scholarly journals Crazy 'Bout a Mercury

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-74
Author(s):  
Elton G. McGoun
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Real Image ◽  
Automobile Market ◽  
The Public ◽  
Memorable Line

When we purchase an automobile, we are also acquiring an amorphous but very real image, that is, the statement which the automobile makes about its owner to the public. Such images are forged in popular culture, and Mercury is an automobile brand that had an auspicious post-WWII popular culture debut. In 1948, K.C. Douglas recorded “Mercury Boogie” on a 10-inch 78-RPM, with its memorable line in the chorus “I’m crazy ‘bout a Mercury.” Five years later in 1953, George and Sam Barris transformed a 1951 Mercury Club Coupe into the Hirohata Merc, creating a classic of customization that has been described as “the most famous custom of all time” (Taylor 2006: 56). Ford occasionally attempted to take advantage of these strong roots in popular culture formed in the make’s earliest days, but the company’s efforts were not notably successful. In spite of Mercury’s promising beginnings in media, it has had only a slight presence in music and film. Mercury’s image never influenced the automobile market beyond the first few years, and it was unable to prevent the brand’s 2011 demise.

Public Service Motivation in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Mastracci
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Service Motivation ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
Buffy The Vampire Slayer ◽  
The Public ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Public Servant ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual

In this paper, the author examines public service as depicted in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS). First, she shows how slaying meets the economist’s definition of a public good, using the BtVS episode “Flooded” (6.04). Second, she discusses public service motivation (PSM) to determine whether or not Buffy, a public servant, operates from a public service ethic. Relying on established measures and evidence from shooting scripts and episode transcripts, the author concludes Buffy is a public servant motivated by a public service ethic. In this way, BtVS informs scholarship on public service by broadening the concept of PSM beyond the public sector; prompting one to wonder whether it is located in a sector, an occupation, or in the individual. These conclusions allow the author to situate Buffy alongside other idealized public servants in American popular culture.

Are They Ready for Their Close-Up? Civil Servants and Their Portrayal in Contemporary American Cinema

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle C. Pautz ◽  
Laura Roselle
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Case Study Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Narrative Forms

Perceptions of government and civil servants are shaped by a variety of factors including popular culture. In the public administration literature the significant role that film and other narrative forms have on citizens’ perceptions is duly noted, and there is ample research on politicians and military heroes in film, but a focus on civil servants remains largely elusive. Among the sparse literature centered on civil servants are studies that employ a case study approach or focus on a few films. In contrast, our research employs a large sample of 150 films. These films comprise the top ten box-office grossing films from 1992 through 2006; therefore we examine the films most likely to have been seen by a majority of movie-watching Americans. More than 60 percent of the films in our sample portray government as bad, inefficient, and incompetent. However, the data on more than 300 civil servants yield intriguing findings. Surprising, in light of the negative depiction of government, is the positive depiction of individual civil servants. Half of civil servants were positively portrayed, and only 40 percent were negatively depicted. Americans may view government negatively, but they see in film positive depictions of how individual civil servants can and do make a positive difference.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra L. Yacovazzi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
The Common ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
Maria Monk ◽  
People Today

Nuns in popular media today are a staple of kitsch culture, evident in the common appearance of bobble-head nuns, nun costumes, and nun caricatures on TV, movies, and the stage. Nun stereotypes include the sexy vixen, the naïve innocent, and the scary nun. These types were forged in nineteenth-century convent narratives. While people today may not recognize the name “Maria Monk,” her legacy lives on in the public imagination. There may be no demands to search convents, but nuns and monastic life are nevertheless generally not taken seriously. This epilogue traces opposition to nuns from the Civil War to the present, analyzing the various images of nuns in popular culture as they relate to the antebellum campaign against convents. It argues that the source of the misunderstanding about nuns is rooted in the inability to categorize these women either as traditional wives and mothers or as secular, career-driven singles.

Nothing in Popular Culture Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gad Saad
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Case Analysis ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychology Today ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Song Lyrics

An evolutionary lens can inform the study of cultural forms in a myriad of ways. These can be construed as adaptations, as exaptations (evolutionary byproducts), as gene–culture interactions, as memes, or as fossils of the human mind. Products of popular culture (e.g., song lyrics, movie themes, romance novels) are to evolutionary cultural theorists what fossils and skeletal remains represent to paleontologists. Although human minds do not fossilize or skeletonize (the cranium does), the cultural products created by human minds do. By identifying universally recurring themes for a given cultural form (song lyrics and collective wisdoms in the current article), spanning a wide range of cultures and time periods, one is able to test key tenets of evolutionary psychology. In addition to using evolutionary psychology to understand the contents of popular culture, the discipline can itself be studied as a contributor to popular culture. Beginning with the sociobiology debates in the 1970s, evolutionary informed analyses of human behavior have engendered great fascination and animus among the public at large. Following a brief summary of studies that have explored the diffusion of the evolutionary behavioral sciences within specific communities (e.g., the British media), I offer a case analysis of the penetration of evolutionary psychology within the blogosphere, specifically the blog community hosted by Psychology Today.

scholarly journals Cultural attributes of Russian rock: elitist or mass culture?

