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aIn her book, Cheney tries to dispel the notion that all rap music is about sex, violence and bling. . . . The book is insightfulaparticularly to white Americans who don't get the appeal of Louis Farrakhan or to older African-Americans whose knowledge of black music stops at Smokey Robinson. After reading this book, both groups might at least be tempted to sample some Public Enemy music.a
--"The San Luis Obispo Tribune"

aA lively, unique, and often revisionist perspective on the sexual politics of hip-hop culture.a
--William L. Van Deburg, author of "New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965a1975"

"A study of rap singers of the 1980s and 90s that sets their political expression in the context of the racial and sexual politics of black nationalism since the early 19th century."
--"The Chronicle"

a[A] must read for anyone interested in the problems of gender and politics in rap music. Charise Cheney combines an historianas insight with an expansive knowledge of hip-hop culture to produce this remarkable study of the rise of artists influenced by black nationalismathe self-proclaimed araptivists.a Cheney dives head-on into the contentious debates regarding the articulations of masculinity and black nationalism in rap, and how these reflect black Americansa age-old desire for power and authority. A vital contribution."
--Jane Rhodes, author of "Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon"

aA provocative analysis that no one will be able to ignore. A compelling challenge to consider the ways that patriarchy has influenced the movement for blackself-determination.a--"Choice," Highly recommended

Brothers Gonna Work It Out considers the political expression of rap artists within the historical tradition of black nationalism. Interweaving songs and personal interviews with hip-hop artists and activists including Chuck D of Public Enemy, KRS-One, Rosa Clemente, manager of dead prez, and Wise Intelligent of Poor Righteous Teachers, Cheney links late twentieth-century hip-hop nationalists with their nineteenth-century spiritual forebears.

Cheney examines Black nationalism as an ideology historically inspired by a crisis of masculinity. Challenging simplistic notions of hip-hop culture as simply sexist or misogynistic, she pays particular attention to Black nationalists' historicizing of slavery and their visualization of male empowerment through violent resistance. She charts the recent rejection of Christianity in the lyrics of rap nationalist music due to the perception that it is too conciliatory, and the increasing popularity of Black Muslim rap artists.

Cheney situates rap nationalism in the 1980s and 90s within a long tradition of Black nationalist political thought which extends beyond its more obvious influences in the mid-to-late twentieth century like the Nation of Islam or the Black Power Movement, and demonstrates its power as a voice for disenfranchised and disillusioned youth all over the world.

(Book). A classic, finally back in print British rock historian Barney Hoskyns (Hotel California, Across the Great Divide: The Band in America) examines the long and twisted rock 'n' roll history of Los Angeles in its glamorous and debauched glory. The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, the Doors, Little Feat, the Eagles, Steely Dan, Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, and others (from Charlie Parker right up to Black Flag, the Minutemen, Jane's Addiction, Ice Cube, and Guns N' Roses) populate the pages of this comprehensive and extensively illustrated book.

This in-depth exploration of Goth culture invites fresh understanding-and a critique of contemporary mainstream culture by comparison. Goth culture is extremely diverse, touching on visual art, fashion, film, music, and body aesthetics. Goths: A Guide to an American Subculture offers a concise, easy-to-follow history of the subculture that explores its emergence and its impact on popular culture in the United States. The book covers films, bands, and artists central to Goth culture, with emphasis on the Goth approach to fashion and body adornment. In addition, it discusses how America's Goth culture has influenced Goth populations elsewhere and how international developments have changed the U.S. Goth community. The volume is enriched with biographies of prominent Goth celebrities, such as Marilyn Manson and Robert Smith, as well as with interviews that offer readers a firsthand view of the culture. It concludes with an evaluation of Goth culture today, a look at what the future might hold, and a discussion of the significance of Goth culture to American society as a whole. Sidebars cover topics such as face paint, hair color, and the origin of various body piercings Biographical sketches and interviews help students learn about the people fundamental to Goth culture Primary documents support research and analysis A glossary helps students understand essential terms related to the Goths. A bibliography of print and nonprint resources directs readers to additional sources of information

