Consumption. By Cornel Sandvoss. Boston: Polity Press, 2005, ISBN 0745629725, 224 pages, $62.95 (cloth); ISBN 0745629733, 224 pages, $22.95 (paper). Media Audiences and Identity...
TL;DR: The culture industries unfailingly argue that they provide us the news and entertainment that we want that is, we the people determine what is produced via our attention and, of course, our purcha
Abstract: The culture industries unfailingly argue that they provide us the news and entertainment that we want That is, we the people determine what is produced via our attention and, of course, our purcha
TL;DR: In this paper, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1963/1971) wrote a letter to his adolescent daughter Scottie, worrying that she was becoming what he called an "idler", someone whose "only contribution to t...
Abstract: In July of 1938, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1963/1971) wrote a letter to his adolescent daughter Scottie. He worried that she was becoming what he called an “idler,” someone whose “only contribution to t...
TL;DR: On one level, it is easier to write these introductory essays when the articles are all clearly on the same or similar topics: television, fandom, or popular music, for example.
Abstract: On one level, it is easier to write these introductory essays when the articles are all clearly on the same or similar topics: television, fandom, or popular music, for example. So as we sat down t...