Hollywood Animation, Late Modernity and Contemporary America

2021 ◽  
pp. 78-108
Author(s):  
Noel Brown
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Similar Function ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Intertextual Allusion ◽  
Distinguishing Features

One of the primary distinguishing features of post-1990s Hollywood animation is its foregrounding of contemporary culture and society. While many of the ‘classic’ Disney films are set in fantastical or fairy tale landscapes geographically and temporally removed from everyday life (‘once upon a time…’), most animated features from the early 1990s onwards are self-conscious artefacts of late modernity. There are two primary manifestations of the foregrounding of contemporary culture in post-1990s Hollywood animation. The first, and most immediately visible, is (a usually comic) intertextuality that takes the form of an intensified referentiality to other works of popular culture and modern life more broadly. The second form is that of social commentary, which is often satirical in nature and tends to be a more abiding thematic focus than the intertextual allusion. This chapter argues that both forms serve a similar function: they are strategies of proximation that anchor films to recognisable and identifiable situations and events.

scholarly journals Contemporary Culture and the Undoing of Feminism: Review of Angela McRobbie's The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change

1970 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Gender Culture ◽  
Corporate World ◽  
The Media ◽  
Feminist Cultural Studies

A
 couple
 of
 times
 a
 year
 (usually
 around
 International
 Women’s
 Day
 or
 the
latest
 gender
 controversy)
 there’ll
 be
 a
 journalist
 on
 the
 phone,
 asking
 me,
 ‘where
 is
 feminism
 now?’ 
Angela 
McRobbie’s
 The 
Aftermath 
of
 Feminism: Gender,
 Culture
 and
 Social
 Change
 provides
 the
 perfect
 answer,
 though
 one
 that
 probably
 won’t
 be
 dutifully
 reported
 in
 the
 pages
 of
 the
 Courier­ Mail.
 McRobbie
 has
 always
 been
 a
 preeminent
 figure
 in
 feminist
 cultural
 studies,
 and
 this
 work
 highlights
 her
 continuing 
importance.
Indeed, The 
Aftermath 
of 
Feminism
 reminds
 us 
of 
the 
power
 of 
feminist 
cultural
 studies 
to 
explain
 what’s 
going 
on,
whether
 this 
is 
in 
the
media,
 popular
 culture,
 everyday
 life,
 governmentality,
 the
 corporate
 world,
 or
 their
 interrelationships.
 And
 McRobbie’s
 diagnosis
 of
 ‘a
 social
 and
 cultural
 landscape
 which
 could
 be
 called
 post‐feminist’
 
is
 uncompromising,
 far‐reaching 
in
 scope,
 and 
deeply 
disturbing.

Some Reflections on Making Popular Culture in Urban Africa

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
AbdouMaliq Simone
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Urban Africa ◽  
The City ◽  
Ways Of Being

Abstract:In contemporary urban Africa, the turbulence of the city requires incessant innovation that is capable of generating new ways of being. Rather than treating popular culture as some distinctive sector, this article attempts to investigate the popular as methods of bringing together activities and actors that on the surface would not seem compatible, and as experimental forms of generating value in the everyday life of urban residents. This investigation, sited largely in Douala, Cameroon, looks at how youth from varying neighborhoods attempt to get by, and at the unexpected forms of contestation that can ensue.

scholarly journals The politics of a ‘Poncy Pillowcase’: Migration and borders in Coronation Street’

Politics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandria J Innes ◽  
Robert J Topinka
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Soap Opera ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
And Gender

This article examines the ways in which popular culture stages and supplies resources for agency in everyday life, with particular attention to migration and borders. Drawing upon cultural studies, and specific insights originating from the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, we explore how intersectional identities such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender are experienced in relation to the globalisation of culture and identity in a 2007 Coronation Street storyline. The soap opera genre offers particular insights into how agency emerges in everyday life as migrants and locals navigate the forces of globalisation. We argue that a focus on popular culture can mitigate the problem of isolating migrant experiences from local experiences in migrant-receiving areas.

A screwball property: Love It or List It as postfeminist realty TV

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 543-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean M Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Gothic Novel ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The Family ◽  
Television Programme ◽  
Family Home ◽  
Screwball Comedy ◽  
Depression Era

This article argues that the property television programme, Love It or List It (2008–), employs conventions from the classic screwball comedy to both consolidate its position within the lucrative realty TV market – especially in response to the recent (2008) recession – and negotiate modern gender dynamics within the home. Its Depression-era (1930s) financial and aesthetic resonances are not incidental. And, as with much contemporary culture, this modern iteration of the screwball comedy is not discretely contained by medium or genre of influence: Love It or List It also borrows flourishes from documentary, tabloid TV, melodrama and the gothic novel. In keeping with its reference to a kind of baseball pitching style that is difficult for hitters to anticipate, the screwball’s tendency to suddenly switch course has been identified as its central means for engaging in cultural critique. Love It or List It as an exemplar of reality TV’s recombinant style is still very much like its cinematic predecessor: it has the adeptness to say many things to many audiences. This article makes no claims for Love It or List It’s progressive politics; rather, as with some classic screwball comedies, it explores the possibility that equivocating, shifting course or otherwise abandoning narrative logic register a profound ambivalence about marriage, coupledom and the family home as sacrosanct loci of modern life.