A rigorous study of the social meaning and consequences of racist humor, and a damning argument for when the joke is not just a joke. Having a "good" sense of humor generally means being able to take a joke without getting offended-laughing even at a taboo thought or at another's expense. The insinuation is that laughter eases social tension and creates solidarity in an overly politicized social world. But do the stakes change when the jokes are racist? In The Souls of White Jokes Raul Perez argues that we must genuinely confront this unsettling question in order to fully understand the persistence of anti-black racism and white supremacy in American society today. W.E.B. Du Bois's prescient essay "The Souls of White Folk" was one of the first to theorize whiteness as a social and political construct based on a feeling of superiority over racialized others-a kind of racial contempt. Perez extends this theory to the study of humor, connecting theories of racial formation to parallel ideas about humor stemming from laughter at another's misfortune. Critically synthesizing scholarship on race, humor, and emotions, he uncovers a key function of humor as a tool for producing racial alienation, dehumanization, exclusion, and even violence. Perez tracks this use of humor from blackface minstrelsy to contemporary contexts, including police culture, politics, and far-right extremists. Rather than being harmless fun, this humor plays a central role in reinforcing and mobilizing racist ideology and power under the guise of amusement. The Souls of White Jokes exposes this malicious side of humor, while also revealing a new facet of racism today. Though it can be comforting to imagine racism as coming from racial hatred and anger, the terrifying reality is that it is tied up in seemingly benign, even joyful, everyday interactions as well- and for racism to be eradicated we must face this truth.

Individuals often view "culture" as activities beyond their interests, associating the concept with exclusivity or high art. To be cultured is often synonymous with engaging in physical expressions of art, like opera, a classical music concert, a museum exhibit or a theater performance. While culture does indeed extend to all these things, it is the internal processes of memory, language, imagination and thought that frequently have more significance than any real-world activity. Culture is day-to-day life, ideas, identity and perception. This book investigates the ways in which thought and belief have inspired collective human endeavors and traditions. The text brings the act of thinking into clear focus, outlining its effect on civic development while exploring the history of cultural epistemology. Spanning across time periods and geographic regions, chapters derive new and unique meaning from the connection between thought, belief, tradition and the cultures they create. It explores how active thinking leads to group identity and documents the multigenerational ideas and attitudes that have strengthened cultural memory.

Over one hundred twenty formula romance novels are churned out every month. These romantic fantasies for women are big business and earn huge profits for the companies that publish them. Love's $weet Return examines the phenomenon of romance fiction, focusing specifically on one of the most successful book publishers in the world, the Canadian-based Harlequin Enterprises. Margaret Jensen details the rise of the company, examines the Harlequin formula, and evaluates the growth and impact of both Harlequin and its competition. She also assesses recent shifts in the content of Harlequins, particularly as they pertain to women's changing roles in society.

Profiling 48 classic American foods ranging from junk and fast food to main dishes to desserts, this book reveals what made these dishes iconic in American pop culture. Americans have increasingly embraced food culture, a fact proven by the rising popularity of celebrity chefs and the prominence of television shows celebrating food themes. This fascinating overview reveals the surprising story behind the foods America loves. The Story Behind the Dish: Classic American Foods is an engaging pop culture resource which helps tell the story of American food. Each chapter is devoted to one of 48 distinctive American dishes and features the story of where the food developed, what inspired its creation, and how it has evolved. The book not only covers each food as a single entry, but also analyzes the themes and events that connect them, making the text useful as both a reference and a narrative on the history of food. 48 entries on the development, popularization, and adaptation of each dish Numerous recipes Historical photographs of American foods Recommended reading lists for each chapter

