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The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption
By Daniel Herwitz. 2008
Princess Diana, Jackie O, Grace Kelly—the star icon is the most talked about yet least understood persona. The object of…
adoration, fantasy, and cult obsession, the star icon is a celebrity, yet she is also something more: a dazzling figure at the center of a media pantomime that is at once voyeuristic and zealously guarded. With skill and humor, Daniel Herwitz pokes at the gears of the celebrity-making machine, recruiting a philosopher's interest in the media, an eye for society, and a love of popular culture to divine our yearning for these iconic figures and the role they play in our lives.Herwitz portrays the star icon as caught between transcendence and trauma. An effervescent being living on a distant, exalted planet, the star icon is also a melodramatic heroine desperate to escape her life and the ever-watchful eye of the media. The public buoys her up and then eagerly watches her fall, her collapse providing a satisfying conclusion to a story sensationally told—while leaving the public yearning for a rebirth.Herwitz locates this double life in the opposing tensions of film, television, religion, and consumer culture, offering fresh perspectives on these subjects while ingeniously mapping society's creation (and destruction) of these special aesthetic stars. Herwitz has a soft spot for popular culture yet remains deeply skeptical of public illusion. He worries that the media distances us from even minimal insight into those who are transfigured into star icons. It also blinds us to the shaping of our political present.Sports Spectators
By Allen Guttmann. 1986
In his previous books Allen Guttmann has provided incisive perspectives on Avery Brundage's role in the Olympic movement and on…
the nature of modern sports. Now, in his latest book, the accomplished historian of sport turns his attention from the playing field to the grandstand. Sports Spectators, the first historical study of the subject from antiquity to today, is at once erudite and entertaining; comprehensive and succint.Guttmann first examines the history of sports spectators, starting with Ancient Greece and Rome. He then moves on to the Renaissance and traces three early sports -the tournament, archery, and early versions of football. The author then focuses on the emergenece of sports in post-Renaissance England, and discusses the curious spectacle of animal sports (bear- and bull-baiting and cockfighting), as well as the first appearance of combat sports such as sword fighting, stick fighting, and boxing. The book concludes its historical view by exploring contemporary baseball, football, rowing, tennis, and golf.From his chronological narrative, Guttmann shifts to detailed analysis of the economic, sociological, and psychological aspects of sports spectatorship. Who were, and are, sports spectators? What is their gender and social class? Have they normally been participants as well as fans? What are the political functions of sports-watching? What are the social dynamics of spectatorship?Guttmann provides fresh insights which will be useful to scholars and fascinating to everyone. Sports Spectators also looks at the dramatic transformations radio and television have made, and offers an incisive critique of today's sports-related violence, including the increasingly frequent incidences of spectator hooliganism. How violent (or peaceful) have spectators traditionally been? Has spectator violence increased or decreased?You needn't be a season ticket-holder to enjoy Sports Spectators. Allen Guttmann makes the history of fandom come alive for any reader interested in Western culture and what forms of entertainment reveal about us, as well as those concerned with the recent growth of spectator violence.What is the sentimental? How can we understand it by way of the visual and narrative modes of signification specific…
to cinema and through the manners of social interaction and collective imagining specific to a particular culture in transition? What can the sentimental tell us about the precarious foundations of human coexistence in this age of globalization? Rey Chow explores these questions through nine contemporary Chinese directors (Chen Kaige, Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yimou, Ann Hui, Peter Chan, Wayne Wang, Ang Lee, Li Yang, and Tsai Ming-liang) whose accomplishments have become historic events in world cinema. Approaching their works from multiple perspectives, including the question of origins, nostalgia, the everyday, feminine "psychic interiority," commodification, biopolitics, migration, education, homosexuality, kinship, and incest, and concluding with an account of the Chinese films' epistemic affinity with the Hollywood blockbuster Brokeback Mountain, Chow proposes that the sentimental is a discursive constellation traversing affect, time, identity, and social mores, a constellation whose contours tends to morph under different historical circumstances and in different genres and media. In contemporary Chinese films, she argues, the sentimental consistently takes the form not of revolution but of compromise, not of radical departure but of moderation, endurance, and accommodation. By naming these films sentimental fabulations-screen artifacts of cultural becoming with irreducible aesthetic, conceptual, and speculative logics of their own-Chow presents Chinese cinema first and foremost as an invitation to the pleasures and challenges of critical thinking.The Scandal of Susan Sontag (Gender and Culture Series)
