Pop Culture Goes to War, by Geoff Martin and Erin Steuter, explores the persistence of and opposition to militarism in American life. It provides a comprehensive overview of the role of toys, video games, music, television and movies in supporting contemporary militarism. Resistance to militarism is highlighted through the traditional mediums of music and movies, and increasingly through the arts, 'culture jamming,' and the satire of The Daily Show, The Onion, The Simpsons, The Colbert Report, and South Park.
Covering many aspects of the Vietnam War that have not been addressed before, this book supplies new perspectives from academics as well as Vietnam veterans that explore how this key conflict of the 20th century has influenced everyday life and popular culture during the war as well as for the past 50 years. How did the experience of the Vietnam War change the United States, not just in the 1950s through the 1970s, but through to today? What role do popular music and movies play in how we think of the Vietnam War? How similar are the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—and now Syria—to the Vietnam War in terms of duration, cost, success and failure rates, and veteran issues? This two-volume set addresses these questions and many more, examining how the Vietnam War has been represented in media, music, and film, and how American popular culture changed because of the war. Accessibly written and appropriate for students and general readers, this work documents how the war that occurred on the other side of the globe in the jungles of Vietnam impacted everyday life in the United States and influenced various entertainment modes. It not only covers the impact of the counterculture revolution, popular music about Vietnam recorded while the war was being fought (and after), and films made immediately following the end of the war in the 1970s, but also draws connections to more modern events and popular culture expressions, such as films made in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Attention is paid to the impact of social movements like the environmental movement and the civil rights movement and their relationships to the Vietnam War. The set will also highlight how the experiences and events of the Vietnam War are still impacting current generations through television shows such as Mad Men.
This is the first comprehensive study of popular culture in twentieth-century China, and of its political impact during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 (known in China as "The War of Resistance against Japan"). Chang-tai Hung shows in compelling detail how Chinese resisters used a variety of popular cultural forms—especially dramas, cartoons, and newspapers—to reach out to the rural audience and galvanize support for the war cause. While the Nationalists used popular culture as a patriotic tool, the Communists refashioned it into a socialist propaganda instrument, creating lively symbols of peasant heroes and joyful images of village life under their rule. In the end, Hung argues, the Communists' use of popular culture contributed to their victory in revolution.
From the New York Times bestselling author of How We Got To Now and Farsighted Forget everything you’ve ever read about the age of dumbed-down, instant-gratification culture. In this provocative, unfailingly intelligent, thoroughly researched, and surprisingly convincing big idea book, Steven Johnson draws from fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and media theory to argue that the pop culture we soak in every day—from Lord of the Rings to Grand Theft Auto to The Simpsons—has been growing more sophisticated with each passing year, and, far from rotting our brains, is actually posing new cognitive challenges that are actually making our minds measurably sharper. After reading Everything Bad is Good for You, you will never regard the glow of the video game or television screen the same way again. With a new afterword by the author.
Militainment, Inc. offers provocative, sometimes disturbing insight into the ways that war is presented and viewed as entertainment—or "militainment"—in contemporary American popular culture. War has been the subject of entertainment for centuries, but Roger Stahl argues that a new interactive mode of militarized entertainment is recruiting its audience as virtual-citizen soldiers. The author examines a wide range of historical and contemporary media examples to demonstrate the ways that war now invites audiences to enter the spectacle as an interactive participant through a variety of channels—from news coverage to online video games to reality television. Simply put, rather than presenting war as something to be watched, the new interactive militainment presents war as something to be played and experienced vicariously. Stahl examines the challenges that this new mode of militarized entertainment poses for democracy, and explores the controversies and resistant practices that it has inspired. This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between war and media, and it sheds surprising light on the connections between virtual battlefields and the international conflicts unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
"In Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, Eric Avila offers a unique argument about the restructuring of urban space in the two decades following World War II and the role played by new suburban spaces in dramatically transforming the political culture of the United States. Avila's work helps us see how and why the postwar suburb produced the political culture of 'balanced budget conservatism' that is now the dominant force in politics, how the eclipse of the New Deal since the 1970s represents not only a change of views but also an alteration of spaces."—George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness
A collection of analyses focusing on popular culture as a profound discursive site of anxiety and discussion about 9/11 and demystifies the day's events.
Introduction -- American Girls and National Identity -- Fighting Femininity on Home Soil in Civil War Films, 1908 to -- American Revolution and Other Wars -- Featuring Preparedness and Peace; or, America and the European War, Part I -- From Serial Queens to Patriotic Heroines; or, America and the European War, Part II -- The American Girl and Wartime Patriotism -- Conclusion.
Contents tourism is tourism induced by the contents (narratives, characters, locations and other creative elements) of films, novels, games, manga, anime, television dramas and other forms of popular culture. Amidst the boom in global interest in Japanese popular culture, the utilization of popular culture to induce tourism domestically and internationally has been central to the "Cool Japan" strategy and, since 2005, government policy for local community revitalization. This book presents four main case studies of contents tourism: the phenomenon of "anime pilgrimage" to sites appearing in animated film; the travel behaviours and "pop-spiritualism" of female history fans to heritage sites; the collaboration between local community, fans and copyright holders that underpinned an anime-induced tourism boom in a small town north of Tokyo; and the large-scale economic impacts of tourism induced by NHK’s annual samurai period drama (Taiga Drama). It is the first major collection of articles published in English about media-induced tourism in Japan using the "contents tourism" approach. This book will be of particular interest to students and researchers of media and tourism studies in Asia. This book was previously published as a special issue of Japan Forum.
Surveying a range of topics, this lively and informative survey provides an up-to-date, thematic global history of popular culture focusing on the period since the end of the Second World War.
