Journal of Popular Culture articles from August 2004

Journal of Popular Culture archives from August 2004

Editorial: gone with the Western.(Editorial)
August 1, 2004... I HAVE BEEN A LIFELONG ADMIRER OF WESTERNS. AS A CHILD GROWING UP in Ohio during the late 1950s and early 1960s, I adored television Westerns such as Gunsmoke, Maverick, The Rifleman, Sugarfoot, Cheyenne, and numerous other small-screen...

Convention and ideology in the contemporary softcore feature: the sexual architecture of House of Love.(popular culture and pornographic films)
August 1, 2004... Trying to write honestly about pornographic films is like trying to tie one's shoe while walking: it's practically impossible without sacrificing stride and balance and a certain amount of ordinary dignity, the sort one uses with bank...

A soldier's body: GI Joe, Hasbro's great American hero, and the symptoms of empire.
August 1, 2004... GI JOE BROUGHT PHENOMENAL GROWTH AND GAIN TO THE HASBRO toy company. In 1964, the year Hasbro introduced GI Joe, the United States was still holding on to a naive self-concept that helped make the climate prime for this innovative boys' toy...

Haggling spoken here: gender, class, and style in US garage sale bargaining.
August 1, 2004... I'll bargain anytime. You don't expect people to come down much in the first hour, but it doesn't hurt to ask. [At] another little sale... [they] had a beautiful screen, bamboo screen. He wanted $8 for it... I walked around and...

Y2K as an endtime sign: apocalypticism in America at the fin-de-millennium.
August 1, 2004... {God} may be preparing to confound our language, to jam our communications, scatter our efforts, and judge us for our sin and rebellion against His Lordship. We are hearing from many sources that January 1, 2000, will be a fateful...

Remembering Dr. Timothy Leary.
August 1, 2004... He flies so high, He swoops so low. He knows exactly which way he's gonna go... --The Moody Blues "Legend of a Mind" In Search of the Lost Chord The charisma of the guru may become as self-serving as the very ...

The Ochiai deer dance: a traditional dance in a modern world.
August 1, 2004... IN JAPAN, SHRINE FESTIVALS HAVE BEEN THE FOCAL POINT OF POPULAR culture in rural and urban communities for hundreds of years (Ashkenazi 4; Littleton 195; Honda 6). Folk performances formed the core of shrine festivals until their decline...

American dreams of mutants: the X-Men--"pulp" fiction, science fiction, and superheroes.
August 1, 2004... REVIEWING AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO POPULAR CULTURE OF THE twentieth century, the critic Martin Williams identifies "motion picture drama, jazz, a special kind of musical theater and its associated music and dance, the modern detective story,...

Will you marry me?: spectacle and consumption in the ritual of marriage proposals.
August 1, 2004... JOEL FERNGHETTI HAS BEEN DATING ANNIE FREDERICKS FOR OVER FOUR years. Joel is a simple and honest man who shares a wonderful relationship with Annie. The two met on a summer night at a country fair in southern Alberta, where they were both...

Visions of America: Johnson Brothers pottery in the US market, 1872-2002.
August 1, 2004... TABLEWARE DESIGNS PRODUCED IN BRITAIN FOR EXPORT TO THE United States were clearly intended to appeal to the American consumer, and their pictorial motifs and pattern names reflect what the British designers understood to be America's history...

Middlebrow Moderns: Popular American Women Writers of the 1920s.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... Middlebrow Moderns: Popular American Women Writers of the 1920s. Eds. Lisa Botshon and Meredith Goldsmith. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003. Lisa Botshon and Meredith Goldsmith's goals for their volume on popular American...

It's the Cowboy Way: The Amazing True Adventures of Riders in the Sky.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... It's the Cowboy Way: The Amazing True Adventures of Riders in the Sky. Don Cusic. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. The popular western quartet The Riders in the Sky consists of Douglas Green (Ranger Doug), Fred LaBour (Too...

Big Media, Big Money: Cultural Texts and Political Economics.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... Big Media, Big Money: Cultural Texts and Political Economics. Ronald V. Bettig and Jeanne Lynn Hall. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. An eminently helpful and eye-opening book, Big Media, Big Money: Cultural Texts and Political...

Memory's Nation: The Place of Plymouth Rock.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... Memory's Nation: The Place of Plymouth Rock. John Seelye. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Memory's Nation: The Place of Plymouth Rock is John Seelye's intellectual history of this mythical landing place. As it was...

The Adventures of Amos 'n' Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... The Adventures of Amos 'n' Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon. Melvin Patrick Ely. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001. Melvin Patrick Ely's perceptive, entertaining account of America's most popular radio...

Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century. Scott Bukatman. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Scott Bukatman's Matters of Gravity, his second book after the well-received Terminal Identity (1993), explores...

Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives. Todd Gitlin. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002. In his latest book about US mass media, sociologist Todd Gitlin implores readers to take media images and...

The West Wing: The American Presidency as Television Drama.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... The West Wing: The American Presidency as Television Drama. Eds. Peter C. Rollins and John E. Connor. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003. This is the season of American politics as another presidential election unfolds and the...

Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate Interactions, Forbidden Frontiers.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate Interactions, Forbidden Frontiers. Joane Nagel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. In this fine book, Joane Nagel examines the ways in which ethnicity, race, and sexuality intersect in the...

Manly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... Manly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America. Jessamyn Neuhaus. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Embedded within the pages of American cookbooks, aspiring chefs find cultural messages...

Words at War: World War II Era Radio Drama and the Postwar Broadcasting Industry Blacklist.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... Words at War: World War II Era Radio Drama and the Postwar Broadcasting Industry Blacklist. Howard Blue. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002. The efforts of radio dramatists to persuade their fellow countrymen that Allied victory in the...

The Emperor's Old Groove: Decolonizing Disney's Magic Kingdom.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... The Emperor's Old Groove: Decolonizing Disney's Magic Kingdom. Ed. Brenda Ayers. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. While the Disney corporation has been castigated for its ideological complicity with the most noxious aspects of capitalism, its...

The Tour to End All Tours: The Story of Major League Baseball's 1913-1914 World Tour.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... The Tour to End All Tours: The Story of Major League Baseball's 1913-1914 World Tour. James E. Elfers. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. James E. Elfers contributes significantly to popular culture with this readable,...

From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural. Lynn Schofield Clark. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Relative to its ideological importance, religion has been woefully underacknowledged in studies of popular...

I Was a Cold War Monster: Horror Films, Eroticism and the Cold War Imagination.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... I Was a Cold War Monster: Horror Films, Eroticism and the Cold War Imagination. Cyndy Hendershot. Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 2001. Monsters. The Cold War imagination was full of them. They came forth from outer space (It Came from...