W cieniu radiacji. Seksualizacje bomby atomowej w kulturze popularnej lat 40. i 50. w Stanach Zjednoczonych

2017 ◽  
pp. 33-41
Author(s):  
Piotr Urbanowicz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Cinema ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
Science Fiction Films

The aim of the article is to present a phenomenon of the sexualization of an atomic bomb in the popular culture of the 1940s and the 1950s in the United States. On the basis of sociological and cultural studies, the author lists the functions of this phenomenon. Furthermore, he uses the examples of press reports and popular cinema to indicate that the sexualization of the atomic bomb resulted from fear of sterilization and assimilation of soldiers coming back from the front. The analysis concerns the film I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958). The author proves that science fiction films conceptualize social concerns, and accustom the viewers with atomic tension by means of appropriate narratives.

The Criminalization of Homosexuality in Popular Cinema

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Dalton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sexual Deviance ◽  
Popular Cinema ◽  
Crime Films ◽  
Crime Film ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Year 2000

In the early 1940s, films started to appear where homosexual characters were represented as inherently criminal. These early representations were often subtle or implicit because various production codes operating in the United States and United Kingdom forbade explicit depictions or naming of homosexuality. During the 1940s, homosexuality was associated with disease and sexual deviance. This ensured that these early depictions were unflattering. Gradually, as time progressed and homosexuality became a less taboo topic, representations of homosexual criminality became less coded and more explicit. Filmmakers became bolder in their treatment of the theme of homosexuality and crime. The most fascinating discovery is that, when it comes to popular culture and the cinema, murder is the crime that is typically associated with homosexuality. However, murder has been a mainstay of crime film plots and so it is not surprising that homicide features in films linked to crime and homosexuality. By the year 2000, it is apparent that the cinematic treatment of homosexuality and crime had evolved to become quite sophisticated. Whereas earlier films reviled their homosexual characters such that they attracted little empathy from the audience, these later films have sought to engender a greater tolerance and sympathy for the homosexual killers they depict. Finally, it is important to note that films that depict homosexuals as killers are not an expression of homophobic sentient per se. Crime films have long situated killing as an essential aspect of their plots, and so films that feature homosexuals as murderers are simply a subset of this most popular cinematic genre.

The Fact(s) of Michael Jordan’s Blackness: Excavating a Floating Racial Signifier

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Formation ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
Critical Media ◽  
Important Site

This genealogical examination of Michael Jordan’s popular signification reveals a complex narrative that incorporates many of the historically grounded racial codes that continue to structure the racial formation of the United States. Borrowing judiciously from cultural studies, poststructuralist, and postmodern theorizing, this paper critically analyzes the imaged persona of Michael Jordan as an important site of mediated popular culture, at which specific racial ideologies are publicized and authorized in support of the reactionary agenda of the post-Reaganite American imaginary. As such, this paper attempts to develop a critical media literacy that encourages readers to interrogate their engagement with the racially oppressive discursive tracts circulated by the popular media.

Applying the Devil's Works in a Holy Cause: Working-Class Popular Culture and the Salvation Army in the United States, 1879-1900

1997 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-223
Author(s):  
Lillian Taiz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
York City ◽  
The United States ◽  
Salvation Army ◽  
Public Meeting ◽  
The Many ◽  
Sunday Evening

Forty-eight hours after they landed in New York City in 1880, a small contingent of the Salvation Army held their first public meeting at the infamous Harry Hill's Variety Theater. The enterprising Hill, alerted to the group's arrival from Britain by newspaper reports, contacted their leader, Commissioner George Scott Railton, and offered to pay the group to “do a turn” for “an hour or two on … Sunday evening.” In nineteenth-century New York City, Harry Hill's was one of the best known concert saloons, and reformers considered him “among the disreputable classes” of that city. His saloon, they said, was “nothing more than one of the many gates to hell.”

Capturing the Art of Public Service: The Government’s Perspective

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Tony Carrizales
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virtual Museum ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Government Institutions ◽  
Art Forms

Public Service, in popular culture, can be viewed through many artistic lenses. Although there has been a consistent negative portrayal of government through art forms such as film and television, this research looks to review how government institutions in the United States have used art to provide a positive portrayal of public service. Eight forms of public service art are outlined through a content analysis of the holdings at the Virtual Museum of Public Service. The findings show that government and public entities have historically and continually engaged in promoting public service through art. Many of these public art examples are accessible year round, without limitations, such as buildings, statues, and public structures.

Crisis Management in the Event of Arrest, Disappearance, or Death of Mission Personnel

1985 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 115-116
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Crisis Management ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
Catholic Mission ◽  
Mission Agency ◽  
Crisis Situations

These guidelines were prepared by the Maryknoll Sisters, Office of Social Concerns, for the United States Catholic Mission Association, in March 1984. Each mission agency needs to have its own guidelines for procedures in crisis situations. These guidelines are published here to help others as they consider their own procedures under such circumstances.

Why Are the Missiles (and Missile Defence) Called Peace-Keepers? – Corroding the Concept of Peaceful Use

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 789-828
Author(s):  
Keith Wilson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Peace ◽  
Security Framework ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
Earth Space ◽  
Peace And Security

The United States is abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to deploy a limited missile defence shield. Amongst other developments, this is prompting a reconsideration of the global security framework. However, a crucial element is missing from the current missile defence proposals: a clearly articulated concept of peaceful use, applicable both to outer space and to earth-space. The deployment of missile defence runs counter to emerging norms. It has effects going far beyond the abandonment or re-configuration of specific Cold War agreements. In a community of nations committed to the maintenance of international peace and security (cf. national or plurilateral security), sustainable meaning for widely used and accepted norms of peaceful use and peaceful purposes is at risk.

The Business of Rhyming: Burma-Shave Poetry and Popular Culture

PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
Mike Chasar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Advertising Campaign ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
The Core ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Creative Forces

This essay uses the example of the long‐lived and popular Burma‐Shave advertising campaign to argue that literary critics should extend their attention to the vast amounts of poetry written for advertising purposes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Burma‐Shave campaign—which featured sequences of rhyming billboards erected along highways in the United States from 1926 to 1963—not only cultivated characteristics of literary and even avantgarde writing but effectively pressured that literariness into serving the commercial marketplace. At the same time, as the campaign's reception history shows, the spirit of linguistic play and innovation at the core of Burma‐Shave's poetry unintentionally distracted consumers' attention away from the commercial message and toward the creative forces of reading and writing poetry. A striking example of popular reading practices at work, this history shows how poetry created even in the most commercial contexts might resist the commodification that many twentieth‐century poets and critics feared. (MC)

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.

Zines, Half-Lives, and Afterlives: On the Temporalities of Social and Political Change

PMLA ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 126 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janice Radway
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Political Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Alternative Press ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Do It Yourself ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
The 1960S

The term zine is a recent variant of fanzine, a neologism coined in the 1930s to refer to magazines self-published by Aficionados of science fiction. Until zines emerged as digital forms, they were generally defined as handmade, noncommercial, irregularly issued, small-run, paper publications circulated by individuals participating in alternative, special-interest communities. Zines exploded in popularity during the 1980s when punk music fans adopted the form as part of their do-it-yourself aesthetic and as an outsider way to communicate among themselves about punk's defiant response to the commercialism of mainstream society. In 1990, only a few years after the first punk zines appeared, Mike Gunderloy made a case for the genre's significance in an article published in the Whole Earth Review, one of the few surviving organs of the 1960s alternative press in the United States. He celebrated zines' wide range of interests and the oppositional politics that generated their underground approach to publication.

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