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The Eighties were a time in Western popular music that seemed to exist only by virtue of it coming after something else---namely, the 1960s counterculture and the punk rock of the 1970s. Inheriting both the failure of permanent cultural revolution and the intense cynicism that is punk's strongest legacy, youth cultures in the 1980s found it increasingly difficult to live in the present. This thesis labels this historical dilemma postmodern. It will show how SPIN magazine attempted to move past this dilemma in order to assert a unique identity for 1980s popular music and youth cultures. In particular, John Leland, a columnist for SPIN, appropriated a pop aesthetic as an identity marker and, in the process, questioned the supposed ineffectiveness of pop music for a political postmodernism. An analysis of Leland's writing uncovers what accounts of this era tend to ignore: the social function of postmodernism.

This Master's thesis provides an analysis of the contemporary depiction of significant historical moments in U.S.-Japan relations in American cinematography, specifically in the films: The Last Samurai, Pearl Harbor, Letters from Iwo Jima, and Emperor. The analysis elaborates on theoretical stream of popular culture and world politics and most particularly on the popular geopolitics discipline. A discourse analysis is used as the research method, through which the three main aspects of popular geopolitics in the selected movies are followed - representational logics, affect, and intertextuality. The research goal is to tackle the question, how the historical milestones in U.S.-Japan relations are portrayed in the present and how their portrayal is linked to the current geopolitical context. The research shows that filmmakers usually try to offer a balanced view of both sides, which means there are positive and negative portrayals of both Japanese and American characters. Japanese villains are usually militarists, which is in line with the postwar narrative of the American Occupation administration. The trend of negative portrayal of Americans has been strengthened only recently due to controversies related to the War on Terror. The main finding, however, is the fact that although Japan is...

The rise in popularity of the female sleuth television programs makes it important to explore representations of gender and knowledge. This investigation analyzes interpretations of intuition in the television sleuth genre and relevant paratexts, examines gendered public and private spheres and raises broader questions about gendered knowledge in the series Medium, Crossing Jordan, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Veronica Mars, Monk, The Profiler and True Calling. Rooted in feminist cultural studies, historical and sociological analysis, television and film theory and work on the detective genre, this investigation establishes common frames, or filters, through which the television sleuth genre represents intuition and the gendered experience of knowledge. Women with intuition are depicted as unstable, dangerous and mentally ill. Though framed similarly, intuitive men have more freedom. This study expands on academic research on television representations of gender and knowledge. Societal implications include further understanding of meaning-making in regard to gendered knowing. / by Sheela Celeste Dominguez. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2008. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2008. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Each panelist has chosen an artifact (or type, genre, etc.) from the recent past and interrogated its role as an influence on contemporary popular culture, working to show the linkage between then and now. This type of work is underappreciated and we would like to attempt to show how informing ourselves on popular culture past can make us better critics in the present. Our hope is to inspire others to take up that cause as well. In that spirit, we would like to encourage people to come prepared to discuss ideas and share their own work in a workshop type environment.

This thesis examines the precode horror comic books of the 1950's as an original American art form and as a popular medium in postwar America.

This extended case analysis thus demonstrates the intricate relationship between complex state capacities and cultural hegemony. It aims to deepen our understanding of the cultural history and state nature of Mao's China; theoretically, it aims to bring the state back into the cultural analysis based on a more solid foundation of state theory and provide a reference case for applying state theory to analyze cultural and other issues. / This research is an empirical analysis of the cultural hegemony pursued by Mao's China (1949-1966) in the field of mass culture. Based on the empirical research of this study, and inspired by the perspective of "Bringing the State back in" School, and the "State in Society" theory as well, this research put forth the theoretical perspective of "Complex Vision of State Capacities", which highlights the uneven-ness of state capacities in different fields and different aspects of the same field, and emphasizes that we should pay attention to both the strong state capacities, weak state capacities, the paradox of strong state capacities, the conflict between different state projects and the influence of "policy feedback" on state capacities. Based on the Extended Case Method, this research selects the Dashijie Amusement Center in Shanghai as the subject of research. It analyzes how the new regime effectively took over and transformed Dashijie, and meanwhile, demonstrates that under the influence of the complex state capacities, Dashijie gradually lost its original characteristics as an amusement center, and became more and more similar with Workers' Club. This phenomenon is called as cultural isomorphism. Negotiational hegemony to some extent alleviated this situation of cultural isomorphism, while zero-sum hegemony exacerbated it. With this development, the number of audience of Dashijie dropped a lot, which implies the predicament of cultural hegemony in the field of mass culture pursued by the totalistic state. Following the methodological perspective of the Extended Case Method, and also inspired by Bourdieu's theory of cultural field, this research further analyzes the evolution of Shanghai Bureau of Cultural Affairs. It demonstrated that, compared with the Nationalist Government, the new regime took further step in state building in the field of mass culture, advancing the bureaucratization of cultural administrative apparatuses and penetrating the state power into the cultural field at the grass-roots level. On the other hand, this research also reveals that the new regime is constrained by the weak state capacities in financial resources, human capital, sufficient bureaucratization, and the limitation of state capacities in the heterogeneity of the masses and the asynchronous-ness of structural transformation. As a result, the state capacity of the totalistic state in eradicating the production and circulation of the old mass cultural products is relatively strong and thus relatively successful, while the state capacity in constructing a new socialist mass culture, which was expected to be widely accepted by the masses, is relatively weak and thus relatively unsuccessful. In the view of "Complex Vision of State Capacities", negotiational hegemony reflected the recognition of complex state capacities, and it was thus necessary and beneficial for the state project of cultural hegemony; while the zero-sum hegemony reflected lack of recognition of or even did not accept the situation of complex state capacities, and thus exacerbated the situation of cultural isomorphism, leading to the final predicatement of cultural hegemony. / 肖文明. / Adviser: Hoi-man Chan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-04, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-339). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Xiao Wenming.