This is a series of unorthodox peices that analyze some 40 of the author's favorite jazz records. The book is intended to make people listen to records which we believe are worth listening to again.

Since the advent of the cinema, Jesus has frequently appeared in our movie houses and on our television screens. Indeed, it may well be that more people worldwide know about Jesus and his life story from the movies than from any other medium. Indeed, Jesus' story has been adapted dozens of times throughout the history of commercial cinema, from the 1912 silent From the Manger to the Cross to Mel Gibson's 2004 The Passion of the Christ. No doubt there are more to come.
Drawing on a broad range of movies, biblical scholar Adele Reinhartz traces the way in which Jesus of Nazareth has become Jesus of Hollywood. She argues that Jesus films both reflect and influence cultural perceptions of Jesus and the other figures in his story. She focuses on the cinematic interpretation of Jesus' relationships with the key people in his life: his family, his friends, and his foes. She examines how these films address theological issues, such as Jesus' identity as both human and divine, political issues, such as the role of the individual in society and the possibility of freedom under political oppression, social issues, such as gender roles and hierarchies, and personal issues, such as the nature of friendship and human sexuality.
Reinhartz's study of Jesus' celluloid incarnations shows how Jesus movies reshape the past in the image of the present. Despite society's profound interest in Jesus as a religious and historical figure, Jesus movies are fascinating not as history but as mirrors of the concerns, anxieties, and values of our own era. As the story of Jesus continues to capture the imagination of filmmakers and moviegoers, he remains as significant a cultural figure today as he was 2000years ago.

U2's success and significance are due, in large part, to finding inventive, creative solutions for overcoming obstacles and moving past conventional boundaries. As it has embraced change and transformation over and over again, its fans and critics have come to value and expect this element of U2. These new essays from the disciplines of organizational communication, music theory, literary studies, religion, and cultural studies offer perspectives on several ways U2's dynamic of change has been a constant theme throughout its career. The eight essays here come from the U2 Conference 2013, which explores the music, work, and influence of U2, furthering the scholarship on U2.

This book addresses the issue of music consumption in the digital era of technologies. It explores how individuals use music in the context of their everyday lives and how, in return, music acquires certain roles within everyday contexts and more broadly in their life narratives.

The decade of the 1910s saw the United States rise above strictly European cultural influences as the mixing of race, ethnicity, class, and gender yielded colorful fusions within American society. Historian David Blanke delves into the cornucopia of activities, trends, and events that shaped and enriched the day-to-day lives of Americans in this decade. Twelve scrupulously researched chapters bring to life all of the important aspects of popular culture in 1910s America: from "Birth of a Nation" to the Black Sox scandal, the Teddy Bear to Tarzan, breakfast cereal to the first brassiere. This lead title in Greenwood's forthcoming American Popular Culture Through History series shows the many facets of American society merging to form the beginnings of the United States' eclectic 20th century culture.

This debut volume launches a series designed to be advanced yet accessible, informative yet fun. Students researching the history of American art, film, literature, music, and sports will be taken beyond the names and dates in their textbooks and learn about the interests, styles, and tastes of past Americans. Series volumes will also include a timeline of significant cultural events as well as a cost comparison list of commonly used items. This valuable reference resource will introduce students to things, activities, and people that enriched and defined the lives of Americans in the seminal years of 1910 to 1919. These collages of culture will enrich the research of high school or college students and help them see how Americans' lives, aspirations, dreams, even the idea of what it is to be American, have evolved in the past--and will continue to change in the future.

The book sets out to examine the concept of 'chav', providing a review of its origins, its characterological figures, the process of enregisterment whereby it has come to be recognized in public discourse, and the traits associated with it in traditional media representations. The author then discusses the 'chav' label in light of recent re-appropriations in social network activity (particularly through the video-sharing app TikTok) and subsequent commentary in the public sphere. She traces the evolution of the term from its use during the first decade of the twenty-first century to make sense of class, status and cultural capital, to its resurgence and the ways in which it is still associated with appearance in gendered and classed ways. She then draws on recent developments in linguistic anthropology and embodied sociocultural linguistics to argue that social media users draw on communicative resources to perform identities that are both situated in specific contexts of discourse and dynamically changing, challenging the idea that geo-sociocultural varieties and mannerisms are the sole way of indexing membership of a community. This volume contends that equating 'chav' with 'underclass' in the most recent uses of the concept on social networks may not be the whole story, and the book will be of interest to sociocultural linguistics and identity researchers, as well as readers in anthropology, sociology, British studies, cultural studies, identity studies, digital humanities, and sociolinguistics.