By Barbara Ching, Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor. 2009
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) spoke of the promiscuity of art and literature-the willingness of great artists and writers to scandalize their…
spectators through critical frankness, complexity, and beauty. Sontag's life and thought were no less promiscuous. She wrote deeply and engagingly about a range of subjects-theater, sex, politics, novels, torture, and illness-and courted celebrity and controversy both publicly and privately. Throughout her career, she not only earned adulation but also provoked scorn. Her living was the embodiment of scandal.In this collection, Terry Castle, Nancy K. Miller, Wayne Koestenbaum, E. Ann Kaplan, and other leading scholars revisit Sontag's groundbreaking life and work. Against Interpretation, "Notes on Camp," Letter from Hanoi, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, I, Etcetera, and The Volcano Lover-these works form the center of essays no less passionate and imaginative than Sontag herself. Debating questions raised by the thinker's own images and identities, including her sexuality, these works question Sontag's status as a female intellectual and her parallel interest in ambitious and prophetic fictional women; her ambivalence toward popular culture; and her personal and professional "scandals." Paired with rare photographs and illustrations, this timely anthology expands our understanding of Sontag's images and power.From the beginning of the American Occupation in 1945 to the post-bubble period of the early 1990s, popular music provided…
Japanese listeners with a much-needed release, channeling their desires, fears, and frustrations into a pleasurable and fluid art. Pop music allowed Japanese artists and audiences to assume various identities, reflecting the country's uncomfortable position under American hegemony and its uncertainty within ever-shifting geopolitical realities. In the first English-language study of this phenomenon, Michael K. Bourdaghs considers genres as diverse as boogie-woogie, rockabilly, enka, 1960s rock and roll, 1970s new music, folk, and techno-pop. Reading these forms and their cultural import through music, literary, and cultural theory, he introduces readers to the sensual moods and meanings of modern Japan. As he unpacks the complexities of popular music production and consumption, Bourdaghs interprets Japan as it worked through (or tried to forget) its imperial past. These efforts grew even murkier as Japanese pop migrated to the nation's former colonies. In postwar Japan, pop music both accelerated and protested the commodification of everyday life, challenged and reproduced gender hierarchies, and insisted on the uniqueness of a national culture, even as it participated in an increasingly integrated global marketplace. Each chapter in Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon examines a single genre through a particular theoretical lens: the relation of music to liberation; the influence of cultural mapping on musical appreciation; the role of translation in transmitting musical genres around the globe; the place of noise in music and its relation to historical change; the tenuous connection between ideologies of authenticity and imitation; the link between commercial success and artistic integrity; and the function of melodrama. Bourdaghs concludes with a look at recent Japanese pop music culture.Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture (Museum Meanings #Vol. 4)
By Eilean Hooper-Greenhill. 2000
This is a multi-disciplinary study that adopts an innovative and original approach to a highly topical question, that of meaning-making…
in museums, focusing its attention on pedagogy and visual culture.This work explores such questions as: How and why is it that museums select and arrange artefacts, shape knowledge, construct a view? How do museums produce values? How do active audiences make meaning from what they experience in museums? This stimulating book provokes debate and discussion on these topics and puts forward the idea of a new museum - the post-museum, which will challenge the familiar modernist museum. A must for students and professionals in the field.A Queerly Joyful Noise: Choral Musicking for Social Justice
By Julia Jules Bal n. 2017
A Queerly Joyful Noise examines how choral singing can be both personally transformative and politically impactful. As they blend their…
different voices to create something beautiful, LGBTIQ singers stand together and make themselves heard. Comparing queer choral performances to the uses of group singing within the civil rights and labor movements, Julia “Jules” Balén maps the relationship between different forms of oppression and strategic musical forms of resistance. She also explores the potential this queer communal space creates for mobilizing progressive social action. A proud member of numerous queer choruses, Balén draws from years of firsthand observations, archival research, and extensive interviews to reveal how queer chorus members feel shared vulnerability, collective strength, and even moments of ecstasy when performing. A Queerly Joyful Noise serves as a testament to the power of music, intimately depicting how participation in a queer chorus is more than a pastime, but a meaningful form of protest through celebration.Boy's Own: The Complete Fanzines 1986-92
