American Popular Culture 5AAEB073

Level/Semester taught: Level 5, 2nd year module, semester 1 Convenor/Teacher: Dr Clare Birchall < [email protected]> Office: VWB 627 Credit Value: 15 credits Assessment: 1) 1000-word critical glossary of key terms due 10th Nov 2015 1pm, worth 15% of final mark; 2) 3000-word essay, due 12th Jan 2016, 1pm worth 85% of final mark. [Please check these dates on the department website and Keats. They were correct at the time of going to print!] 3) Formative, unassessed work: Group seminar presentation

Module Description The focus of this module will be on critically evaluating the place and meaning of American popular culture in contemporary life. In order to fully understand the contemporary moment, however, we will locate the complex historical and transnational roots of American popular culture. For example, we will consider how ambivalent Puritan attitudes towards "worldly delights" has shaped wider cultural perceptions of popular culture, and the politics of imported (and distorted) African cultural traditions that became a feature of Plantation life and shaped centuries of music production and consumption. We will also discuss how American ideals, both constitutional (such as freedom of the press, and also the right to keep and bear arms) and mythic (the American Dream, the frontier, individualism) have influenced the place and content of popular culture in the US. These histories will give us a fuller understanding of contemporary forms. This module will teach you how to perform close readings of popular cultural practices and forms, and how to contextualise those forms at the national and transnational level. We will look to historical and contemporary forms to explore the politics of popular culture. Forms we will consider include tabloids such as The National Enquirer, Hollywood film, music videos, television shows, social media and digital platforms, theme parks, video games, and comics. But we will also examine popular phenomena, practices and events such blackface, drag, African-American "Indians" in New Orleans Mardi Gras, the 1963 March on Washington, plastic surgery, hipsters, and Disneyland. Contemporary processes such as pornographication and gentrification, and theoretical approaches like postmodernism, postfeminism and posthumanism will inform the most recent examples of popular culture. We will be seeking to understand how self- and collective understanding today is produced culturally; how power operates through such culture; how freedom is realised and constrained; how cultural values and tastes are produced and reproduced; and how injustice is both perpetrated and resisted in popular culture (many people know that The Simpsons,

for example, is replete with critical parodies of bourgeois values, cultural prejudices and global capitalism; but not many realise that the production company uses cheap labour in Korea). This will be an interdisciplinary course drawing on American cultural studies, history, media studies, political theory, and literary theory. Popular culture as an 'object' of inquiry belongs to no single discipline, not least because it plays a significant role in many aspects of the contemporary life of social groups and individuals living in a multicultural and extremely diverse modern America, one which is increasingly 'globalised' and connected - in many senses - to other societies around the world. Lecture/seminar programme

1

The Emergence of American Popular Culture: Puritan “worldly delights”, slave culture, folk tradition, leisure time, press freedom, and technological innovation

2

American Dreams: Myth, Immigration, Celebrity and Popular Culture

3

The Politics of Performance: Blackface, Buffalo Bill and Drag

4

Street Life: Marches, Festivals, & Mardi Gras

5

Hollywood and Ideology: Reading Adorno against HUAC

6

READING WEEK

7

The Politics of Taste: Trailer Trash, Kitsch, Hipsters, & Gentrification

8

Postmodern Pop Culture: Disneyland & Vegas

9

Postfeminist Pop Culture: Pageants, Pornographication & Rape Revenge Fantasies

10

Posthuman Pop Culture: Superman, Cyborgs, Plastic Surgery & Zombie Politics

11

Postnational Pop Culture: Cultural Imperialism, Hybrid Forms & Globalisation

Useful background reading  J. Storey, An Introductory Guide to Critical Theory and Popular Culture University of Georgia Press, 1996.  Campbell, Neil, American Cultural Studies: An Introduction to American Culture. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2011.  L. Ashby, With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2006.  G. Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and Popular Culture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990.  W. Fitzhugh Brundage (ed.) Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011  R. Rubin and J. Melnick, Immigration and Popular Culture, New York: New York University Press, 2007.  K. D. Thompson, Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery, Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014.  L. Crowthers, Globalization and American Popular Culture, 3rd Edition, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.  R. Guins & Z. Cruz, Popular Culture: A Reader, London: Sage, 2005.

