Rich, Attractive People in Attractive Places Doing Attractive Things is a fictional memoir of a dead Manhattan socialite from the 1950's named Sunny Marcus. The novel is Sunny's monologue from Hell and features many well-known figures from American pop culture including Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Clark Gable, William Powell and Babe Paley. It traces the upward trajectory of Sunny's life from a modest childhood in 1920's Los Angeles to the heights of social success in the unforgiving world of Café Society to her murder.

When I was younger, shortly after my father died, my mother bought me a t-shirt that I loved and wore till it was worn out. On the shirt there was an image of a man, strapped into an electric chair, holding pieces of bread in each hand. A sign above him read, "Making the best of a bad situation." That statement became a mantra I held onto in the early years after my father's death. It still guides my personal philosophy---humor is key to survival. Particularly a type of humor that celebrates the fact that "shit happens", while highlighting and delighting in the irrational: who is the doomed man going to give the toast to once he is dead?

How did music play a consistent role through various memories? In this memoir, I look at the sweet, the traumatic and troubling. I use specific songs as connections to lost loved ones. I pin the power of music to the loss of three important people in my life: my sister, father, and mother. Who were their musical touchstones? Did I share them? Did music run through them as it has always run through me? The memoir is sandwiched by a brief extended metaphor that props up the conceit that we are entering a live concert performance. It is billed as a "letter to a lost loved one" because it is indeed meant to address that lost one, my sister, my guide. In the opening section I've lost my voice. I eventually reclaim it and vow that I will perhaps meet my sister at some point in the future.

In the tradition of academic satire, Lady Lazarus is the fictional biography of the daughter of American rock musicians. In her late teens she rises to fame as confessional poet, who, despite only publishing one collection of poems during her brief life, becomes an overnight sensation. Author Andrew Altschul is satirizing academia’s need to be a part of popular culture and in doing so, privileges the ability to use controversy and conventional beauty to sell books as opposed to creating quality art. By focusing on how the author uses Hans Robert Jauss’ horizons of expectations, unreliable narrators, anecdotes in biography and the economics of fame as a deciding factor in academia, the author has created a dense and punitive opinion of academia’s inclusion of popular culture into its world.

Cette thèse a pour objectif de questionner la présence de la figure napoléonienne, près de deux cents ans après la disparition de Napoléon Bonaparte (1769-1821), dans la production culturelle populaire francophone (littérature, bande dessinée, jeux vidéo, publicité) de la fin du XXe siècle et du début du XXIe siècle, sous l’angle de la mythocritique.Dans une démarche diachronique, sont préalablement évoquées les représentations de l’image napoléonienne aux XIXe et XXe siècles, à travers la littérature et la culture populaires (caricatures, chansons, images d’Épinal) afin de mettre en lumière la création du mythe de Napoléon et son évolution à travers les siècles. Nous avons fait le choix de suivre une approche synchronique, tout d'abord, en privilégiant l’étude comparée de romans francophones (uchronies, pastiches…) évoquant le personnage napoléonien. Notre corpus prend aussi en compte l’imagerie contemporaine, par le biais de divers exemples de bandes dessinées et de mangas japonais utilisant la figure de Napoléon Bonaparte, depuis les années 1969 (bicentenaire de sa naissance). Nous nous sommes donnés pour tâche d’illustrer et de documenter, le plus exhaustivement possible, cette présence du mythe afin de l’analyser et de pouvoir en dégager les mythèmes et motifs postmodernes qui la nourrissent.D’autres supports que la littérature populaire sont également convoqués car ils en constituent le vecteur : en effet, nous avons souhaité intégrer à nos travaux l’analyse de publicités ; l’image et la vidéo constituant indéniablement aujourd’hui, une des sources principales des représentations collectives et des mythes de la postmodernité. Dans le but de réaliser des recherches les plus exhaustives possibles, nous avons également souhaité, dans l’ultime chapitre de notre étude, interroger la présence (ou l’absence) de la figure napoléonienne dans les programmes de l’Éducation nationale ou encore les collections et expositions des musées. A travers l’étude approfondie de ce corpus, accompagnée d’un large panorama comprenant notamment l’analyse de la présence de la figure historique de Napoléon Bonaparte dans les jeux vidéo et sa représentation sur de nombreux sites internet, il a été question de mettre au jour les mythèmes-motifs-valeurs contemporains qui émergent aujourd’hui du personnage demeurant mythe, en France, deux cents ans après sa disparition. / The aim of this thesis is to question the presence of Napoleonic figure, nearly two hundred years after the death of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), in the popular and francophone cultural production (literature, comics, video games, advertising) of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, in terms of mythocritique.In a diachronic approach, are previously mentioned representations of Napoleonic image in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through literature and popular culture (cartoons, songs, images of Epinal) to highlight the creation of the myth of Napoleon and its evolution through the centuries.In a synchronic approach through, first of all, by the comparative study of French novels (uchronies, pastiches...) evoking the figure of Napoleon and then, at the heart of contemporary imagery, through various examples of comics and Japanese manga using the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte, from the years 1969 (bicentenary of his birth), we set ourselves the task of illustrating and documenting as thoroughly as possible the presence of myth in order to analyze and identify the postmodern mythemes that nourish.We are interested not only by popular literature but also other materials which constitute the vector of myth : in fact, we wanted to integrate into our work the advertising analysis; image and video undeniably constitute today a major source of collective representations and myths of postmodernity.In order to make possible the most extensive research, we also wanted in the final chapter of our study, questioning the presence (or absence) of Napoleonic figure in national Education programs or museum collections and exhibitions.Through in-depth study of this corpus, along with a wide panorama including in particular the analysis of the presence of the historical figure of Napoleon Bonaparte in video games and its representation on many websites, the matter was to expose contemporary mythemes and values emerging of the character, which is a myth today, in France, two hundred years after his death.