What is addiction? What images trigger it? What beliefs support it? How does addiction manipulate reality? Limit perception? Is addiction the motivation behind crude materialism? Is our culture so mesmerized by fantasy that it lacks the ability to understand the consequences of certain realities? Addicts are last to see their self-demise, can a whole culture be so blind? Perhaps. It has become apparent that no longer is addiction someone else's problem, lingering behind doorways or down dark alleys. No longer are the dealers of the world only doing business on street corners or in abandoned warehouses. They are in high-rises and malls, on billboards and commercials, in schools, on the radio, in print, and always with the best deal taking residence in our psyche. *********** Great An insightful, integrated, and enticing explanation of the process of addiction and how it creates devastation not only at an individual level, but at the level of society. Though disturbing, the concept of Cultural Addiction is quite compelling as it proves that there is a basic, understood process behind consumerism. As it asks tough questions, with clear data, it challenges all of us to look at our patterns in not only how they affect our lives, but also ultimately how they affect others and future life. --Thom Hartmann, Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight

This study examines the reception of Cleopatra from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day as it has been reflected in popular culture in the United States of America. Daugherty provides a broad overview of the influence of the Egyptian queen by looking at her presence in film, novels, comics, cartoons, TV shows, music, advertising and toys. The aim of the book is to show the different ways in which the figure of Cleopatra was able to reach a large and non-elite audience. Furthermore, Daugherty makes a study of the reception of Cleopatra during her own lifetime. He begins by looking at her portrayal in the vicious propaganda campaign waged by Octavian against his rival Marc Antony. The consequence was that Cleopatra was left with a tarnished reputation after the civil war. Daugherty's examination of both the historical and contemporary reception of Cleopatra shows the enduring legacy of one of history's most remarkable queens.

* MANY USES: Ready to get the party started? Want to emphasize the genius point you just made? Want to add something special to the song you're playing? Cheering on a team or graduate? The Mini Air Horn is here to help. Just press down on the button and this mini horn will let out a loud and satisfying air horn noise. * FUN MINI SIZE: Air horn measures 3-1/2" tall, making it easy to pack for any hype-worthy excursion. * PERFECT GIFT: A great stocking stuffer, White Elephant winner, birthday present, or congratulatory gift. * ICONIC SOUND: The air horn is featured in many songs and is a sports-spectator favorite for making noise. Now, this pocket-size device lets you bring the sound to any setting! * INCLUDES MINI BOOK: Also inside the box is a vibrant, 32-page 2-1/2" x 3" mini book on the origins of the air horn and its vast pop-culture applications and history.

This book examines the ways in which the histories of racial violence, from slavery onwards, are manifest in representations of the body in twenty-first-century culture set in the US South. Christopher Lloyd focuses on corporeality in literature and film to detail the workings of cultural memory in the present. Drawing on the fields of Southern Studies, Memory Studies and Black Studies, the book also engages psychoanalysis, Animal Studies and posthumanism to revitalize questions of the racialized body. Lloyd traces corporeal legacies in the US South through novels by Jesmyn Ward, Kathryn Stockett and others, alongside film and television such as Beasts of the Southern Wild and The Walking Dead. In all, the book explores the ways in which bodies in contemporary southern culture bear the traces of racial regulation and injury.

Democracy of Sound is the first book to examine music piracy in the United States from the dawn of sound recording to the rise of Napster and online file-sharing. It asks why Americans stopped thinking of copyright as a monopoly-a kind of necessary evil-and came to see intellectual property as sacrosanct and necessary for the prosperity of an "information economy." Recordings only became eligible for federal copyright in 1972, following years of struggle between pirates, musicians, songwriters, broadcasters, and record companies over the right to own sound. Beginning in the 1890s, the book follows the competing visions of Americans who proposed ways to keep obscure and noncommercial music in circulation, preserve out-of-print recordings from extinction, or simply make records more freely and cheaply available. Genteel jazz collectors swapped and copied rare records in the 1930s; radicals pitched piracy as a mortal threat to capitalism in the 1960s, while hip-hop DJs from the 1970s onwards reused and transformed sounds to create a freer and less regulated market for mixtapes. Each challenged the idea that sound could be owned by anyone. The conflict led to the contemporary stalemate between those who believe that "information wants to be free" and those who insist that economic prosperity depends on protecting intellectual property. The saga of piracy also shows how the dubbers, bootleggers, and tape traders forged new social networks that ultimately gave rise to the social media of the twenty first century. Democracy of Sound is a colorful story of people making law, resisting law, and imagining how law might shape the future of music, from the Victrola and pianola to iTunes and BitTorrent.

