Understanding The Simpsons

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moritz Fink
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Alternative Media ◽  
Participatory Culture ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Prime Time ◽  
The Simpsons ◽  
Tv Show

Another book on The Simpsons? you might wonder. Isn’t the yellow cartoon troupe around the eponymous chaotic family somewhat worn-out? Perhaps you even ask yourself whether that nineties’ show is still on the air anyhow. Accolades such as "the best TV show of the twentieth century" or "the longest-running scripted series on American prime-time television" have elevated The Simpsons to the pop culture pantheon, while also suggesting the very vintage character of the program. But the label "The Simpsons" refers not just to a show that seems to belong to a bygone television era, it implies a rich narrative universe, including a set of iconic figures, familiar across continents and generations. Through lens of a transmedia studies, Understanding The Simpsons traces the franchise’s trajectory, from its original conception shaped by alternative media traditions to its astounding, long-lived impact as a cult phenomenon in popular culture. Examining the legacy of online fan forums and bootleg T-shirts from the show’s heyday in the early 1990s, as well as the meaning of The Simpsons in contemporary digital culture, this book demonstrates how one of the most popular comedy series of all time has redefined the intersections between the corporate media and participatory culture – and is alive indeed.

scholarly journals Libertarianism in Pop Culture:

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcella Lins
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Buffy The Vampire Slayer ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
And Function ◽  
Tv Show ◽  
Made In

Television drama is an important tool to present hypothetical scenarios and imagine various ways to deal with them, while testing the viability of ethical theories that could guide moral judgements and practical decisions made in real life. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) left an important legacy in Popular Culture captivating viewers worldwide and still being relevant 20 years later. The aim of this article is to revisit Buffy’s Season 4 and analyze it through a libertarian perspective. Over this season, a great number of relevant subjects are discussed, such as the form and function of the state, its relationship with society, the subversion of public authorities and the morality of law and punishment. It is expected that the successful adoption of libertarian ethics and principles to understand this TV show might bring out Libertarianism as a valuable philosophical alternative to be taken into account when looking for solutions to current issues.

Pentecostalism and Popular Culture in Britain and America from the Early Twentieth Century to the 1970s

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Global Christianity ◽  
Mass Entertainment

Pentecostalism is now the second largest subgrouping of global Christianity. It’s charted tremendous growth, even in deeply post-Christian countries like Sweden. This chapter compares British and American pentecostalism and looks at how disciples related to or rejected pop culture. Believers had an interesting, hot and cold, relationship with mass entertainment, music, and mass media. They were eager to borrow much for evangelistic purposes, and quick to shun all that they thought to be sinful. British pentecostalism never grew at the pace and never achieved the astounding success of their co-religionists across the Atlantic. Some of this had directly to do with access to mass culture and a willingness or ability to adjust the faith to pop culture. This chapter ends by detailing and analysing the major differences and similarities of the faith as it developed in both regions.

Espionage and Exile

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
The Cold War

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.

History Has Its Eyes on You

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Maslon
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Technological Advance ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Generational Change ◽  
Personal Preference ◽  
Broadway Musical ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Consumer Habits

A generational change at the beginning of the twenty-first century intersected with the technological advance of the Internet to provide a renaissance of Broadway music in popular culture. Downloading playlists allowed the home listener to become, in essence, his/her own record producer; length, narrative, performer were now all in the hands of the consumer’s personal preference. Following in the footsteps of Rent (as a favorite of a younger demographic), Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton emerged as the greatest pop culture/Broadway musical phenomenon of the twenty-first century; its cast album and cover recording shot up near the top of music’s pop charts. A rediscovery of the power of Broadway’s music to transform listening and consumer habits seems imminent with the addition of Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen to a devoted fan base—and beyond.

How American Newspaper Comic Strips Portray God, Angels, and Humans

2020 ◽  
pp. 398-413
Author(s):  
Leonard Greenspoon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Comic Strip ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Texts

The comic strip as a mainstay of print and more recently online media is an American invention that began its development in the last decades of the 1800s. For many decades in the mid-twentieth century, comic strips were among the most widely disseminated forms of popular culture. With their succession of panels, pictures, and pithy perspectives, comics have come to cover an array of topics, including religion. This chapter looks at how the Bible (Old and New Testament) figures in comic strips, focusing specifically on three areas: the depiction of the divine, renderings of specific biblical texts, and how comic strips can function as sites in which religious identity and controversies play out. Relevant examples are drawn from several dozen strips. Special attention is also paid to a few, like Peanuts and BC, in which biblical imagery, ideology, and idiom are characteristically portrayed in distinctive ways.

