THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

Think ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (30) ◽  
pp. 11-24
Author(s):  
Michael Shermer
Keyword(s):  
Cigarette Smoking ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
Serial Killers ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Urban Legends

The 1990's über conspiracy-theory television series The X-Files was a decade-defining and culture-reflecting mosh pit of UFOs, extraterrestrials, psychics, demons, monsters, mutants, shape-shifters, serial killers, paranormal phenomena, urban legends turned real, corporate cabals and government cover-ups, and leakages unveiled by a deep-throat-like ‘cigarette smoking man’ character played, ironically, by real-life skeptic William B. Davis. Gillian Anderson's skeptical FBI agent Dana Scully played off David Duchovny's believing character Fox Mulder, whose slogans became posterized pop-culture catch-phrases ‘I want to believe’ and ‘The truth is out there’.

scholarly journals Waterpipe effects on pulmonary function and cardiovascular indices: a comparison to cigarette smoking in real life situation

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (10) ◽  
pp. 620-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelly Layoun ◽  
Nadine Saleh ◽  
Bernadette Barbour ◽  
Sanaa Awada ◽  
Samar Rachidi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cigarette Smoking ◽  
Pulmonary Function ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Life Situation ◽  
Real Life Situation

scholarly journals When the Author Owns the World

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 959-978
Author(s):  
Steven D. Jamar ◽  
Christen B’anca Glenn
Keyword(s):  
Pop Culture ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The World ◽  
Original Works

Fan fiction is amateur writing that imaginatively reinvents a work in pop culture while maintaining the identifiable aspects of the preexisting work. Fans of various books, films, and television series write their own versions of the stories and post them online in fan fiction communities. Fan fiction as practiced today is a way for fans to creatively express themselves and become integrated into the story and world they love. The stories range from highly derivative works, where relatively few plot points are changed, to entirely new plot lines using the same world and characters of the original, underlying work. Some provide backstories about existing characters, and some are more in the nature of sequels. Some are quite original works more in the nature of “inspired by” than “derived from.”

Voice Change in Pop Culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 77-132
Author(s):  
Bridget Sweet
Keyword(s):  
Pop Culture ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Voice Change ◽  
Media Portrayals ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Music Television ◽  
Adolescent Voice ◽  
Popular Television ◽  
The Way

The chapter discusses the way popular understanding and misunderstanding of voice change is largely perpetuated by mainstream media. Portrayals of voice change distributed via music, television, and movies have contributed to a simulacrum of adolescent voice change, a situated reality not based in fact but accepted in pop culture. The generally embraced perception of voice change is that it is a time of humiliation, anxiety, turmoil, and dread. Voice change is not always pleasant, but students and music educators perceive and approach the experience with such angst and trepidation well before it begins that is rarely given the opportunity to be something positive or exciting. The chapter examines and distills episodes of The Brady Bunch, The Wonder Years, and The Goldbergs, popular television series that spanned a period of more than 40 years, each with an episode focused on the adolescent changing voice.

Killing Two Birds with One Deceit

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Dynel
Keyword(s):  
Real Life ◽  
Television Series ◽  
American Television ◽  
Speaker Meaning ◽  
Complex Mechanisms

This paper explores the workings of deception performed in multi-party interactions, a topic hitherto hardly ever examined by deception philosophers. Deception is here discussed in the light of a neo-Goffmanian classification of (un)ratified hearers and a neo-Gricean version of speaker meaning, anchored in non-reflexive intentionality and accountability, which is shown to operate beyond the speaker-hearer dyad. An utterance, it is argued, may carry different meanings, judged according to their (lack of) intentionality and (non)deceptiveness, towards the individuals performing different hearer roles. The complex mechanisms of deception with regard to different hearers are illustrated with examples culled from the American television series “House.” Deception in fictional interactions is illustrative of real-life manifestations of deception, yet it brings into focus also those rare ones, which are in the centre of philosophical attention.

scholarly journals Serial killers, spiders and cybersex: Social and survival information bias in the transmission of urban legends

2014 ◽  
Vol 106 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Stubbersfield ◽  
Jamshid J. Tehrani ◽  
Emma G. Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Serial Killers ◽  
Information Bias ◽  
Urban Legends

scholarly journals On serial killers: the collective's search for understanding

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn S. Harper
Keyword(s):  
Mass Murder ◽  
Serial Killer ◽  
Serial Killers ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Serial Killing ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Logical Extension

I will begin by examining the term serial itself and its importance in the notion of the serial killer. What does the term serial say? It draws on series - a term often used in reference to novels, films and, quite literally, the television series. Series carries notions of multiple segments that are all linked in some way. There is an ongoing nature to the series - when one segment ends, another begins. The series creates anticipation, anxiety of what is to come and a hope for closure. As "serial killer" is a relatively new term it becomes possible to trace its inception and examine what is being revealed in this naming process. I then go to illustrate how this term serial is what sets serial killing apart from other forms of multiple murder (such as mass murder, spree killing, terrorism and assassination). I will explore the features of the serial killer that appear to make it unique to the collective by developing the language of the accounts of understanding the serial killer: the profiling account, the study of numbers, facts and statistics as a way to apprehend and comprehend the serial killer; the logical extension of society account, where the serial killer is a reflection of society from concerns with the individual to celebrity and consumerism; and the serial killer account, where the serial killer explains his own motivations. In looking at these accounts it becomes possible to see the cliches that are used to discuss the serial killer and how these reveal thoughts and fears of the collective, rather than providing the insight on the serial killer that the accounts are seeking.