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (8) ◽  
pp. 105-117
Author(s):  
Ma Weihong ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Political System ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
Rock Bands ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Rock N Roll ◽  
Cultural Niche

The article deals with identifying Russian rock culture as elitist or mass culture. The author characterizes the concepts of elitist and mass culture, explaining the difference between them, and examines the characteristics of Russian rock culture on the basis of this analysis. The author concludes that Russian rock culture is a kind of reconciliation of elite and mass culture: in the second half of the XX century the complexity of the Soviet political system and ideology determined the destiny and cultural attributes of Russian rock, making it a complex, multifaceted and eclectic phenomenon. Forced to survive, rock bands had to incorporate elements of popular music into their works and use mass media to attract the public. Having joined the ranks of commercial performances, rock 'n' roll gained more popularity, and gradually there appeared some signs of the rock culture decline. In the end, however, rock culture did not transform into mass culture, and Russian rock musicians and rock poets continued to play their music in search of a new cultural niche for themselves to express their critical attitude to reality, their denial and opposition to the processes of industrialization and urbanization, returning to the history and culture of the nation, paying attention to philosophical and religious issues and to the depth and completeness of poetic content, reconstructing Russian cultural memory, reflecting on the environmental situation in the modern world. Rock culture is still a culture of resistance, but as society continues to change, the form and content of resistance is also constantly changing, and it is because of this that rock culture has acquired a kind of humanistic foundation that is much deeper than that of popular culture, so ignoring the difference between rock culture and popular culture destroys the innate spirit and the essence of rock culture itself.

The Flapper and the Joven Moderna

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
Cecilia Tossounian
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Female Role ◽  
Consumer Capitalism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Construction ◽  
Traditional Female Role

Chapter 2 studies how the flapper, the archetypical modern girl, was construed by popular culture in the 1920s and 1930s. Mass media was engaged in a debate about the defining traits of the American flapper and her Argentine counterpart. While the flapper inhabited a distant land, the joven moderna combined popular fashions and mannerisms both foreign and domestic. Portrayed as an upper-class character, she went beyond the traditional female role of the devoted daughter. An oversimplified media construction, the Argentine flapper alerted the public of the dangerous effects of international consumer capitalism and Americanization on gender and national identity.

Chick Noir: Surveilling Femininity and the Affects of Loss in Gone Girl

Noir Affect ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 197-221
Author(s):  
Pamela Thoma
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Young Women ◽  
First Century ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Surveillance Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
A Site

This chapter explores a surprising shift that has occurred in postfeminist popular culture and more specifically “chick culture” in the wake of the global economic crisis. Chick noir forms itself in opposition to those two standbys of twenty-first-century U.S culture, chick lit and the chick flick. If these latter genres perform a humorous remodelling of romance as the “happy object” around which young women should orient self-making or self-improvement projects for the promise of a good life and future feelings of happiness, chick noir has emerged across popular culture to chronicle widespread economic hardship and social decline under neoliberalism. Chick noir narratives are driven by negative affect and deal in the dark side of relationships, domesticity, and the public sphere for women. The chapter takes Gone Girl as its focus. This chapter pays particular attention to ways in which both texts shine a light on modern surveillance culture to explore the textual production of empathy and coercion and the ways in which these texts imagine femininity as a site of surveillance. What emerges is a form of noir affect that dramatizes the absolute lack of a stable or noncontradictory space for the contemporary female subject.

Representations of Law, Rights, and Criminal Justice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Machura
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
New Media ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media

Criminal justice and its institutions are key objects of popular culture and attract extensive media attention. The portrayal of the justice system, its rules, professions, and institutions has been invigorated with the invention of new media technology. The authorities’ reaction to wrong doing has proven not less exciting to the audience than the criminal acts themselves. French sociologist Emile Durkheim emphasized that every member of society has an interest in social cohesion and wishes to see perpetrators appropriately punished. The media plays to this basic inclination. From the reactions of the justice system to crime people take clues not only for its effectiveness but the public also wants to see its basic values represented in the work of officials and their decisions. Therefore, aspects of procedural and distributive justice are picked up by popular imagination and exploited to the full by media producers. Beyond recognition that media depictions of criminal justice will follow media conventions and will therefore be distorted in systematic ways, it has to be acknowledged that those representations and the expectations they formed have become a major force in society. Political repercussions and influences on how crime is dealt with are a consequence.

Lawyers and Courts in French Popular Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Villez
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Television News ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Reports ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Over Time

From watching imported American popular culture dramas focusing on criminal justice, French television viewers have become confused as to how their own legal system really works. They have erroneous expectations of behaviours in court, like addressing judges by the wrong title, a title that comes from poor dubbing. Or they will refuse to answer questions, thinking they have Fifth Amendment protections, when they do not. They know very little of the organization of courtroom space. Since it is forbidden by law to take photographs or film trials in France, it is difficult to bring accurate court images to the public. The French produce police dramas, but very few series or made-for-television movies on justice, thus providing no alternatives for these erroneous criteria. They do, however, produce documentaries and docudramas dealing with past investigations or with timely issues such as recidivism or reintegration into society after prison. Documentaries, although pertinent, give viewers only one-shot access to the representations of justice and the legal professions they contain. The do not facilitate the acquisition over time of a legal culture. In addition to the confusion, the French have a negative image of lawyers as motivated by money and politics rather than justice. Films and French television fictions are responsible for this impression. Television news reports are short and give incomplete accounts of the law or on-going proceedings. Sometimes lawyers are interviewed in these reports, but never prosecutors or judges. Judges and prosecutors are magistrats, not lawyers. They train in different institutions from lawyers and are civil servants, so they are not as likely as lawyers to be making a lot of money, nor are they free to make public statements. The image of these professions is consequently more positive in the French imagination as portrayed in the popular culture.

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