Journal of Popular Culture articles from November 1 2003

Journal of Popular Culture archives from November 1 2003

Editorial: "the story of popular culture".
November 1, 2003... AN IMPORTANT (AND PLEASING) RECENT DEVELOPMENT AT MANY colleges and universities is the creation and expansion of courses devoted to the scholarly study of popular culture. My home institution of Michigan State University is no exception, and...

Owen Keane, failure and detective.
November 1, 2003... "FAILURE WAS THE THEME OF MY RESUME," OWEN KEANE SAYS IN Orion Rising, the most recent full-length novel in the detective series written by Terence Faherty of Indianapolis. "I'd never held an important job or any job for very long. They...

TV.com: participatory viewing on the Web.
November 1, 2003... TODAY WE ARE ON THE BRINK OF THE WIDESPREAD ADOPTION OF SOME form of hybrid Web-TV technology, a convergence that will bring about fundamental changes in how we think about television and its audience. The resultant device will represent more...

The many lives of Captain Canuck: nationalism, culture, and the creation of a Canadian comic book superhero.
November 1, 2003... CANADA FINALLY HAS HER OWN HONEST-TO-GOODNESS COMIC MAGAZINE, with Canada's very own superhero--Captain Canuck!" (C.C. 1). (1) Captain Canuck's 1975 release was the first Canadian comic book success since the collapse of the Second World War...

In dubious battle: Vietnam's "infectious phantasmagoria".
November 1, 2003... THE CROSS PURPOSES, OBFUSCATION, AND DUPLICITY THAT UNDERMINED our best Vietnam intentions from the 1940s onward had a curious footnote in 2001. A Mount Holyoke history professor whose honors included a National Book Award and a Pulitzer...

Seeking authenticity in the marketplace.
November 1, 2003... USING BACKES'S ARTICLE ON THE SHOPPING MALL AS A STARTING POINT, this article compares the retail experience in malls with that in other types of venues; namely, craft fairs, specialty stores (specifically, surf shops), and sidewalk vendors....

"Beer, glorious beer": gender politics and Australian popular culture.
November 1, 2003... "Beer is a religion in Australia," Sydney journalist and author Cyril Pearl declared in 1969. It was "more important to the media than the more conventional religions," and "similarly enveloped in myths." The first of these was that...

Transnational commodities as local cultural icons: Barbie dolls in Mexico.
November 1, 2003... THE TRANSFORMATION OF NORTH AMERICAN IMAGES AND PRODUCTS into transnational commodities and their circulation around the world in a process of globalization has raised concerns about the homogenization of cultures. This research explores how...

I am Canadian: national identity in beer commercials.
November 1, 2003... OCCASIONALLY A TELEVISION COMMERCIAL CAUSES SOCIAL, POLITICAL, and business ramifications way beyond anyone's initial expectations. In March 2000, a sixty-second television beer commercial became an overnight phenomenon. For approximately...

Till death do us part: the consumptive Victorian heroine in popular romantic fiction.
November 1, 2003... It is commonly known that deathbed scenes abound in Victorian fiction, so it should not be surprising that consumption--or tuberculosis (TB) as it is now known, which accounted for a quarter of all actual deaths in Victorian Britain--should...

Branding the American family: a strategic study of the culture, composition, and consumer behavior of families in the new millennium.
November 1, 2003... Introduction FOR MOST AMERICANS, FAMILY MEANS THE INFRASTRUCTURE SHAPING their life's journey in one way or another from the cradle to the grave. Whatever form it takes, family provides the earliest experiences of nurturing, security,...

Hell's angels and the illusion of the counterculture.
November 1, 2003... ON DECEMBER 6, 1969, MEREDITH HUNTER, AN EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD black man, lay stabbed to death on the dusty grounds of the Altamont Speedway just outside of Tracy, California. One of the thousands of young people at the speedway for a free...

The Cinema of Generation X: a Critical Study.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Peter Hanson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002. With his newest book, critic, filmmaker, and journalist Peter Hanson presents a serious, informative examination of filmmakers of Generation X, whom Hansen identifies as filmmakers born...

The Moose That Roared: the Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Keith Scott. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2001. This review begins with a disclaimer: growing up in northern New Jersey in the early 1960s, I was a devoted fan of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and his daft but loyal friend, Bullwinkle J....

Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Nicholson Baker. New York: Random House, 2001. If you have ever worked with scratched, blurry, poorly photographed microfilm of an old newspaper or magazine and had the sinking feeling that you were perhaps looking at the best extant copy...

When Law Goes Pop: the Vanishing Line Between Law and Popular Culture.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Richard K. Sherwin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. We begin with a startling proposition: law has entered the age of images. Legal reality can be understood only by knowing what appears on the screen. Something is up. ...

Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports, and the American Dream.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Ed. Joseph Dorinson and Joram Warmund. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998. This collection of twenty-three essays and the texts of two short addresses represents a selection of presentations made at the April 3-5, 1997 conference on the...

The Voice of the Dawn: an Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Frederick Matthew Wiseman. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001. Frederick Wiseman's The Voice of the Dawn is an important new study of native New England. From the very first page, Wiseman's "autohistory" reclaims the...

Vertical Margins: Mountaineering and the Landscapes of Neoimperialism.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Reuben Ellis. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001. In Vertical Margins, Reuben Ellis investigates the presence of empire in modern mountaineering exploration literature. As Western imperialism evolved, so too did the purpose and...

The South in Black and White: Race, Sex, and Literature in the 1940s.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... McKay Jenkins. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. While reading McKay Jenkins's book examining racial and sexual identities in the South of the 1940s, one realizes that being a white Southern author struggling with...

Inventing America: a History of the United States.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Pauline Maier, Merritt Roe Smith, Alexander Keyssar, and Daniel J. Kevles. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. Inventing America is the first survey of American history to give appropriate treatment to science, engineering, and technology. This...

Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880-1920.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Clifford Putney. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. With broad strokes and fine detail, Putney brings clarity and light to a relatively little-reported yet seminal movement in American history. Muscular Christianity carries the...

Talk Fiction: Literature and the Talk Explosion.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Irene Kacandes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. In Talk Fiction: Literature and the Talk Explosion, Irene Kacandes argues that contemporary talk radio and television programming have given rise to a new form of orality in...

The Satanic Screen: an Illustrated Guide to the Devil in Cinema.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Nikolas Schreck. London: Creation Books, 2001. The Satanic Screen is entry 17 in Creation Books's fine series on extreme cinema. It looks at how the Devil has been portrayed throughout the history of film. Satan's depiction in film dates...