scholarly journals Children’s Engagement with Urban Legends: Temporality and Collective Story-sharing Through Horror Narratives

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Piper Biswell
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Digital Medium ◽  
Urban Legends ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Story Sharing ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Personal Devices

<p>This thesis explores how children engage with horror narratives in the digital era and how this engagement has changed over the last decade. The term ‘Horror narratives’ encompasses a wide range of genre-based storytelling from urban legends, to creepypastas, to images, YouTube videos, and internet forums. It is a broad form of story-sharing that transcends physical and digital mediums. I examine the relationship between the horror narratives, the individual child, and wider group engagement in real-life and on a digital platforms, and how this has changed over the last fifteen years. Over the past twenty years children’s access to personal devices and digital media has expanded rapidly. I ask whether oral tradition has been overtaken by digital horror narratives. What does story-sharing look like in a digital medium?   Part of this paper is looking at how children’s horror narrative repertoires develop and what stories are retained and disseminated among their peers. In my childhood era the predominant form of dissemination was oral story-sharing, but during my fieldwork with young scouts I learned that children engage in a variety of media for dissemination as they now have easier access to internet communities on their personal devices. I have compared popular oral urban legends from my childhood (Click Click Slide, Drip Drip, and “Johnny, I want my liver back”) to contemporary horror narratives children engage with both in real-life and in the digital medium. My thesis also explores the relationship between young adults in their early twenties and memories of these horror narratives from their childhood, and how these memories have been impacted by nostalgia and retroactive knowledge. The major question of this thesis is how has horror storytelling changed from my childhood fifteen years ago to present time, and what have new technologies contributed to this evolution in horror narration?</p>

scholarly journals An Idiopathic Dalliance in Television, Para-social Relationships, and Consumption: A Study of Pop-Culture Television Nutrition and the Bandwagon Effect

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Sycoff ◽  
Charese Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Eating Habits ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Food Choices ◽  
Female Adolescents ◽  
Previous Knowledge ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Bandwagon Effect ◽  
Unhealthy Eating ◽  
Television Characters

Although it has previously been established that television causes unhealthy eating habits, uncertainty remains as to how this occurs. This study researches the parameters of viewers forming an emotional investment with the characters in pop-culture television and subsequently becoming influenced by the negative nutritional habits that are promoted. This influence is a form of cognitive bias called bandwagon effect. In context, it can be described as a psychological phenomenon in which the viewer starts to eat unhealthy foods as a result of having formed a para-social bond with television characters and, regardless of previous knowledge and practices, the viewer begins to copy the television characters’ food intake regiment. In order to prove this argument, a correlational study was run. Participants, female adolescents and early adults (the most prominent demographic of the show), completed the required consent form preceding survey part one, then watched several episodes of the pop-culture television series Gilmore Girls, known for the aesthetically pleasing protagonists’ plentiful consumption of unhealthy food. The participants of the study had unhealthy and healthy food options displayed within grasp while viewing and at completion of the viewing filled out survey part two which asked about food choices. A week later, participants received survey part three to fill out and return to the researcher. Upon receiving the results, data analysis was performed, and the outcome was deemed statistically insignificant even though the hypothesis proved correct. It was found that participants had worse nutrition after watching the pop-culture television series. 

The Threat of the Thaw: The Cold War on the Screen

Films on Ice ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Westerståhl Stenport
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Real Life ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Porous Sheet ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
Alien Invasion ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines how the Arctic was figured as a porous sheet of ice separating the East and West Blocs during the Cold War and held a privileged position in Hollywood and Soviet filmmaking from the 1950s to the 1980s. Stenport’s case studies range from early alien invasion films such as The Thing From Another World (1951), USSR national icebreaker epics such as The Red Tent (1969), political thrillers such as Ice Station Zebra, 1968), Oscar winning ‘Real Life Adventures’ Disney documentaries such as Men Against the Arctic (1955) to television series such as The Big Picture (1951-1964). Stenport examines a wide swath of cinematic forms from the U.S., the USSR, Sweden, and Norway not previously analysed in tension with one another, showing how these are put to environmental and ideological uses.

Hannibal’s Precursors

2013 ◽  
pp. 11-14
Author(s):  
Barry Forshaw
Keyword(s):  
Human Skin ◽  
Real Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Serial Killer ◽  
Serial Killers ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Slasher Film ◽  
Thomas Harris ◽  
Mass Murderer

This chapter discusses the other serial killers in the cinema before Hannibal Lecter. In 1959, the writer Robert Bloch was inspired by the gruesome case of the Wisconsin mass murderer Ed Gein, with his keepsakes of bones and human skin. He transmuted elements of the Gein case into the phenomenally successful Psycho (published 1959), reconfiguring the real-life Gein as the chubby, unprepossessing mother's boy Norman Bates, who dispatches a variety of victims in gruesome fashion. Subsequently, Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of the novel (1960) laid down the parameters for a variety of genres: the serial killer movie, the slasher film, and the modern big-budget horror film which utilises above-the-title stars rather than the journeyman actors who had populated such fare previously. But above all else, Hitchcock and his talented screenwriter Joseph Stefano created a template for the intelligent, richly developed, and charismatic fictional serial killer in their version of Norman Bates. Hitchcock's film was to influence a generation of film-makers and writers; among them Thomas Harris.

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