This collection examines the nerd and/or geek stereotype in popular culture today. Utilizing the media-film, TV, YouTube, Twitter, fiction-that often defines daily lives, the contributors interrogate what it means to be labeled a "nerd" or "geek." While the nerd/geek that is so easily recognized now is assuredly a twenty-first century construct, an examination of the terms' history brings a greater understanding of their evolution. From sports to slasher films, Age of the Geek establishes a dialogue with texts as varied as the depictions of "nerd" or "geek" stereotypes.

This book examines the interconnections between punk and alternative comedy (altcom). It explores how punk's tendency towards humour and parody influenced the trajectory taken by altcom in the UK, and the punk strategies introduced when altcom sought self-definition against dominant established trends. The Punk Turn in Comedy considers the early promise of punk-comedy convergence in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's 'Derek and Clive', and discusses punk and altcom's attitudes towards dominant traditions. The chapters demonstrate how punk and altcom sought a direct approach for critique, one that rejected innuendo, while embracing the 'amateur' in style and experimenting with audience-performer interaction. Giappone argues that altcom tended to be more consistently politicised than punk, with a renewed emphasis on responsibility. The book is a timely exploration of the 'punk turn' in comedy history, and will speak to scholars of both comedy and punk studies.

The different stages of a festival's evolution provide a plethora of opportunities for us to better understand our culture, the relationships we build, what we value in our culture and our communities, and how we socialize and interact with one another. Managing and Developing Community Festivals and Events brings together community festival and event research from nine different countries. It critically explores how festivals and their communities develop and impact upon one another. The chapters focus on a wide range of festivals such as food and culinary festivals, art events, religious pilgrimage and feast festivals, as well as a variety of diverse themes such as joy, civil unrest, preservation of cultures and authenticity.

Remakes are pervasive in today's popular culture, whether they take the form of reboots, "re-imaginings," or overly familiar sequels. Television remakes have proven popular with producers and networks interested in building on the nostalgic capital of past successes (or giving a second chance to underused properties). Some TV remakes have been critical and commercial hits, and others haven't made it past the pilot stage; all have provided valuable material ripe for academic analysis. In Remake Television: Reboot, Re-use, Recycle, edited by Carlen Lavigne, contributors from a variety of backgrounds offer multicultural, multidisciplinary perspectives on remake themes in popular television series, from classic cult favorites such as The Avengers (1961-69) and The X-Files (1993-2002) to current hits like Doctor Who (2005-present) and The Walking Dead (2010-present). Chapters examine what constitutes a remake, and what series changes might tell us about changing historical and cultural contexts-or about the medium of television itself.

The Art of Darkness is a visually rich sourcebook featuring eclectic artworks that have been inspired and informed by the morbid, melancholic and macabre. Throughout history, artists have been obsessed with darkness - creating works that haunt and horrify, mesmerise and delight and play on our innermost fears. Gentileschi took revenge with paint in Judith Slaying Holofernes while Bosch depicted fearful visions of Hell that still beguile. Victorian Britain became strangely obsessed with the dead and in Norway Munch explored anxiety and fear in one of the most famous paintings in the world (The Scream, 1893). Today, the Chapman Brothers, Damien Hirst and Louise Bourgeois, as well as many lesser known artists working in the margins, are still drawn to all that is macabre. From Dreams & Nightmares to Matters of Mortality, Depravity & Destruction to Gods & Monsters - this book introduces sometimes disturbing and often beautiful artworks that indulge our greatest fears, uniting us as humans from century to century. But, while these themes might scare us - can't they also be heartening and beautiful? Exploring and examining the artworks with thoughtful and evocative text, S. Elizabeth offers insight into each artist's influences and inspirations, asking what comfort can be found in facing our demons? Why are we tempted by fear and the grotesque? And what does this tell us about the human mind? Of course, sometimes there is no good that can come from the sensibilities of darkness and the sickly shivers and sensations they evoke. These are uncomfortable feelings, and we must sit for a while with these shadows - from the safety of our armchairs. Artists covered include Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, Francisco de Goya, Leonora Carrington, John Everett Millais, Tracey Emin, Vincent van Gogh, Barbara Hepworth, Paul Cezanne and Salvador Dali, as well as scores more. With over 200 carefully curated artworks from across the centuries, The Art of Darkness examines all that is dark in a bid to haunt and hearten. This book is part of the Art in the Margins series, following up on The Art of the Occult, which investigates representations of the mystical, esoteric and occult in art from across different times and cultures.