By Frank Broughton. 2014
There’s a moment in Jack Kerouac’s 1962 autobiographical come-down novel ‘Big Sur’ where ‘the King of the Beats’ (a term…
he hated) comes face to face with “some sort of Beat Jesus”, an 18 year old proto-hippy “with a beard and crazy hair”, in San Francisco a good eight or nine years before Woodstock, and a forbearer of a subcultural, generational shift that arguably changed Western culture for good. Boys Own, the Complete Fanzines, 1986-92, has Big Sur moments peppered through the 1986-88 issues, as a small crew of West London football lads, clubbers, music freaks and blaggers start to realise that they’re not just near the centre of Acid House as it starts to emerge from the primordial soup of mid 80’s UK subculture, they and the faces around them are helping create it. Just as Kerouac refused to be dragged into the patchouli scented embrace of the idealistic movement he helped create, by Autumn 1988 the Boys Own central committee were already kicking back against the commercialised explosion in Acid House culture : The TV documentary crews lurking around raves were mocked, the first wave of mass market ravers in Top Shop bought smiley t shirts were famously branded ‘Teds’, the plain clothes coppers in bandanas and day glo laughed at. But whilst Kerouac’s bitterness against the hippies he’d helped create solidified into a destructive, reactionary, booze fuelled hatred, the Boys Own lot carried on throwing parties, dj ing and making records, always ready to have a laugh from the side lines at the assumed self-importance of those same activities. The Boys Own Fanzines, like Oz and International Times for the hippies, or Sniffing Glue and Vague for the punks, remain an invaluable collection of first hand accounts and sharp witted commentaries documenting the pre-history, moment of inception, and after-shocks of Acid House, one of the more exciting and important moments in our modern subcultural history.Master the skills and knowledge you need to succeed in the new Level 2 Diploma for Hair Professionals.Endorsed by City…
& Guilds as a quality resource supporting their new qualifications, this textbook is focused on the practical skills needed for your course. Written specifically for apprentices taking the new Hair Professional Standards, this book will be your guide as you work through your Apprenticeship and prepare for your end-point assessment.Packed with numerous step-by-step photos to demonstrate all Hair Professional techniques, for hairdressers and barbersInspires you with photographs and illustrations of the latest styles and techniquesHelps prepare you for the synoptic assessments with Test Your Knowledge questions and Practical Assignments at the end of each chapter, designed to test knowledge and understanding and help you to refine your practical skillsIdentifies opportunities for you to improve Maths and English skills throughout the courseProvides industry know-how as the author shares her knowledge and experience with Handy Hints and suggests helpful activities throughoutInspires you to be the best you can be with Industry Insight profiles of successful hair professionals for every chapterCovers all mandatory units, plus the 'Perming hair' optional unit, with the two further optional units available online:oHair relaxing treatments and techniquesoHair extension servicesComputer Models for Facial Beauty Analysis
By David Zhang, Fangmei Chen, Yong Xu. 2016
This book covers the key advances in computerized facial beauty analysis with an emphasis on data-driven research and the…
results of quantitative experiments It takes a big step toward practical facial beauty analysis proposes more reliable and stable facial features for beauty analysis and designs new models methods algorithms and schemes while implementing a facial beauty analysis and beautification system This book also tests some previous putative rules and models for facial beauty analysis by using computationally efficient mathematical models and algorithms especially large scale database-based and repeatable experiments The first section of this book provides an overview of facial beauty analysis The base of facial beauty analysis i e facial beauty features is presented in part two Part three describes hypotheses on facial beauty while part four defines data-driven facial beauty analysis models This book concludes with the authors explaining how to implement their new facial beauty analysis system This book is designed for researchers professionals and post graduate students working in the field of facial beauty analysis computer vision human-machine interface pattern recognition and biometrics Those involved in interdisciplinary fields with also find the contents useful The ideas means and conclusions for beauty analysis are valuable for researchers and the system design and implementation can be used as models for practitioners and engineersScoring Off the Field: Football Culture in Bengal, 1911–80 (South Asian History And Culture Ser.)
