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In this accessible introductory guide, the author identifies key feminist approaches to popular culture from the 1960s to the present and demonstrates how the relationship between feminism, femininity and popular culture has often been a troubled one. The book introduces the central ideas of both second-wave feminism and feminist cultural studies and demonstrates how they inform feminist debates about a range of popular forms and practices through a series of case studies: the woman's film; romantic fiction; soap opera; consumption and material culture; fashion and beauty practices; and youth culture and popular music.
Based on a diverse range of texts and sites, including: Bridget Jones, African-American music videos, news coverage, radio shows, the Scream trilogy, Sex and the City and hip hop the authors analyse how different meanings of feminism have been negotiated within popular culture and how popular culture has made sense of feminism.
What and how we eat are two of the most persistent choices we face in everyday life. Whatever we decide on though, and however mundane our decisions may seem, they will be inscribed with information both about ourselves and about our positions in the world around us. Yet, food has only recently become a significant and coherent area of inquiry for cultural studies and the social sciences. Food and Cultural Studies re-examines the interdisciplinary history of food studies from a cultural studies framework, from the semiotics of Barthes and the anthropology of Levi-Strauss to Elias' historical analysis and Bourdieu's work on the relationship between food, consumption and cultural identity. The authors then go on to explore subjects as diverse as food and nation, the gendering of eating in, the phenomenon of TV chefs, the ethics of vegetarianism and food, risk and moral panics.
This wide-ranging text challenges a range of ideas about domestic culture. It examines how the meanings of domestic life are produced across a range of discourses and practices, from architecture, lifestyle media and advertising to home decoration, cooking and watching television.
This collection intervenes into the debates surrounding feminism’s contentious relationship with domesticity in popular culture. The contributors touch on topics ranging from reality television shows like How Clean is Your House? to the figure of the maid in contemporary American cinema.
Lifestyles have a history, and lifestyle media is fundamentally implicated in this history. This original volume examines issues of taste, media and lifestyle from the 1900s to 1970s, providing a wealth of empirical evidence and debate from varied international perspectives. Including examples as diverse as 'Good Housekeeping' and 'Playboy', it explores the continuities and discontinuities between the past and present to provide a better understanding of the representation of lifestyle and its relationship to the self. The volume demonstrates how ideas about gender, nation and 'race' problematize taken-for-granted assumptions about lifestyle, with particular emphasis on the new middle classes in the US. The book also examines the role of advertising and marketing in mediating ideas about lifestyle, the role of material culture in the construction of cultural hierarchies and the positioning of social groups within wider cartographies of taste. The volume makes a significant contribution to this growing field and will interest academics and students in media and cultural studies, communication studies, cultural history and sociology.
This collection concentrates on the analysis of cult movies, how they are defined, who defines them and the cultural politics of these definitions. The definition of the cult movie relies on a sense of its distinction from the "mainstream" or "ordinary." This also raises issues about the perception of it as an oppositional form of cinema, and of its strained relationships to processes of institutionalization and classification. In other words, cult movie fandom has often presented itself as being in opposition to the academy, commercial film industries and the media more generally, but has been far more dependent on these forms than it has usually been willing to admit. The international roster of essayists range over the full and entertaining gamut of cult films from Dario Argento, Spanish horror and Peter Jackson's New Zealand gorefests to sexploitation, kung fu and sci-fi flicks.
In the course of a full day at Butternut Hollow Pond, readers will meet water striders, snapping turtles, herons, woodchucks, and other animals that live in the pond. Readers will learn how each creature fits into the habitat's food chain.
Written by an academic and researcher with over twenty years' experience in teaching and convening Media Studies courses, Media Studies: A Complete Introduction is designed to give you everything you need to succeed, all in one place. It covers the key areas that students are expected to be confident in, outlining the basics in clear jargon-free English, and then providing added-value features like case studies, and even lists of questions you might be asked in your seminar or exam. The book uses a structure that mirrors the way Media Studies is taught on many university courses. Chapters include essential coverage of the history, organization and production of the media industries, and regulation of the media. The analysis of media texts is covered in detail, as are the issues of identity and gender, the idea of globalization and the shifting face of social media in its many contexts.