BEYOND THE TOURIST EXPERIENCE: ANALYZING THE IMAGINATION OF PLACE AND TRAVEL IN EVERYDAY LIFE

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
The Self ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Individual State ◽  
Imaginary World ◽  
Tourism Research ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article advocates a new agenda for (media) tourism research that links questions of tourist experiences to the role and meaning of imagination in everyday life. Based on a small-scale, qualitative study among a group of seventeen respondents of diverse ages and backgrounds currently residing in the Netherlands, we offer an empirical exploration of the places that are of importance for people’s individual state of mind and investigate how these places relate to (potential) tourist experiences. The combination of in-depth interviews and random-cue self-reporting resulted in the following findings: 1) all our respondents regularly reside in an elaborate imaginary world, consisting of both fictional and non-fictional places; 2) this imaginary world is dominated by places which make the respondents feel nostalgic; 3) in this regard, the private home and houses from childhood are pivotal; 4) the ‘home’ is seen as topos of the self and contrasted with ‘away’; 5) the imagination of ‘away’ emerges from memories of previous tourist experiences, personal fantasies and, last but not least, influences from popular culture. We conclude that imagining and visiting other locations are part of a life-long project of ‘identity work’ in which personal identities are performed, confirmed and extended. By travelling, either physically or mentally, individuals anchor their identity - the entirety of ideas about who they are, where they come from and where they think they belong - in a broader, spatial framework.

scholarly journals Film as medium for meaning making: A practical theological reflection

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita L. Cloete
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Practical Theology ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
The Self ◽  
Practical Theological

The reflection on film will be situated within the framework of popular culture and livedreligion as recognised themes within the discipline of practical theology. It is argued that theperspective of viewers is of importance within the process of meaning-making. By focusing onthe experience and meaning-making through the act of film-watching the emphasis is not somuch on the message that the producer wishes to convey but rather on the experience that iscreated within the viewer. Experience is not viewed as only emotional, but rather that, at least,both the cognitive and emotional are key in the act of watching a film. It is therefore arguedthat this experience that is seldom reflected on by viewers could serve as a fruitful platform formeaning-making by the viewer. In a context where there seems to be a decline in institutionalisedforms of religion, it is important to investigate emerging forms of religion. Furthermore, theturn to the self also makes people’s experiences and practices in everyday life valuableresources for theological reflection. This reflection could provide a theoretical framework forespecially empirical research on how film as specific form of media serves as a religiousresource and plays a role in the construction of meaning and religious identity.

Conclusion: Sincerity Dreams

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Rutten
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Cultural Paradigms ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Inclusive Analysis

This conclusion reflects on today's dreams of renewing or revitalizing sincerity and rejects the notion that they are outdated or do not deserve any of our attention. It cites the work of several scholars to show that sincerity is anything but obsolete in twenty-first-century popular culture. Indeed, today's strivings to renew sincerity have not been neglected by scholars such as R. Jay Magill Jr., Epstein, and Yurchak. The rhetoric on new sincerity has been addressed in thoughtful analyses of contemporary culture that have helped the author in crafting a comprehensive and geographically inclusive analysis of present-day sincerity rhetoric. In post-Communist Russia, debates on a shift to late or post-postmodern cultural paradigms are thriving with at least as much fervor as—and possibly more than—in Western Europe or the United States. This conclusion discusses the newly gained insights which the author's sincerity study offers.

scholarly journals Looking for national and genre identity in the modern Russian and Hungarian author fairy tale (on the example of the texts by A. Kabakov, A. Stepanov and A. Mosonyi)

2020 ◽  
pp. 383-398
Author(s):  
Polina V. Korolkova
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Adult Reader ◽  
Modern Russian

The essay deals with the interaction between the genre transformations of the author fairy tale and the national problematics, as well as the question of the modern strategies of genre renewal on the example of the texts by modern Russian and Hungarian writers (“The Moscow fairy tales” by A. Kabakov, “The fairy tales not about people” by A. Stepa-nov, “The Budapest fairy tales” and “The supermarket fairy tales” by A. Mosonyi). Among other questions, I address the so-called “genre me-mory” (M. Lipovetsky’s term), which in the texts by Kabakov, Stepanov, and Mosonyi functions at the level of entire cycles but rarely at the level of separate texts. With regard to the fi eld of children’s literature, the na-tional locus makes the texts appear more modern-looking and therefore appealing to an adult reader who rediscovers the details of everyday life. The opposite strategy is often applied in the philosophical, parable or political fairy tales, when the authors give priority to the nation-specifi c, nuanced and recognizable locus, which at the same time receives the features of the fairy tale or mythological space.

scholarly journals Komiksy Marzeny Sowy. Marzi opowiada o dzieciństwie w PRL-u

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 99-111
Author(s):  
Anna Podemska-Kałuża
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Valuable Source ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
Adult World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Difficult Times ◽  
International Success

Marzena Sowa’s Comics. Marzi Talks About Childhood in PRLPolish screenwriter Marzena Sowa is the author of the comics’ cycle about Marzi, which was published in the years 2005–2011 and was an international success (the drawings prepared by Sylvain Savoia). The storiesabout the red-haired girl, the daughter of the workman and the resident of industrial city are the forms autobiographical, that show the reality of life in Poland in the 1980s. The prospect of a child, who is a careful observer of the adult world, has allowed the presentation of history of country in Central Europe at the end of communism. The cycle of Marzi presents an evocative picture of experience “last generation of PRL”, is the witness to the contemporary culture and the record of the struggles of society with the problems of everyday life in “difficult times”. Since its debut in 2005, the critic compares this comic diary from the time of puberty to the famous Persepolisof Marjane Satrapi. For the modern reader the books of Marzena Sowa is a valuable source of knowledge about Poland in the days of “Solidarity” and Lech Wałęsa, as well as the iconic comics that has a big power of social and cultural impact.

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