Spring Man: A Belief Legend between Folklore and Popular Culture deconstructs the nationalistic myth of Spring Man that was created after the Second World War in visual culture and literature and presents his original form as an ambiguous ghostly denizen of oral culture. Petr Janecek analyzes the archetypal character, social context, and cultural significance of this fascinating phenomenon with help of dozens of accounts provided by period eyewitnesses, oral narratives, and other sources. At the same time, the author illustrates the international origin of the tales in the originally British migratory legend of Spring-heeled Jack that reaches back to the second third of the 19th century and draws parallels between the Czech myth of spring man and similar urban phantom narratives popular in the 1910s Russia, 1940s U.S. and Slovakia, 1950s Germany, as well as other parts of the world.

This book argues that Halloween need not be the first nor the most influential youth slasher film for it to hold a special place in the history of youth cinema. John Carpenter's 1978 horror hit was once considered the be-all, end-all of teen slasher cinema and was regarded as the first, the best, and the most influential American slasher film. Recent revisions in film history, however, have challenged Halloween's comfortable place in the canon of youth horror cinema. However, this book argues that the film, like no other, draws from the themes, imagery, and obsessions that fueled youth horror cinema since the 1950s-Gothic atmosphere, atomic dread, twisted psychology, and alienated teenage monsters-and ties them together in the deceptively simple story of a masked killer on Halloween night. Along the way, the film delivers a savage critique of social institutions and their failure to protect young people. Halloween also depicts a cadre of compelling and complicated youth characters: teenage babysitters watching over preadolescents as a killer, who is viciously avoiding the responsibilities of young adulthood, stalks them through the shadows. This book explores all these aspects of Halloween, including the franchise it spawned, providing an invaluable insight into this iconic film for students and researchers alike.

Stories of world-ending catastrophe have featured prominently in film and television. Zombie apocalypses, climate disasters, alien invasions, global pandemics and dystopian world orders fill our screens-typically with a singular figure or tenacious group tasked with saving or salvaging the world. Why are stories of End Times crisis so popular with audiences? And why is the hero so often a white man who overcomes personal struggles and major obstacles to lead humanity toward a restored future? This book examines the familiar trope of the hero and the recasting of contemporary anxieties in films like The Walking Dead, Snowpiercer and Mad Max: Fury Road. Some have familiar roots in Western cultural traditions yet many question popular assumptions about heroes and heroism to tell new and fascinating stories about race, gender and society and the power of individuals to change the world.

In the twenty-first century, American culture is experiencing a profound shift toward pluralism and secularization. In Fairy Tales in Contemporary American Culture: How We Hate to Love Them, Kate Koppy argues that the increasing popularity and presence of fairy tales within American culture is both indicative of and contributing to this shift. By analyzing contemporary fairy tale texts as both new versions in a particular tale type and as wholly new fairy-tale pastiches, Koppy shows that fairy tales have become a key part of American secular scripture, a corpus of shared stories that work to maintain a sense of community among diverse audiences in the United States, as much as biblical scripture and associated texts used to.

