Chapter Two. Bruce Lee Between Popular Culture and Cultural Politics

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Bruce Lee

Schooling, Popular Culture, and a Pedagogy of Possibility

1988 ◽  
Vol 170 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry A. Giroux ◽  
Roger I. Simon
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Student Voice ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper, the authors analyze the importance of critical pedagogy by examining its potentially transformative relations with the sphere of popular culture. Popular culture is viewed not only as a site of contradiction and struggle but also as a significant pedagogical terrain that raises important questions regarding such issues as the relevance of everyday life, the importance of student voice, the significance of both meaning and pleasure in the learning process, and the relationship between knowledge and power in the curriculum. In the end of the piece, the authors raise a number of questions that suggest important inquiries that need to be analyzed regarding how teachers and others can further develop the notion of critical pedagogy as a form of cultural politics.

scholarly journals Bruce Lee as gladiator: Celebrity, vernacular stoicism and cinema

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 348-361
Author(s):  
Lindsay Steenberg
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Body Type ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
The Third ◽  
Bruce Lee ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Opening Up

This article situates Bruce Lee’s films and star persona in the context of wider patterns in global genre cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. I argue for a connection between the Western reception of Lee’s films and those of the mid-century Italian sword and sandal films, beginning with the Colosseum fight between Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris that concludes Way of the Dragon (1972). From the dojo fights of Fist of Fury (1972), through the tournament structure in Enter the Dragon (1973), to his statistically led re-animation in the EA Sports UFC 3 (2018) videogame, Bruce Lee can be usefully considered as a gladiator. Bruce Lee, as fighter, performer and star persona, contributes to the enduring gladiatorial archetype that is an embedded feature in the Western visual imaginary. Furthermore, I argue that the gladiator archetype itself shifted because of Lee’s onscreen roles and the discourse that surrounds his star persona. In order to map these shifts and patterns of confluence, I chart three main points of impact that Lee has had on the gladiatorial archetype using his Western-facing roles on film and television, namely the television series Longstreet (1971–1972) and Enter the Dragon (1973). First, I consider the inclusion of martial arts and, second, the opening up of the field of representation to different models of masculinity, including a leaner body type and a non-White – in this case, ethnically Chinese – gladiator. The third point is the emphasis on a popular, or vernacular, stoicism. Ultimately, I elucidate the relationship between the gladiator, Bruce Lee, and philosophy, arguing that Lee embodies a vernacular stoicism that has become one of the defining features of the post-millennial gladiator and notions of heroic masculinity in popular culture more widely.

Locating MIA: ‘Race’, commodification and the politics of production

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 736-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anamik Saha
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Asian Culture ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Asian Identity ◽  
Industry Practice ◽  
Political Intervention ◽  
Asian Music ◽  
The Way

MIA (real name: Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam) is one of the few British South Asian music artists who have crossed into the mainstream of western pop. The way in which she has attained this while foregrounding an explicit anti-racist and anti-imperialist message in her songs can be seen as a significant musical-political intervention, although the particular contestation of her work that has followed also highlights the challenges that Asian artists continue to face in gaining recognition within western popular culture. However, what is truly significant about MIA’s career is how she has managed to express a disavowed Asian identity without becoming trapped in the marginal space through which Asian culture is excluded. This has been the outcome of particular industry practice that has harnessed successfully the enabling features of commodification. In this way MIA represents an effective cultural politics of difference, the success of which is absolutely contingent upon an equally effective politics of production.

scholarly journals Punk Women and Riot Grrls

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosi Braidotti
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Riot Grrrl ◽  
Media Activism ◽  
Power And Resistance ◽  
Iconic Images ◽  
The Face

This paper deals with feminist cultural politics, nomadic thought and media activism. It combines theoretical insights from Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy with Riot Grrrl bands and women’s punk music. The paper explores two central aspects of the Pussy Riot’s performances: the visual and the musical. The visual includes an analysis of “the face” as a landscape of both power and resistance and discusses also the function of the mask as a cultural and political device. It then highlights the role of iconic images like Queen Beatrix, Angela Davies, the Guerrilla Girls and others in popular culture. The musical component includes Janis Joplin, the ultimate Riot Grrrl band Bikini Kill, Nina Hagen and, of course, Pussy Riot. Embodying the slogan “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution” the paper argues for an affirmative and  creative approach to feminist theory and practice and to contemporary cultural politics. 

scholarly journals Baudrillard on Broadway: Bio-musicals, the hyperreal and the cultural politics of simuloquism

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Macpherson
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Musical Theatre ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Current Experience ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

This article considers the nature of vocal hyperreality in bio-musicals: a form of musical theatre in which actors simulate the voices of well-known pop singers or groups in theatrical retellings of their lives and careers. To do so, I employ the four successive stages of simulacrum found in Jean Baudrillard’s ‘The precession of simulacra’ (1981) to consider the potentials and limitations of such vocal simulation in the act of (re)authoring pop singers for the musical stage. Considering the way in which such performances mask or denature their source material (the ‘original’ voices of pop singers and artists), while at the same time employing a dual temporality of cultural memory and current experience, I offer a neologism that may help articulate the complex experience for audience members who attend these productions. The final part of the article considers the peculiar convention of releasing Original Cast Recordings of these works, arguing that these may be symptomatic of Baudrillard’s simulacrum, as popular culture reaches a terminus from which it is unable to progress without regression, intertextuality or manufactured nostalgia.

scholarly journals “Sometimes a Bee Can Move an Ox”: Biblical Epics and One Man's Quest to Promote Jewish Values in Blacklist-Era Hollywood

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-194
Author(s):  
Andrew Paul
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
Liberal Humanism ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
Biblical Epics

In the 1950s, the top American Jewish organizations chose a single man, John Stone, to represent their collective interests in Hollywood. Over the course of the decade, Stone's Motion Picture Project sought to prevent antisemitism on film and to inspire the creation of positive Jewish characters. Negotiating the cultural politics of the era, however, resulted in an increasing tendency to favor depictions of biblical Jews over contemporary American ones. In a strange twist, Stone endorsed no film with as much zeal asBen-Hur, a New Testament celebration of Jesus. By following Stone's tortuous attempts to navigate Cold War controversies, and by casting new light on the phenomenal success of biblical epics in the 1950s, this essay suggests that at the heart of postwar popular culture was a shift toward a particular discourse of liberal humanism.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracey Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
First Century ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
Political Speech ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Mother Blame

This book examines the cultural politics of parent-blame in Britain, or more precisely, mother-blame, arguing that the manufacture and circulation of ‘bad parents’ is part of a social, cultural and political rubric that is at once gendered and gendering. It begins with the premise that parent-blame manifests, in part, through the sacralisation and idealisation of some mothers. It also discusses the emergence of the figure of the ‘bad parent’ as a ‘bearer of crisis’ and shows how this figure came to populate public debate, popular culture, policy documents and political speech, everyday conversation, social media and media culture at the turn of the twenty-first century. Finally, it locates the construction of ‘parenting crisis’ within a broader context of neoliberalism. The book contends that the neoliberalisation of parenting disguises and obscures the structural processes and excesses that are widening social inequality and deepening the poverty of those marginalised at the bottom.

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