The Wolf and the Lamb: Popular Culture in France from the Old Regime to the Twentieth Century

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 743
Author(s):  
Philip Dawson ◽  
Jacques Beauroy ◽  
Marc Bertrand ◽  
Edward T. Gargan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Old Regime

scholarly journals Posleratni bildungsroman jedne generacije kao vrhunsko delo jugoslovenske popularne televizijske estetike – TV serija Grlom u jagode

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Nataša Simeunović-Bajić
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Other ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Maturation Period ◽  
Story Line ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Generational Identity ◽  
Discursive Field ◽  
Tv Show

The aim of this paper is to identify the way in which the television TV series Grlom u jagode (Headless Rush) has become cult TV show and piece of popular TV aesthetics. It represents the daily life and social reality, as well as the construction of generational identity in the period of 1960-1969 in Yugoslavia. Headless Rush was produced in 1975 by Srđan Karanovic. It is an original project of a group of young people and a product of the Editorial Staffof the Second Belgrade TV Channel.The paper starts from the assumption that television series as a specific TV discourse participate in the articulation of social practices in a complex political context, thereby significantly affecting the formation, evolution and understanding of the meaning of popular culture. The fact that the discursive field is very broad and very detailed is characteristic for the potential meanings of this series. It represents the attempt to grasp the whole maturation period of a young man in socialist Yugoslavia in the Balkans. This decade has been chosen on purpose because it was important in the growing up of the series’ crew and the other members on the set. Each episode is a comprehensive and complete narrative unit, related to events that took place in only one presented year. Each episode contains the same sentence: „Back in the 196...“ thereby chronologically pointing out to the significant world’s and Yugoslav historical events. Each episode follows the socialization of Bane Bumblebee primarily, and then that of his friends, girlfriends, his sister, as well as his periodical girlfriend Goca. Each episode combines factographies, documentaries, pseudo-factographies, in a narrative and fictional framework. Besides, there is something that might be called pseudo-documentary or out-of-film world in which the characters comment the story line in which they participate. All these elements and patterns create particular aesthetic world.

scholarly journals Mickey’s Trailer and Environmental Thought: Disney Cartoons and Countryside

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
Joe Goddard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Land Uses ◽  
Automobile Ownership ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
Environmental Cognition ◽  
Environmental Thought ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

The influence of popular cartoons on environmental cognition is explored in this essay through readings of Mickey’s Trailer, a 1938 cartoon directed by Ben Sharpsteen for Walt Disney. Other materials considered include Ford Motor Company’s 1937-38 film coproduced by Wilder Pictures, Glacier International Park, which promotes motor-tourism and automobile ownership, and Ben Sharpsteen’s other work for Walt Disney. The article also examines the ideas of physical and “illusional” zoning in the city, especially the way that they were applied in the mid-twentieth century. Physical zoning involved separating incompatible land uses, whereas illusional zoning entailed seeing what you wanted to see. What does Mickey’s Trailer say about how people can live, and can it inform where people choose to live? The essay muses that appreciations of nature and the environment are influenced by popular culture.

scholarly journals American war movies. David Ayer’s Fury as mythologisation of war and soldiers

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Marcin Kępiński
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Traditional Culture ◽  
Symbolic Language ◽  
War Films ◽  
Hollywood Cinema

Both pop culture and modern Hollywood cinema are mainly intended for entertainment. American war films are not free from this vice. A researcher of culture should shun attempts to find hidden symbols, myths and flashes of meanings from distant traditional culture in such films. Contemporary popular mythologies do not represent the same mythical pattern that Eliade wrote about. Popular culture consists of ideas on various topics, borrowings, quotations and fragments of meanings, all patched together. In my view, however, Fury goes beyond pop culture and entertainment. After all, there is also good American war cinema and films that are not mindless borrowings or calques of carelessly patchworked pieces of pop culture. One can look at them and find certain cultural tropes and motifs known to specialists in humanities, such as an initiation journey, the symbolic language of eternal myths or archetypal figures of cultural heroes, all in a version transformed by popular culture, of course. The aim of my article is therefore to analyse David Ayer’s film from the perspective of a culture researcher who seeks cultural tropes and sources of the war hero myth in this cinematic work.

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