Week 1

The Emergence of American Popular Culture: Puritan “worldly delights”, slave culture, folk tradition, leisure time, press freedom, and technological innovation Set Reading * K. D. Thompson, ‘Introduction’, Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery, Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Further Reading * L. Ashby, With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2006. * W. Fitzhugh Brundage (ed.) Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011

Week 2 American Dreams: Myth, Immigration, Celebrity Set Reading * R. Rubin and J. Melnick, ‘Introduction’, Immigration and Popular Culture, New York: New York University Press, 2007. * Extract from Karen Sternheimer, Celebrity Culture and the American Dream, London: Routledge. 8-15. Further Reading * V. Cambridge, Immigration, Diversity, and Broadcasting in the United States, 1990-2001, Ohio University Press, 2005. * Gareth Palmer, ‘Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: An American Fairytale’, in Dines and Humez (eds.) Gender, Race and Class in Media, London, Sage: 37-44. * Lawrence Samuel, The American Dream: A Cultural History, Syracuse University Press, 2012. * Jim Cullen, (ed) ‘Chapter 7: The Firmament of Stardom’, Popular Culture in American History, Second Edition, Blackwell, 2013. * R. Rubin and J. Melnick, Immigration and Popular Culture, New York: New York University Press, 2007. * Karen Sternheimer, Celebrity Culture and the American Dream, London: Routledge. * Neil Campbell & Alasdair Kean, ‘Chapter 2: Ethnicity and Immigration’, American Cultural Studies, Routledge, 2011. Electronic Resource: http://www.kcl.eblib.com/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=957528 dcc

Week 3 The Politics of Performance: Blackface, Buffalo Bill and Drag Set Reading * Jim Cullen, (ed.) ‘Chapter 3: The Racy Appeal of the Minstrel’, Popular Culture in American History, Blackwell, 2013. 67-89 Further Reading Gender Performance * Judith Halberstam, ‘Drag Kings: Masculinity and Performance,’ Female Masculinity, Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. * Judith Bulter, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London: Routledge, 1990. * Del LaGrace Volcano and Judith 'Jack' Halberstam, The drag king book, London: Serpent's Tail, 1999.

* Juan Antonio Suárez, Bike boys, drag queens & superstars: Avant-garde, mass culture, and gay identities in the 1960s underground cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Blackface * Ralph Ellison, ‘Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke,’ Shadow and Act, New York; Random House, 1964. * John Strausbaugh, Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult and Imitation in American Popular Culture, Tarcher Penguin, 2006. * Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. * Dale Cockerell, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Buffalo Bill and the Wild West Matthew Rebhorn, Pioneer performances: staging the frontier. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Electronic Resource: http://library.kcl.ac.uk:80/F/?func=direct&doc_number=001453272&local_base=KINGS * L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, University of New Mexico Press, 1999. * Paul Reddin, The Wild West Shows, University of Illinois Press, 1999. Week 4 Street Life: Protest, Festivals, & Mardi Gras Set Reading * George Lipsitz, Chapter 10 ‘Mardi Gras Indians’, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Culture, University of Minnesota Press, 1990: 233-256. Further Reading * Michel de Certeau, ‘Walking in the City’, The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984. * Helen A. Regis, ‘Blackness and the Politics of Memory in the New Orleans Second Line’ American Ethnologist, Vol. 28, No. 4, Nov., 2001, pp. 752-777. * Lucy Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition, University of California Press, 2002. * John Storey, ‘Rockin’ Hegemony: West Coast Rock and Amerika’s War in Vietnam’, in J. Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, Second Edition, Longman 1998. 225-235. * James Gill, Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans, University Press of Mississippi, 1997. * Samuel Kinser, Carnival American Style: Mardi Gras at New Orleans, University of Chicago Press, 1990. * Renee Guarriello Heath, Courtney Vail Fletcher, Ricardo Munoz (eds.) Understanding Occupy: From Wall Street to Portland, Lexington Books, 2013. * Paulo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism, Pluto, 2012.

