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>

<p>The purpose of this study is to examine the possible theoretic and (f)actual role(s) of pop-culture icons in peace and evelopment-related global issues, using the qualitative research methods of text- and discourse analysis. Do pop-culture icons have a role to play at all in this field? If so, what is that role? What are these celebrity activists currently saying and doing on the international development scene and what are their analyses like? What are their current and historical functions? There is support in the academic literature suggesting that celebrity activists can possess vast power resources (scope of influence), (soft) power and (charismatic) authority, which in turn enables them to influence the attitudes and values of (especially young, receptive) people. The findings also show that the most successful celebrity activists have a global reach, as well as access to the international arenas of political power (e. g. the G8 and the World Economic Forum). Celebrity activists seem to be able to "sell" messages in a way that the politicians and officials of today cannot. When they speak, people listen. They further employ a two-level outreach, as they connect with political and economical elite groups as well as with the masses of world citizens in a way that politicians and officials, whose influence is more often limited by traditional nation state boundaries, cannot. I argue that the celebrity activists should be seen as a complement to the civil society and the work of NGO's and INGO's, since it is by further enhancing their work and strengthening their agendas that most of them act.Celebrity activists offer an alternative to the political establishment, which is viewed by suspicion by large groups of citizens, and can play a role in empowerment, inspiration, education, information, awareness raising, fundraising, opinion building and lobbying and function as diplomats, spokespersons, ambassadors, entrepreneurs, convenors and heroic voices.</p>

Delinquencies brings together forty-eight poems that reflect some of the aesthetic, philosophical and cultural interests I've attended over the last five years or so--namely, ideas related to failure and abhorrent behavior.

This thesis explores images of the Japanese schoolgirl as accessory to the Occidental Self in contemporary Orientalist pop culture in the US. In an analysis of a series of images by four different Western pop culture artists, each artist expresses an appreciation for Japan that is based primarily on their encounter with Japanese pop culture. Furthermore, they express identification with the Japanese Other and a desire to introject into Japanese subjectivities. However, lacking the material body needed for full immersion or identification with the Other, they produce the Japanese schoolgirl as an accessory to the Self. The accessory provides false immersion or identification with the Japanese Other. In this way, the Japanese schoolgirl becomes the embodiment of Japanese pop culture and an object for Western fetishization. / text

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.

This paper aims to describe how religion teachers in Swedish schools teach concerning questions about life issues and popular culture. To research the teachers' didactic approach to these issues, didactics has been defined with three educational questions: what, how and why. The essay focuses on teachers' effective implementation of teaching on life issues and popular culture, which we used a theory of offering meaningfulness describing what subject matter that may be imparted to the students. An offer of meaningfulness can be pursued and can be made visible in the context of what and how performs the teaching and also in the context where the teacher planned the teaching elements. The method that the paper has used is the interviews of four different active religious educators in Stockholm and Uppsala area. These interviews were conducted at every teacher’s workplace. The interviews were recorded and we used a semi- structured interview guide, which has been created to ensure that the important issues for the survey answered. The results show that religion teachers are experiencing a shortage of time, when planning the teaching elements of life issues teaching on life issues and popular culture. The results also show that when students receive instructions in the subjects concerning life issues and popular culture, it is usually in relation to the other world religions. In the discussion, our results were partially consistent with previous studies in the field of life issues and popular culture. The interviewed teachers created different offer of meaningfulness that the students could impart in their creation of answers to the questions of life.

I’m not a girl, not yet a woman, but I do have popular sensibilities. Pop music plucks ideas and symbols from where ever it pleases to create a new narrative. So do I. Reflecting on how I see women and how the gaze of others affects this. By mapping my magpie like collection of images, songs, paintings and films I tell the story of my girl gang. My ceramic sculptures are a physical manifestation of my research into different ways of looking at girls.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2010-02-26Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:15:46Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 baquiao_rc_me_arafcl.pdf: 5215556 bytes, checksum: a2fdcf7d57bb7e364ca82a9148ed9cc6 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / 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 / 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