By Kausik Bandyopadhyay. 2011
This book examines how football, as a mass spectator sport, came to represent a novel, unique cultural identity of Bengali…
people in terms of nation, community, region/locality and club, contributing to the continuity of everyday socio-cultural life. It explains how football became a viable popular social force with a rare emotional spontaneity and peculiar self-expressive fan culture against the background of anti-imperial nationalist movement and postcolonial political tension and social transformation. In the process, it investigates certain key questions and problems in the social history of football in Bengal, which have hitherto been ignored in the existing works on the subject.The author offers some original arguments in treating football as a cultural phenomenon, setting it squarely in the context of Bengali politics and society. It strengthens the premise that social history of South Asian sport can be meaningfully understood only by looking beyond the sports field. The study, using sport as a lens, has tried to consider some relevant themes of social history, and brings forth important issues of political and cultural history of 20th-century Bengal. Simultaneously, it highlights the transformed role of football as an instrument of reaction, resistance and subversion. It indicates that the football field of Bengal proves to be a mirror image of what society experiences in its cultural and political field, through a series of historical projections of identity, difference and culture.Media & Culture: An Introduction To Mass Communication
By Richard Campbell, Bettina Fabos, Christopher R. Martin. 2019
While we all use digital technology daily, many of us don't realize how text, audio, and visual media converge together…
to enhance our everyday experiences. The new edition of Media & Culture: Mass Communication in a Digital Age enriches students' understanding of these experiences – a skill that has become more important than ever. Media & Culture starts with the digital world students know and then goes further, focusing on what these constant changes mean to them. Through new infographics, cross-reference pages, and a digital jobs feature, the book explains and illustrates how the media industries connect, interlock, and converge, Media & Culture brings together industry expertise, media history, and current trends for an engaging, exhilarating look at the media right now.The Skin Nerd: Your straight-talking guide to feeding, protecting & respecting your skin
By Jennifer Rock. 2018
'The skin is an organ and should be respected accordingly.'This is the mantra of award-winning skincare expert Jennifer Rock, also…
known as The Skin Nerd. We should feed our skin, shield it, and give it all the care and attention it needs - and deserves. in her first book, Jennifer shares all the passion, knowledge and expertise she has gathered over her extensive career to bring you the essential guide to healthy skin.Written in Jennifer's unique brand of humour and honesty, with nerd-isms galore, this book is jam-packed with 'skinformation' and advice to educate you about your skin needs at every stage of your life.It includes The 10 Skin Nerd Commandments, advice on anti-ageing, acne and other skin conditions, the benefits of a refreshing Spritz O'Clock, which skingredients to look out for (and which to avoid), and how your diet affects the body's largest organ. The Skin Nerd will teach you a holistic approach to looking after your skin inside and out, and give you the confidence to achieve glowing, healthy skin.'Jennifer is one of the most knowledgeable, honest and reliable experts I know and trust in the industry. A must read for anyone interested in proper skincare' Triona McCarthy, Sunday Independent Beauty Editor*Please note that this ebook is available in two formats. This reflowable format will render better for customers with earlier e-readers with monochrome, e-ink screens. (The fixed format editions is best suited to colour/tablet devices.) Both formats feature the same text content.*The Digital Edge: How Black and Latino Youth Navigate Digital Inequality (Connected Youth and Digital Futures #4)
By S. Craig Watkins, Vivian Shaw, Jacqueline Ryan Vickery, Alexander Cho, Andres Lombana-Bermudez, Lauren Weinzimmer. 2018
How black and Latino youth learn, create, and collaborate online The Digital Edge examines how the digital and social-media lives…