Week 5 Hollywood and Ideology: Reading Adorno against HUAC Set Reading T. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, 'The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception' from Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944); in Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, ed. M. Gigi and D.M. Kellner (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). Further Reading * D. Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture, Routledge, 1995, pp 45-76.

* J. Storey, ‘Chapter 5’, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction , Harvester, 2001. * T. Adorno, 'On Popular Music' in J.Storey (ed) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader , Harvester, 1994. * Michael Ryan & Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film, Indiana University Press, 1990. * Deborah Cook, The Culture Industry Revisited: Theodore W Adorno on Mass Culture, Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.

Week 6 Reading Week

Week 7 The Politics of Taste: Trailer Trash, Kitsch, Hipsters, & Gentrification Set Reading * Mark Grief, ‘Positions’, M. Grief et al. (Eds) What was the Hipster? N+1 Foundation, 2010. 4-13. * Pierre Bourdieu, 'Distinction and the Aristocracy of Culture,' in John Storey (Ed) Cultural Theory And Popular Culture: A Reader, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1998. Further Reading Hipsters (See Keats for news articles) * John Leland, Hip: The History. New York: Ecco, 2004. * M. Grief et al. (Eds) What was the Hipster? N+1 Foundation, 2010. * Richard Loyd, Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City. Routledge, 2006. * Jake Kinzey, The Sacred and the Profane: An Investigation of Hipsters, John Hunt Publishing, 2012. Subcultures * Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton (Eds) The Subcultures Reader, London: Routledge, 1997. * Dick Hebdidge, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London Routledge, 1979. (Note, this book is about British punk, but it is considered a classic in subculture studies.) * Ben Chapelle, ‘Lowrider Style: Cultural Politics and the Poetics of Scale’, in M. Ryan (ed) Cultural Studies: An Anthology, Blackwell, 2008. 634-645. * S. Thornton, ‘The Social Logic of Subcultural Capital,’ The Subcultures Reader, (eds) Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton, London: Routledge, 1997. Bourdieu * P. Bourdieu, Distinction, London: Routledge, 1984. * J. Gronow, The Sociology of Taste, London: Taylor and Francis, 1997. * B. Fowler, Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory, London: Sage, 1997. * R. Harker et al (eds) An Introduction To The Work Of Pierre Bourdieu, London: Macmillan, 1990. * R. Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu, London: Routledge, 1992. * J. F. Lane, Pierre Bourdieu: A Critical Introduction, London: Pluto, 2000. * D. Robbins, Bourdieu and Culture, London: Sage, 2000. * D. Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Chicago: Uni of Chicago press, 1997.

