Popular culture Books

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book is the first study of how ‘weird fiction’ emerged from Victorian supernatural literature, abandoning the more conventional Gothic horrors of the past for the contemporary weird tale. It investigates the careers and fiction of a range of the British writers who inspired H. P. Lovecraft, such as Arthur Machen, M. P. Shiel, and John Buchan, to shed light on the tensions between ‘literary’ and ‘genre’ fiction that continue to this day. Weird Fiction in Britain 1880–1939 focuses on the key literary and cultural contexts of weird fiction of the period, including Decadence, paganism, and the occult, and discusses how these later impacted on the seminal American pulp magazine Weird Tales. This ground-breaking book will appeal to scholars of weird, horror and Gothic fiction, genre studies, Decadence, popular fiction, the occult, and Fin-de-Siècle cultural history. Trade Review“Weird Fiction in Britain is certainly worth reading for any fan or student of the weird/gothic tale of the 19th century, as the mass of detail that went into this study is overwhelming, … .” (A. Ebert, popcultureshelf.com, March 29, 2019)Table of Contents1. Introduction.2. The Weird Fin-De-Siècle and After.3. Shiel, Stenbock, Gilchrist, and Machen.4. Buchan.5. Weird Tales and Pulp Decadence.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis edited collection from leading scholars in the fields of media, communications, cultural studies and a number of aligned areas looks to the intersection of capitalism, crime and the media. The text is founded on the principles of cultural criminology – that how we determine and understand crime lies in the social world and that the determination of crime and its mediation in popular culture have a political basis. The book consists of eleven chapters and is divided into three sections. Section one considers the intersection of crime and capitalism in a range of contemporary cultural texts. Section two examines how various power systems influence the operation of the media in its role of reporting crime and holding the powerful to account. Section three considers how texts in a variety of formats are used to conduct politics, communicate politics and enact political decision making. Table of Contents1.​ Introduction2. ‘Grabbing and Keeping’: Deadwood—The Origin of Specie3. ‘Rosie’s Room’ and ‘Bullet’s Phone’: The Commodification of the Lost Girl in The Killing and Its Paratexts4. Noir Tourism and the Black Dahlia Murder5. Reporting Crime and Capitalism: Techniques of Neutralisation in a Corpus of Corporate Fraud News6. Think Tanks, News Sources and Neo-liberal News Discourse: Off-shoring Power and Influence7. Friends in High Places: Sexual Abuse, Power and the Corruptions of Jimmy Savile8. From Chopping Trees to Destroying Capitalism: A Social Etymology of Hacking9. The Loyalist Community of Northern Ireland: From Cultural Defenders to Subcultural Offenders? A Cultural Criminology Exploration10. Activist Media, Social Media and Mediated Republican Deviance in the Northern Irish Peace Process11. Save the Troll! UK Social Media Legislation and the Attack on Freedom of Speech

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book presents chapters that have been brought together to consider the multitude of ways that post-2000 popular music impacts on our cultures and experiences. The focus is on misogyny, toxic masculinity, and heteronormativity. The authors of the chapters consider these three concepts in a wide range of popular music styles and genres; they analyse and evaluate how the concepts are maintained and normalized, challenged, and rejected. The interconnected nature of these concepts is also woven throughout the book. The book also seeks to expand the idea of popular music as understood by many in the West to include popular music genres from outside western Europe and North America that are often ignored (for example, Bollywood and Italian hip hop), and to bring in music genres that are inarguably popular, but also sit under other labels such as rap, metal, and punk.Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1 : Should Real Love Hurt? The Eroticisation of Dominance, Submission and Coercive Control in Contemporary Pop Music Chapter 2: Featuring…Nicki Minaj Chapter 3 : Misogyny and Erotic Pleasure in Bollywood’s “Item Numbers” Chapter 4 : From Pimpology to Pimpologia: A Comparative Analysis of Pimp Rap in the United States and Italy Chapter 5 : How Female is the Future? Undoing Sexism in Contemporary Metal Music Chapter 6 : See the Signs—Justin Timberlake and the Pretence of Romance Chapter 7: Immortal Technique and the Radical Reimagining of Masculinity on the Street Chapter 8 : The Initiation: Re-negotiating Masculinity in Queer Music Video Chapter 9 : Let It Enfold You: Screaming, Masculinity, and the Loss of Emotional Control in Post-millennium Emo Chapter 10 : The Power of Boy Pussy: The Dichotomy Between Liberation and Objectification in Queer Hip-Hop/Rap in the 2000s Chapter 11 : “All Of My Life, Just Like I Was One Of Them”: Trans itioning Punk Chapter 12 : Lady Lazarus: The Death (and Rebirth) of a Gender Revolutionary Chapter 13 : Like a Lollipop: Toxic Masculinity and Female Sexual Pleasure in Hip-Hop Afterword