of low-income youth, especially youth of color, have evolved amidst rapid social and technological change. While notions of the digital divide between the “technology rich” and the “technology poor” have largely focused on access to new media technologies, the contours of the digital divide have grown increasingly complex. Analyzing data from a year‐long ethnographic study at Freeway High School, the authors investigate how the digital media ecologies and practices of black and Latino youth have adapted as a result of the wider diffusion of the internet all around us--in homes, at school, and in the palm of our hands. Their eager adoption of different technologies forge new possibilities for learning and creating that recognize the collective power of youth: peer networks, inventive uses of technology, and impassioned interests that are remaking the digital world. Relying on nearly three hundred in-depth interviews with students, teachers, and parents, and hundreds of hours of observation in technology classes and after school programs, The Digital Edge carefully documents some of the emergent challenges for creating a more equitable digital and educational future. Focusing on the complex interactions between race, class, gender, geography and social inequality, the book explores the educational perils and possibilities of the expansion of digital media into the lives and learning environments of low-income youth. Ultimately, the book addresses how schools can support the ability of students to develop the social, technological, and educational skills required to navigate twenty-first century life. Relying on nearly three hundred in-depth interviews with students, teachers, and parents, and hundreds of hours of observation in technology classes and after school programs, The Digital Edge carefully documents some of the emergent challenges for creating a more equitable digital and educational future. Focusing on the complex interactions between race, class, gender, geography and social inequality, the book explores the educational perils and possibilities of the expansion of digital media into the lives and learning environments of low-income youth. Ultimately, the book addresses how schools can support the ability of students to develop the social, technological, and educational skills required to navigate twenty-first century life.Understanding Popular Music Culture
By Roy Shuker. 2016
This extensively revised and expanded fifth edition of Understanding Popular Music Culture provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the…
production, distribution, consumption and meaning of popular music, and the debates that surround popular culture and popular music. Reflecting the continued proliferation of popular music studies, the new music industry in a digital age, and the emergence of new stars, this new edition has been reorganized and extensively updated throughout, making for a more coherent and sequenced coverage of the field. These updates include: two new chapters entitled 'The Real Thing': Authenticity, covers and the canon and 'Time Will Pass You By': Histories and popular memory new case studies on artists including The Rolling Stones, Lorde, One Direction and Taylor Swift further examples of musical texts, genres, and performers throughout including additional coverage of Electronic Dance Music expanded coverage on the importance of the back catalogue and the box set; reality television and the music biopic greater attention to the role and impact of the internet and digital developments in relation to production, dissemination, mediation and consumption; including the role of social network sites and streaming services each chapter now has its own set of expanded references to facilitate further investigation. Additional resources for students and teachers can also be found on the companion website (www.routledge.com/cw/shuker), which includes additional case studies, links to relevant websites and a discography of popular music metagenres.Speaking with Pictures: Folk Art and the Narrative Tradition in India (Critical Asian Studies)
By Roma Chatterji. 2012
Speaking with Pictures offers a path-breaking exploration of visual narratives in folk art. It foregrounds folk art’s engagement with modernity…
by re-looking at its figurative modes and the ways in which they are embedded in mythic thought. The book discusses folk art as a contemporary phenomenon which is a part of a complex visual culture where the ‘essence’ of tradition is best captured in a ‘new’ form or medium. Each chapter picks up a theme that moves between the local and the global, thereby attempting to problematise the stereotypical view of folk artists as carriers of ‘timeless tradition’. The volume provides an ethnographic account of innovations through a detailed analysis of the scroll painting tradition of the patuas of West Bengal and the Pardhan-Gond style of Madhya Pradesh, highlighting some recent attempts at inter-medium exchange in storytelling.The book will interest those in visual and popular culture in anthropology, sociology, literary criticism and folklore. It will also be of immense value to art historians, museologists, curators and NGOs working in media and communication, apart from those with a general interest in folk art.Children and Television Consumption in the Digital Era: Use, Impact and Regulation
By Barrie Gunter. 2021
Children and Television Consumption in the Digital Era provides a comprehensive analysis of contemporary research on the developmental impact of…