Orientador: Renata Coelho Marchezan / Banca: Arnaldo Cortina / Banca: Ivã Carlos Lopes / Resumo: Esta dissertação visa compreender os sistemas de significação da mídia popular contemporânea. São destacados, como corpus, textos sincréticos produzidos pela indústria cultural norteamericana: Comic books (chamados de histórias em quadrinhos - HQs - no Brasil). Como a proposta é examinar textos que apresentam o plano de expressão verbal conjugado ao plano de expressão visual (textos sincréticos), o arcabouço teórico baseia-se na teoria Semiótica francesa proposta por A. J. Greimas, uma vez que ocorrem desenvolvimentos consideráveis nos estudos semióticos de textos visuais, realizados a partir da teoria greimasiana. Percebe-se que as HQs, em sua maioria, continham temas infantis e que hoje existem várias HQs direcionadas para o público adulto. Com o objetivo de entender a estrutura e o contexto de produção das HQs produzidas para adultos destaca-se a série Sandman (que é produzida para leitores adultos) para análise. As personagens da série são figurativizações de mitos da Antigüidade Clássica. A dissertação pretende estudar a estrutura narrativa e discursiva do texto, e também a figuratividade e as categorias semi-simbólicas e tensivas no plano de expressão visual. Será discutida a intertextualidade que há entre a série Sandman e a literatura. Este trabalho também tenciona entender como os mitos da Antigüidade, com toda sua carga de significados, são projetados em simulacros passionais e reconstruídos pela indústria cultural contemporânea. A respeito dos mitos, é possível formular uma configuração semântica de natureza patêmica que instaura uma nova mitologia e influi tanto no campo cognitivo quanto no campo afetivo do leitor / Abstract: This dissertation intends to comprehend the systems of signification of the contemporary cultural industry about the point of view of greimasian semiotic theory. The objects selected, as corpus, are the syncretic texts produced for the north-american cultural industry: Comic books. The propose is to examine texts that presents the verbal plan of expression united with the visual plan of expression (syncretic texts), the theory choosed are the French semiotic propose by A. J. Greimas, because the studies about visual texts, realized for the greimasian theory, are in great development. The comic books, in great part, are characterized by infantile themes, but, nowadays, there are many comic books produced for mature readers. With the objective of to understand the structure and the production context of the comic books produced by mature readers, this work detaches, as corpus, the Sandman series (produced for mature readers), to the analysis. The characters of the series are figurative creations of myths of Classical Antiquity. The dissertation intends to study the narrative and the discursive structure of the text, and also the figurativity and the semi-symbolic categories and the tensive semiotics concepts in the visual plan of expression. Will be discussed the intertextuality between the Sandman series and the literature. This work aims to understand how the ancient myths, with all their content of meanings, are projected in passional simulacrums and reconstructed for the contemporary cultural industry. Concerning the myths, is possible to formulate a semantic configuration of passional nature that establishes a new mythology and influences in the cognition dimensions and also in the affection dimensions of the reader / Mestre

The miscommunication between sender and receiver during transcoding indexes specific historical moments similarly to analog film's indexical trace. Iconography and glitch art begin to establish glitch's deictic index. The glitch aesthetic exposes societal paranoia by illustrating dependence on the digital and fear of system failure. With the advent of video sharing sites like Youtube and popular cyberfilms, the glitch aesthetic has evolved into a pop culture artifact.

Although immensely popular with American boys upon his debut in 1938, Superman has gradually lost relevance with the postmodern generation. DC Comics has rewritten the character numerous times in an attempt to regain lost popularity, but the problem lies in an aspect of his character they refuse to alter – his invulnerability. Superman’s invulnerable body was engineered to quell the fears America harbored towards technological progress, but his impervious physique now renders him obsolete. Boys in postmodern America, under the influence of post-Enlightenment body values, now connect with vulnerable comic book heroes whose bodies more closely match their own. This paper examines the sociological reasons for the shift in Superman’s popularity by comparing the body values of 1938 with those of today, and concludes that while Superman might have succeeded as a modern hero, he fails as a postmodern one.

It was the best of cities, it was the worst of cities, it was a place of giddying boom, it was a place of economic despair, it was a utopia, it was a dystopic no-topia, it was the world centre of fantasies, and the world centre of nightmares, a town where some struck it rich while others lost themselves in their desires for wealth, in short, the place was so far unlike the present place, that some of the noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. This thesis is constructed of fragmented stories but not in the classic sense as there is no over-arching narrative, no beginning, middle and end, no synthetic conclusion. Rather this thesis is similar to Los Angeles itself; it is a multi-faceted exploration of competing themes that have birthed a city of fictions, a centre of fantasy, a place that shapes our collective memories, even for those of us who grew up in far-off places. Los Angeles has searched for a down-town core, a collective identity, a dominant narrative and these attempts are explored through different themes – the story of film noir, the development of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the redevelopment of Bunker Hill, the violence and upheavals of the riots. I have explored how the city has tried to re-brand itself, Through these prisms, and how these attempts have shaped its development and history. It is said that Los Angeles has an architecture of absence, with its superficiality and lack of depth, and as a visual metaphor, this can represent the giddy changes happening in the field of architecture, where hyper-realism trumps facts. This idea of Los Angeles as a mirror should not surprise: it has long been a world centre for myth-making, an epicenter of fiction, cinema, architecture, et cetera, spewing out seductive, grotesquely exaggerated reflections of North America itself.

<p>The aim of the essay is to investigate the style of the dialogue in the movie Pulp Fiction and also to see if and how it changes depending on the context of the movie. The intention is to do this within a sociopragmatic theoretical framework. The manuscript has been used, along with the DVD with the movie itself.</p>