Popular Culture and Religion in America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Schofield Clark ◽  
Seth M. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Lifestyle Choices ◽  
Cultural Tensions ◽  
Justice Movements ◽  
Popular Television

“Popular culture” is a term that usually refers to those commercially produced items specifically associated with leisure, media, and lifestyle choices. To study religion in popular culture, then, is to explore religion’s appearance in the commercially produced artifacts and texts of a culture. The study of popular culture has been a catalyst of sorts in the context of studying religion. Some have speculated that with the increasing presence of religion in commercially produced products and specifically in the entertainment media, religion may be reduced to entertainment. Others, however, have argued that religion has always been expressed and experienced through contemporary forms of culture, and thus its manifestation in popular culture can be interpreted as a sign of the vitality rather than the demise or superficiality of contemporary religions. Popular culture is worthy of study given its role in cultural reproduction. The study of popular culture and religion encourages scholars to consider the extent to which popular cultural representations limit broader critical considerations of religion by depicting and reinforcing taken-for-granted assumptions of what religion is, who practices it and where, and how it endures as a powerful societal institution. Alternately, popular culture has been explored as a site for public imaginings of how religious practices and identities might be different and more inclusive than they have been in the past, pointing toward the artistic and playful ways in which popular religious expression can comment upon dominant religion, dominant culture, and the power relations between them. With the rise of an ubiquitous media culture in which people are increasingly creators and distributors as well as consumers and modifiers of popular culture, the term has come to encompass a wide variety of products and artifacts, including those both commercially produced and generated outside of traditional commercial and religious contexts. Studies might include explorations of religion in such popular television programs as Orange Is the New Black or in novels such as The Secret Life of Bees, but might also include considerations of how religion and popular culture intersect in practices of Buddhism in the virtual gaming site Second Life, in the critical expressions of Chicana art, in the commercial experiments of Islamic punk rock groups, and in hashtag justice movements. The study of religion and popular culture can be divided into two major strands, both of which are rooted in what is known as the “culture and civilization tradition.” The first strand focuses on popular culture, myth, and cultural cohesion or continuity, while the second explores popular culture in relation to religion, power, and cultural tensions.

scholarly journals Between neo-Ottomanism and Ottomania: navigating state-led and popular cultural representations of the past

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 33-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murat Ergin ◽  
Yağmur Karakaya
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ottoman History ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Popular Television ◽  
Depth Interviews

AbstractIn contemporary Turkey, a growing interest in Ottoman history represents a change in both the official state discourse and popular culture. This nostalgia appropriates, reinterprets, decontextualizes, and juxtaposes formerly distinct symbols, ideas, objects, and histories in unprecedented ways. In this paper, we distinguish between state-led neo-Ottomanism and popular cultural Ottomania, focusing on the ways in which people in Turkey are interpellated by these two different yet interrelated discourses, depending on their social positions. As the boundary between highbrow and popular culture erodes, popular cultural representations come to reinterpret and rehabilitate the Ottoman past while also inventing new insecurities centering on historical “truth.” Utilizing in-depth interviews, we show that individuals juxtapose the popular television seriesMuhteşem Yüzyıl(The Magnificent Century) with what they deem “proper” history, in the process rendering popular culture a “false” version. We also identify four particular interpretive clusters among the consumers of Ottomania: for some, the Ottoman Empire was the epitome of tolerance, where different groups lived peacefully; for others, the imperial past represents Turkish and/or Islamic identities; and finally, critics see the empire as a burden on contemporary Turkey.

Entertainment publics in the Philippines

2021 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2098596
Author(s):  
Anna Cristina Pertierra
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Political Capital ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The Media ◽  
Entertainment Television

Since the late 1980s, Filipino entertainment television has assumed and maintained a dominance in national popular culture, which expanded in the digital era. The media landscape into which digital technologies were launched in the Philippines was largely set in the wake of the 1986 popular movement and change of government referred to as the EDSA revolution: television stations that had been sequestered under martial law were turned over to family-dominated commercial enterprises, and entertainment media proliferated. Building upon the long development of entertainment industries in the Philippines, new social media encounters with entertainment content generate expanded and engaged publics whose formation continues to operate upon a foundation of televisual media. This article considers the particular role that entertainment media plays in the formation of publics in which comedic, melodramatic and celebrity-led content generates networks of followers, users and viewers whose loyalty produces various forms of capital, including in notable cases political capital.

scholarly journals Sensational Science A Rhetorical Analysis of Public Science Education in Entertainment Programming

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salman J. Qureshi
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Rhetorical Criticism ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Scientific Content ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Deficit Model ◽  
Scientific Authority

Film and television media’s adherence to the deficit model has been under scrutiny by science communication scholars for decades. This model suggests that building public trust in scientific authority is as simple as ‘dispensing’ scientific facts to a “scientifically illiterate general public” through mass media (Kirby, 2003). However, despite a virtual scholarly consensus that the deficit model is deepening the public’s misunderstanding of science/scientists, it remains relevant as a method for building trust in scientific authority (Kirby; Vidal, 2018). Using Sonja K. Foss’s generic rhetorical criticism methodology melded with rhetorical film criticism, this MRP assesses the narrative structures, tropes, and stylistic motivations that sustain the deficit model in modern entertainment media. Focusing on didactic scenes, this research paper identifies the rhetorical strategies deployed by the respective directors of the following films and television programs: Interstellar (2014), Stranger Things (2016), Event Horizon (1997), and Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980). The programming that this research paper explores were selected to represent a small sample of both accurate and inaccurate portrayals of theoretical science and to discover if their organizing principles adhere to the deficit model. For science communication scholars this research will highlight effective methodologies of communicating scientific content in narrative formats and serve as an important step in untangling the mystery of the deficit model’s longevity in popular media.