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book analyzes sensationalized Nazi and Holocaust representations in Anglo-American cultural and political discourses. Recognizing that this history is increasingly removed from contemporary life, it explains how irreverent representations can help rejuvenate the story for successive generations of new learners. Surveying seventy-five-years of transatlantic activities, the work erects counterposing categorizes of “constructive and destructive memorializing,” providing scholars with a new framework for elucidating both this history and its historicization.Table of ContentsChapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: The Nuremberg Narrative: Fashioning a Liberalized Anglo-American Holocaust MemorializationChapter 3: The Americanization of the Holocaust: Expressions of Cultural and Political MemorializationChapter 4: Why All the Swastikas?: UK Rock Stars’ Nazi/Holocaust Encounters, 1960s-1980sChapter 5: No Soup For You!: Responsible and Irresponsible Holocaust Humor on American SitcomsChapter 6: Irreverent Instruction: Considering New Approaches in Twenty-First Century European and American Holocaust EducationChapter 7: That is Really Meme: Nazifying Pepe the Frog and the Subversion of Anglo-American Holocaust MemorializationChapter 8: Conclusion

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book explores the representation of London’s nightlife in popular films and newspapers of the interwar period. Through a series of case-studies, it analyses how British popular media in the 1920s and 1930s displayed the capital after dark. It argues that newspapers and films were part of a common culture, which capitalized on the transgressive possibilities of the night. At the same time both media ensured that those in authority, such as the police, were always shown to ultimately be in control of the night. The first chapter of the book provides an overview of the British film and newspaper industries in the interwar period. Subsequent chapters each explore a specific aspect of London’s nightlife. In turn, these chapters consider how films and newspapers of the interwar period depicted women navigating the street at night; the Metropolitan Police’s involvement in nightlife; and the capital’s newly built and expanded suburbs and public transport network. Finally, the book considers how newspapers and films depicted themselves and one another. Trade Review“One of the most impressive aspects of Interwar London After Dark is its catalogue of interwar films. … This makes the book an important resource, as readers will learn about films they might not have heard about otherwise.” (Michael McCluskey, The London Journal, August 29, 2023)Table of Contents1. Introduction: ‘Dancing Goes On Until Dawn’.2. Interwar London: Nights, Newspapers, Films.3. Women On The Night-Time Streets.4. The Metropolitan Police in Interwar Film and Newspapers.5. Suburbs and Public Transport at Night.6. Mirror Image: Newspapers and Films Reflecting Each Other.7. Conclusion.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this comprehensive study of The Stars My Destination, D. Harlan Wilson makes a case for the continued significance of Alfred Bester’s SF masterwork, exploring its distinctive style, influences, intertextuality, affect, and innovation as well as its extensive metafictional properties. In Stars, Bester established himself as a son of the pulp-SF and high-modernist writers that preceded him and a forefather to the New Wave and cyberpunk movements that followed his lead. Wilson’s study depicts Bester as an SF insider as much as an outlier, writing in the spirit of the genre but breaking with the fixation on hard science in favor of psychological interiority, literary experimentation, and adult themes. The book combines close-readings of the novel with broader concerns about contemporary media, technoculture, and the current state of SF itself. In Wilson’s view, SF is a moribund artform, and Stars foresaw the inevitable science fictionalization of our benighted world. With scholarly lucidity and precision, Wilson shows us that Stars pointed the way to what we have (un)become. Table of Contents1. INTRODUCTION 2. SYNOPSIS 3. CHAPTER ONE: Cyberpunk Previsions and Literary Influences 4. CHAPTER TWO: The Frankenstein Riff 5. CHAPTER THREE: Architectures of Psyche, Power, and Patriarchy 6. CHAPTER FOUR: Speaking in Gutter Tongues 7. CODA

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less