This book seeks to configure the ways in which the interdisciplinary, the eclectic and the combinatory have served a strategic purpose in the development of a self-aware and identity-conscious visual discourse in Mexico, from the formative nineteenth century to the post-national 1990s. The construction and interrogation of identities in reproductive media provides the unifying analytical interest ranging over observational writing, illustrated periodicals, graphic art, photography and film. Chapters discuss nation-building imagery and exhibitionary paradigms; cultural nationalism and photographic ethnicity; the interplay of graphic arts and film in the construction of originary identities; disabused perspectives on modernization and urbanism in film and photography; women photographers and the indigenous subject; the questioning of objective identities and the play of reflexive tropes in modernist and 1990s photography; the deconstruction of the Mexican archive in post-national photography and multimedia art; and archaeological models and materials and the dismantling of cultural nationalism in visual culture.

This book explores the relationship between European Union law, culture, and identity. Community trade and competition rules have certainly affected many mundane, though highly formative, aspects of our day-to-day lives: when we shop, what we drink, even which football matches we watch on television. But Community law is not merely a vehicle for challenging established national rules which have a cultural dimension: Article 151 of the EC Treaty, which came into force in 1993, empowers the Community to 'contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States', whilst at the same time bringing the 'common cultural heritage to the fore'. This book explores some of the challenges facing the European Union in developing convincing and coherent policies in the cultural domain. These challenges stem not only from the Union's fragmented institutional structure and Member State sensitivities but also from the uncertainty which surrounds the very meaning of the term 'culture' itself. The wide-ranging contributions illustrate how cultural issues can be seen to permeate all aspects of European Union law, by focussing on areas as diverse as international trade and aid, education, sport, language use, and the mass media.

Starring Tom Cruise examines how Tom Cruise's star image moves across genres and forms as a type of commercial product that offers viewers certain pleasures and expectations. Cruise reads as an action hero and romantic lead yet finds himself in homoerotic and homosocial relationships that unsettle and undermine these heterosexual scripts. In this volume, editor Sean Redmond shows how important star studies is not just to understanding the ideological, commercial, and cultural significance of one star but to seeing how masculinity, ethnicity, sexuality, and commodity relations function in contemporary society. The volume is divided into three parts. Part 1 explores the ways that Cruise's star image and performances are built on a desiring gaze, nearly always complicated by perverse narrative arcs and liminal character relationships. This section also explores the complex and contradictory ways he embodies masculinity and heterosexuality. Part 2 places Cruise within the codes and conventions of genre filmmaking and the way they intersect with the star vehicle. Cruise becomes monomythical, heroic, authentic, and romantic, and at the same time, he struggles to hold these formulas and ideologies together. Part 3 views Cruise as both an ageless totemic figure of masculinity who does his own stunts, as well as an aging star-his body both the conduit for eternally youthful masculinity and a signifier of that which must ultimately fail. These readings are connected to wider discursive issues concerning his private and public life, including the familial/patriarchal roles he takes on.Scholars writing for this collection approach the Cruise star image through various vectors and frames, which are revelatory in nature. As such, they not only demonstrate the very best traditions of close ""star"" textual analysis but also move the approach to the star forward. Students, scholars, and readers of film, media, and celebrity studies will enjoy this deep dive into a complex Hollywood figure.