Week 8 Postmodern Pop Culture: Disneyland & Vegas

Set Reading * J. Storey, ‘Chapter 7: Postmodernism’, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction (Harlow: Pearson, 2001). * M. Irvine, "The Postmodern," "Postmodernism," "Postmodernity": Approaches to Po-Mo, online at http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/pomo.html [not in reading pack] Further Reading * F. Jameson, ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,’ in T. Docherty (ed), Postmodernism: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). * A. McRobbie, Postmodernism and Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). * J. Bignell, Postmodern Media Culture (Aakar Books, 2007) * D.Kellner, Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and the Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern (London: Routledge 1995). * T. Docherty (ed), Postmodernism: A Reader (New York: Columbia Uni Press, 1993). * b.hooks, ‘Chapter 3: Postmodern Blackness,’ Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End, 1990). pp23-31. * T. Brabazon & S. Redhead, ‘Baudrillard in Drag’, Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, Fall 2013. http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2013/brabazon_redhead.htm Week 9 Postfeminist Pop Culture: Pageants, Pornographication & Rape Revenge Fantasies Set Reading * L. Coulthard, ‘Killing Bill’ in Y.Tasker & D. Negra, Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Further Reading Postfeminism * R. Munford & M. Waters, Feminism and Popular Culture: Investigating the Postfeminist Mystique, IB Taurus, 2014. * S. Genz and B. A. Brabon, Postfeminism: Cultural Texts and Theories, Edinburgh: EUP 2009. * S. Gamble, The Routledge Companion to Feminism and Postfeminism, London & New York: Routledge, 2001. * B. Brabon & S. Genz (eds), Postfeminism Gothic: Critical Interventions in Contemporary Culture, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007. * J. Hollows, Feminism in Popular Culture, Oxford: Berg, 2006. * A. Brooks, Postfeminism: Feminism, Cultural Theory and Cultural Forms, London: Routledge 1997. * A. McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture, and Social Change, London: Sage, 2009. * Jane Gerhard, ‘Sex and the City: Carrie Bradshaw’s Queer Postfeminism’, in Dines and Humez (eds.) Gender, Race and Class in Media, London, Sage: 75-80. Pornographication * Joshua Garrison, ‘Chapter 23: The Self-Porning of American Youth,’ Counterpoints, 392 (2011): 348-362. * B. McNair ‘Porno-chic, or the pornogrification of the mainstream’ in Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratisation of Desire , London, Routledge 2002. * B. McNair, Mediated Sex: pornography and postmodern culture, London: Arnold 1996. * S. Paasonen, K.Nikunen, L. Saarenmaa (eds.) Pornification: Sex and sexuality in media culture, Oxford: Berg 2007. R. Gill, ‘Empowerment/Sexism: Figuring Female Sexual Agency in Contemporary Advertising’, Feminism and Psychology, 18.1 (2008), 35-60.

Week 10

Posthuman Pop Culture: Superman, Cyborgs, Plastic Surgery & Zombie Politics Set Reading * N. Badmington, ‘Introduction: They all Laughed’, Alien Chic: Posthumanism and the Other Within (London: Routledge, 2004). * K. Toffoletti, ‘Chapter 4: Posthuman Monsters: The Erasure of Marilyn Manson,’ Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls: Feminism, Popular Culture and the Posthuman Body, (I.B.Taurus, 2007). Further Reading * N. Catherine Hayles, ‘Toward Emboddied Virtuality’, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. * D. Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’ in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge, 1991. * A. Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women, Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. * E.L.Graham, Representations of the Post/human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002). * K. Toffoletti, Cyborgs and Barbie dolls: feminism, popular culture and the posthuman body, I.B.Tauris, 2007. * N. Badmington (ed), Posthumanism, London: Palgrave, 2000. * R. Braidotti, The Posthuman, John Wiley, 2013.

Week 11 Postnational Pop Culture: Cultural Imperialism, Hybrid Forms, & Globalisation Set Reading * L. Crothers, ‘Chapter 6: American Popular Culture and the Future of Globalization’, Globalization and American Popular Culture, third edition, Rowman and Littlefield, 2013. Further Reading * L. Crothers, Globalization and American Popular Culture, third edition, Rowman and Littlefield, 2013. * J. Benyon & D. Dunkerley, ‘General Introduction, part 5: Cultural Homogenization and Hybridization’, in Globalization: The Reader, Psychology Press, 2000. p 22-31. * Neil Campbell & Alasdair Kean, ‘Chapter 10: The Transmission of American Culture’, American Cultural Studies. Routledge, 2011. Electronic Resource: http://www.kcl.eblib.com/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=957528 * M. Kraidy, Hybridity or the Cultural Logic of Globalization: Globalization and Hybridization. Temple University Press, 2005. * J. Tomlinson, ‘Cultural Globalisation: Placing and Displacing the West’, The Media Reader: Continuity and Transformation, ed. H.Mackay & T. O’Sullivan, Sage, 1999:165-177. * S. During, ‘Popular Culture on a Global Scale’, The Media Reader: Continuity and Transformation, ed. H.Mackay & T. O’Sullivan, Sage, 1999: 211-222. * N. Campbell et al. Issues in Americanization and Culture, Edinburgh University Press, 2004.