A Critical Companion to Stanley Kubrick offers a thorough and detailed study of the films of the legendary director. Labeled a recluse, a provocateur, and a perfectionist, Kubrick revolutionized filmmaking, from the use of music in film, narrative pacing and structure, to depictions of war and violence. An unparalleled visionary, his work continues to influence contemporary cinema and visual culture. This book delves into the complexities of his work and examines the wide range of topics and the multiple interpretations that his films inspire. The eighteen chapters in this book use a wide range of methodologies and explore new trends of research in film studies, providing a series of unique and novel perspectives on all of Kubrick's thirteen feature films, from Fear and Desire (1953) to Eyes Wide Shut (1999), as well as his work on A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001).

The gang today is seen as Britain's public enemy number one. This book tackles this gangland thesis head-on and refutes it, questioning how we think about and interpret violent street worlds and how and why we need to think about them in very different ways, pushing the boundaries of critical enquiry and providing a range of new ways of looking at disturbing realities. Through the novel use of authoethnography, the book contests the widely held thesis that urban gangs today represent a serious, novel and developing threat. In this guise, they have been blamed for causing the riots of 2011, most gun related crime, the sexual violation of women, and outbreaks of dangerous dogs. Hallsworth argues that when subject to critical scrutiny, there is always an excess to the violence blamed on gangs that is not gang related and explanations for problems blamed on gangs can be advanced without needing to evoke the gang as an explanatory factor. In light of this, the book considers how best we might understand the nature of violent street worlds without falling into the pitfalls of the discourse of gang talk, exploring questions such as 'How do we have a gang problem?' and 'How best do we avoid one?'This book is provocative, polemical and theoretical and one that seeks to make a significant intervention into both gangs studies and studies of urban violence more generally, commanding significant social attention in the academy and beyond.

Did you know that: * Deserts provide food for fish? * 70% of all birds on the planet are chickens? * Climate change was the reason why humans began to talk? * Cows emit harmful methane when they burp or fart? Filled to the brim with 123 astonishing facts about the environment and climate, this accessible book explores the history of climate change and offers suggestions on how we can keep our planet liveable.

Reagan's War Stories examines the relationship between Ronald Reagan, the public and popular culture. From an overview of Reagan's youth and the pulp fiction he consumed, we get a sense of the future president's good/evil outlook. Carrying that over into Reagan's reading and choices as president, Griffin situates narrative at the center of Reagan's political formation and leadership providing a compelling account of both Reagan's life, his presidency, and a lens into non-traditional strategy formulation. Author Ben Griffin tells three stories about an American president who ushered in the end of the Cold War. A survey of Reagan's youth and the fiction he consumed and created as an announcer and actor, reveals how the future president's worldview developed. A look at the rise of fiction and popular culture rife with pro-Americanism in the 1980s details a uniquely symbiotic relationship between the chief executive and popular culture in framing the Cold War as a struggle with an "Evil Empire" in the Soviet Union. Finally, Griffin outlines how presidential personality and reading preferences shaped President Reagan's pursuit of the "Star Wars" initiative and belief in the transformative combination of freedom and technology. Griffin demonstrates that novels by Tom Clancy, Louis L'Amour, and science fiction influenced Reagan's view of 1980s geopolitics. His identification with fiction led Ronald Reagan to view European Cold War issues with more empathy but harmed the president's policymaking when the narrowness of his reading led him to apply a white-hat/black-hat framework that did not match the reality of conflict in Latin America. Reagan treated fictional portrayals seriously, believing they shaped public views and offered valid ways to think through geo-political issues. Seeking to shape the reading habits of the public, his administration sought to highlight authors who shared his worldview like Tom Clancy, Louis L'Amour, and Allen Drury over other popular writers like Robert Ludlum and John Le Carre who portrayed the Cold War in less stark moral terms. The administration's favored popular authors in turn intentionally incorporated Reagan-era policies into their work to advocate for them through fiction, thus reaching a broader audience than via official government releases and speeches. Showing how Reagan used narrative as both a consumer and a communicator, Griffin notes that Reagan identified with certain stories and they shaped him as a political leader and later and influenced his approach to complex issues. When handled deftly, incorporating fiction created a common language across the administration and provided a way to convey messages to the masses in a memorable fashion.