scholarly journals FADE TO WHITE OR STEREOTYPE: PATRIARCHAL POLICING OF GENDER NORMS IN TELEVISION AND FILMIC REPRESENTATIONS OF CHILDBIRTH

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-34
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Allen Nall
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Double Bind ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Popular Television ◽  
Reproductive Processes ◽  
L Word

Drawing on the examination of five feature films, including Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, and more than half-a-dozen popular television programmes, including Parenthood, The L Word and The Secret Life of the American Teenager, this work argues that dominant cultural representations foster a narrow and potentially damaging, disempowering and dehumanising depiction of childbirth. Together these works foster a dominant conceptualisation and representation of childbirth that narrowly represents childbirth, emphasising themes including ‘bitter birth’ or birth as affliction, a reproductive double bind affirming women’s fundamental procreative role while also pathologising their reproductive processes, and the trivialisation of women’s birthing agency through the broad failure to recognize maternal magnificence. This work further argues that dominant representations of maternity pervading mass media, as indicated in the examined examples, normalise patriarchal gender roles, particularly emphasised femininity, and mark gender noncomformists as deviant. The promotion of such norms is clear in contemporary cultural depictions of childbirth, including birth-related hit films such as Knocked Up and The Back-up Plan. In the last of these an important component of patriarchal gender codes is further shown to include heteronormativity.

The Effect of Popular Culture on TV Program Genres Within Globalization Process

2019 ◽  
pp. 76-93
Author(s):  
Nimet Ersin
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Tv Program ◽  
The World ◽  
Liberal Economy

In the process of globalization, popular culture has spread all around the world far more easily via television. Following 1980s, commercial televisions increasing together with the dominance of liberal economy have operated in accordance with commercial logic, and therefore, television programs have been produced for upper ratings, accordingly for getting high advertisement profits. Together with globalization, television programs have rather focused on entertainment. Popular culture has influenced programme genres both in terms of making existing programs entertaining and emerging novel amusing program genres. In this chapter, following the discussions on popular culture, the increase in entertainment in television programs is generally discussed, and then, the increase in entertainment in television programs in Turkey in the process of globalization is analyzed.

The Bad Sixties

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Hoerl
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Justice Movements ◽  
Reagan Era

Over the past four decades, a wide range of Hollywood films and television programs have referenced events and individuals associated with the 1960s counterculture, anti-war, and Black Power movements. This book analyses narrative patterns and recurring character types across a wide variety of fictionalized film and television portrayals of the late sixties to illustrate how Hollywood has consistently derided and trivialized the period’s protest movements. The Bad Sixties argues that Hollywood has promulgated selective amnesia by decontextualizing spectacular events that have come to define the decade from the motives that drove dissidents. Hollywood’s consistently negative depictions of protest function rhetorically as civics lessons by placing radical dissent, including criticisms of Western imperialism, structural racism, patriarchy, and two-party politics, as outside of the boundaries of legitimate civic engagement in the United States. The book concludes that Hollywood’s vision of the bad sixties has bolstered conservative agendas since the Reagan Era with profound and troubling implications for democracy and social justice movements today.

scholarly journals CONTEMPORARY RECEPTION OF EDDIC THEMES IN NEW MEDIA: VIRTUAL 'NORDIC' IDENTITIES, CASE STUDY: DARK AGE OF CAMELOT

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-54
Author(s):  
Ester Jiresch ◽  
Vincent Boswijk
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
New Media ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Identity Constructions ◽  
Role Playing Game ◽  
Poetic Edda ◽  
Popular Television

This article discusses the most recent (twenty-first century) development in reception and adaptation of Nordic mythology (particularly referring to the Prose and Poetic Edda) and the appropriating of Nordic identities (stereotypes) that is taking place in the so-called new media. In the last two decades the reception of Nordic mythology or Nordic 'themes' in different new media like film, comic books, heavy metal music and computer games has exploded. New media are generally considered expressions of 'popular' culture and have therefore not yet received much scholarly attention. However, since those media are growing notably and especially computer games (console and online applications) reach an enormous audience.Scientific interest in them has increased in recent years. Miller mentions the 'sexiness of Vikings in video games, the pretense of Viking-like settings for popular television programs […]' (Miller, 2014, p. 4). The case study is Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC – Mythic Entertainment 2001) which is a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) that is currently (2015) still available to play online. We will show examples of themes (characters, narratives, objects etc.) deriving from Eddic texts and how they are represented and deployed in the game. Since the representation of 'Nordic' identity is a key feature in the game's construction, it will therefore be addressed as well. The fictional world of DAoC consists of three realms – Albion, Hibernia and Midgard – that are at war with each other. Their (human) inhabitants are respectively based on medieval Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse tribes that differ distinctively in their character traits. Our goal is to elaborate on the representation of identity traits of the fictional 'Norse' races (as defined by the game) that appear in DAoC. We will scrutinize if and how the game uses older or more current concepts of (national) identity. In order to do so, an overview of Scandinavian / Nordic identity constructions that have been popular and / or widespread from antiquity will be presented, via medieval sources to romanticism and nineteenth century nationalism until current discussions of national identity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document