children’s screen engagement in modern society. Barrie Gunter explores how the world of television has evolved to become almost unrecognisable from the broadcast landscapes present over the last years of the 20th century. This key text considers how screen-based entertainment has become increasingly interactive, and how children have become accustomed to creating their own television schedules through streamed services. It explores key topics including screen experiences and the manifestation of prosocial and antisocial behaviour, advertising and the development of consumerism, and the evidence of screen time on a child’s health and school performance. Gunter insightfully assesses television content that children are exposed to and its impact on cognitive and behavioural development. Featuring commentary on the challenges regulators face to keep up with rapidly developing screen technologies and suggestions on how parents can mediate their children’s screen behaviour, this text is an essential read for researchers and students taking courses in child development, family studies, broadcasting and communication.This book is the first comprehensive attempt to identify the deeper causes that have shaped contemporary behaviour patterns and motivations…
among football fans in Poland. Fan culture in Poland has long been based on a distinctively grassroots, spontaneous movements that ruled out any cooperation with local authorities and sports organizations. The activity of supporter groups has regularly failed to meet the principles set by official bodies, intentionally breaching the moral and legal standards of the day. Based on data derived from ethnographic fieldwork, content analysis of fan journals, magazines, social media and online forums, as well as a wide range of qualitative interviews conducted over the years, the book analyses the ways in which fandom culture in Poland has evolved: from its moderate beginnings in the shadows of a communist regime in the 1970’s, through the anomic, ‘uncivilized’ and pathological decade of the 1990’s, to the peculiar culture based on strong cohesion, capabilities of social mobilization and emerging 'resistance identity' in the 21st century. It thus provides a detailed analysis of Polish fandom’s multi-dimensional structure, and will be of interest to students and academics interested in the growing field of football research, as well as those researching the transformation of Central and Eastern Europe, or more generally in European Studies.A thought-provoking and much-needed look at how modern masculinity is harming and holding back men—and all of society—and what we…
can do to promote a new masculinity that allows men of all ages to thrive. In Better Boys, Better Men, cultural critic and New York Times contributor Andrew Reiner argues that men today are working on an outdated model of masculinity, which prevents them in moments of distress and vulnerability from marshalling the courage, strength, and resiliency—the very characteristics we regularly champion in men—they need to thrive in a world vastly different from the ones their fathers and grandfathers grew up in. According to Reiner, this outdated model of manhood can have devastating effects on the entire culture and, especially boys and men, from falling behind in the classroom and rising male unemployment rates to increased levels of depression and disturbing upticks in violence on a mass scale. Reiner interviews boys and men of all ages, educators, counselors, therapists, and physicians throughout the United States to better understand what factors are preventing the country’s boys and men from developing the emotional resiliency they need. He also introduces readers to the boys and men at the vanguard of a new masculinity that empowers them to find and express the full range of their humanity. Urgent and necessary, Better Boys, Better Men will change the way we talk about boys and men in America today.The Way We Wed: A Global History of Wedding Fashion
By Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell. 2020
For fashion buffs, romantics, and brides-to-be, a fascinating collection of wedding garb and glamour through pop culture and history.The Way…
We Wed: A History of Wedding Fashion presents styles and stories from the Renaissance to the present day, chronicling evolving fashions, classes, and expectations. And because all wedding attire has a tale to tell, The Way We Wed also reveals fascinating personal stories of those who wore it.While the book is a rich source of bridal inspiration for all seasons, it's far from a monotonous parade of white gowns. The Way We Wed showcases wedding gowns of all colors and styles from around the world, as well as going-away dresses, accessories (shoes, veils, hats, and tiaras), and clothes worn by flower girls, bridesmaids, mothers of the bride, and grooms. Same-sex weddings are represented along with royal weddings, wartime brides, White House weddings, remarriage, Hollywood weddings, and more. The book features celebrity and historical couples as well as everyday people. A few of the included names:Angelina JolieFrida KahloElizabeth TaylorPrincess DianaMartha WashingtonSolange KnowlesEllen DeGeneresMeghan MarkleIllustrated with 100 gorgeous photos, The Way We Wed is a rich celebration of the art of wedding fashion across time and cultures, and those whose style and circumstances made a statement.