Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination

Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination PDF Author: Henry Jenkins
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479891258
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.

Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination

Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination PDF Author: Henry Jenkins
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479891258
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.

Homer Simpson Marches on Washington

Homer Simpson Marches on Washington PDF Author: Timothy M. Dale
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813139708
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
A volume of enlightening essays on how TV shows, movies, and music can change hearts and minds. Amid all its frenetic humor, the long-running animated hit The Simpsons has often questioned what is culturally acceptable, wading into controversial subjects like gay rights, the war on terror, religion, and animal rights. This subtle form of political analysis is effective in changing opinions and attitudes on a large scale. Homer Simpson Marches on Washington explores the transformative power that enables popular culture to influence political agendas, frame the consciousness of audiences, and create profound shifts in values and ideals. To investigate the full spectrum of popular culture in a democratic society, editors Timothy M. Dale and Joseph J. Foy gather a top-notch team of scholars who use television shows such as Star Trek, The X-Files, All in the Family, The View, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, as well as movies and popular music, to investigate contemporary issues in American popular culture.

Visions of Belonging

Visions of Belonging PDF Author: Judith E. Smith
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231121717
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
-- Elaine May, author of Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era.

Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa

Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa PDF Author: Herman Wasserman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113691160X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 617

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Book Description
Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa examines the role that popular media could play to encourage political debate, provide information for development, or critique the very definitions of ‘democracy’ and ‘development’. Drawing on diverse case studies from various regions of the African continent, essays employ a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to ask critical questions about the potential of popular media to contribute to democratic culture, provide sites of resistance, or, conversely, act as agents for the spread of Americanized entertainment culture to the detriment of local traditions. A wide variety of media formats and platforms are discussed, ranging from radio and television to the Internet, mobile phones, street posters, film and music. As part of the Routledge series Internationalizing Media Studies, the book responds to the important challenge of broadening perspectives on media studies by bringing together a range of expert analyses of media in the African continent that will be of interest to students and scholars of media in Africa and further afield.

Through a Screen Darkly

Through a Screen Darkly PDF Author: Martha Bayles
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300123388
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Why it is a mistake to let commercial entertainment serve as America's de facto ambassador to the world

Being Political Popular

Being Political Popular PDF Author: Sohl Lee
Publisher: Hyunsil Publishing, Seoul
ISBN: 9788965640592
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Many artworks from recent South Korean history are located in the nebulous but fertile contact zone between public/popular culture and democracy movements. Being Political Popular attempts a thematically focused and historically interventionist inquiry into the current status of South Korean contemporary art, exploring the work of 17 artists and art collectives. Being Political Popular documents the complex lines of thinking that scholars such as Chang-nam Kim, Namhee Lee, and Wan-kyung Sung have nurtured on the topics of the popular music and resistant youth culture of the 1970s, the politics of minjung subjectivity during the 1980s democracy movement, and the 1980s minjung art movement. The book also includes artists' writings and manifestos by Mnouk Lim, mixrice, Hein-kuhn Oh, and Sangdom Kim--primary materials that provide the reader with a closer look at their art-making. It serves as a reader's gateway to the recent history of South Korean visual arts and public culture, marking the beginning of a more nuanced and multifaceted investigation of the South Korean aesthetics of politcs.

Mass Politics

Mass Politics PDF Author: Daniel M. Shea
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312219499
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Essays explore the interplay between popular culture and politics in the US, and the ways in which popular culture shapes, reflects, and responds to the political climate

Heroes and Scoundrels

Heroes and Scoundrels PDF Author: Matthew C. Ehrlich
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252096991
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Whether it's the rule-defying lifer, the sharp-witted female newshound, or the irascible editor in chief, journalists in popular culture have shaped our views of the press and its role in a free society since mass culture arose over a century ago. Drawing on portrayals of journalists in television, film, radio, novels, comics, plays, and other media, Matthew C. Ehrlich and Joe Saltzman survey how popular media has depicted the profession across time. Their creative use of media artifacts provides thought-provoking forays into such fundamental issues as how pop culture mythologizes and demythologizes key events in journalism history and how it confronts issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation on the job. From Network to The Wire, from Lois Lane to Mikael Blomkvist, Heroes and Scoundrels reveals how portrayals of journalism's relationship to history, professionalism, power, image, and war influence our thinking and the very practice of democracy.

Politics and Popular Culture

Politics and Popular Culture PDF Author: John Street
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745668682
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
In an age where film stars become presidents and politicians appear in pop videos, politics and popular culture have become inextricably interlinked. In this exciting new book, John Street provides a broad survey and analysis of this relationship.

Entertaining the Citizen

Entertaining the Citizen PDF Author: Liesbet van Zoonen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742529076
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Can politics be combined with entertainment? Can political involvement and participation be fun? Politics and popular culture are converging all the time, whether it's in Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as governor of California or in political television dramas and movies like The West Wing and Dave. This book encourages readers to think about how links between entertainment and politics have the potential to rejuvenate citizenship, endorse civic values, and sustain civic commitment. Instead of discarding the popular as irrelevant or dangerous to the democratic process, Liesbet van Zoonen shows us the possibilities for increasing political knowledge and participation through the arenas of politics and popular music, political "soaps," political television dramas, and politicians as celebrities. A first-rate starting point for debate, Entertaining the Citizen will stimulate and entertain students and general readers alike.