THE BACHELORS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY - THIS IS THE RETRO AND MODERN DAY GUIDE TO THE NEW MILLENNIUM RENAISSANCE MAN AND BACHELOR OF TODAY Authored by LARRY 'VON LARS' WEHUNT 'The Bachelor's Guide To The Galaxy' is not your typical self-deprecating cheesy and kind of funny at times bachelor cookbook, bachelor how to decorate or grill-out guide, how to start a campfire, how to make a killer martini, or laser-focused college dormitory party guide, but instead it is rather a comprehensive and insightful mind-blowing journey into the all-encompassing jet-setting lifestyle of the free modern day American and western bachelor including all aspects of life. Whether you are a taxicab driver or bartender, a professional corporate desk-jockey or manager in business, a stockbroker or lawyer, a tech-savvy dot com guy, a plumber or rancher or truck driver, or just the regular guy who lives next door going to college or trade school, this book was written EXCLUSIVELY FOR YOU Experience the ultimate bachelor lifestyle whether you are a fat cat in business, a middle class cubicle dude on the so called corporate fast track like in the movie Office Space or on a tight fraternity or high school budget still able to party your ass off every night of the week. It is time to tell your girlfriend a good storyline and get out of town to be the fearless weekend warrior and domestic and international traveler who indulges his desires in hedonistic verve for life and for more lustful passion This book is the Big Leagues, the Adult Disneyland and the Great Pyramid of combined ancient and modern male wisdom and knowledge which I have accumulated for you in these written pages while smoking my trademark pipe and wearing my robe and slippers. I know you will LOVE IT This is the first book manuscript project from author Larry 'Von Lars' Wehunt which he hopes will go to press and create quite a stir and become a national and international underground cult classic and bestseller. He is also a writer and a blogger in cyberspace. He details how he worked the American dating scene as a former nightclub prowler turned "International Man of Mystery" 007 Style. He admits he has dated and bedded an "embarrassingly large number of women" over the years and shares his expert dynamic insights, wit, male wisdom and advice. Visionary, saint, huckster, rebel, snake-oil salesman, wise-guy, modern day charlatan and man-about-town, corporate desk jockey, jack of all trades, a roman foot soldier and brave heart in the corporate cubicle trench warfare of today and bachelor extraordinaire and Hugh Hefner wannabe, 'Von Lars' pulls no punches like a raging bull boxer in the ring of life. He tells it the way it really is like an arrow in flight, shoots his intellectual wit and insight with both barrels loaded and takes no prisoners for his first written international "bachelor manifesto" and man's man debut to the entire world This book will challenge conventional wisdom and shake up the status quo and show you how to TAKE CONTROL of your manly life. The smart bachelor knows that to change your life that you must first change your thinking Learn to plan for a life of success and to be one of the lucky ones. As our manly credo echoes in time immortal and as we gallop and race in our roman chariots we boldly proclaim to all: "ONWARDS TO THE EMPIRE AND MAY GOD SAVE THE BACHELOR KING "

"Queer Popular Culture "is an exciting new collection that brings together work from several disciplines that address queer representation in multiple contexts. The articles cover many aspects of contemporary U.S. and international queer culture, including the rise of the queer cowboy, the emergence of lesbian chic, and the expansion of representations of blackness, and work on queer, Taiwanese, online communities. Other essays address queer representations from soap operas to gangster films. The book also includes a pedagogical section that addresses the use of queer concepts in the classroom

This book is the first comprehensive account of how Anglo-American popular music transformed Italian cultural life. Drawing on neglected archival materials, the author explores the rise of new musical tastes and social divisions in late twentieth century Italy. The book reconstructs the emergence of pop music magazines in Italy and offers the first in-depth investigation of the role of critics in global music cultures. It explores how class, gender, race and geographical location shaped the production and consumption of music magazines, as well as critics' struggle over notions of expertise, cultural value and cosmopolitanism. Globalization, Music and Cultures of Distinction provides an innovative framework for studying how globalization transforms cultural institutions and aesthetic hierarchies, thus breaking new ground for sociological and historical research. It will be essential reading for scholars and students interested in cultural sociology, popular music, globalization, media and cultural studies, social theory and contemporary Italy.

A reporter for the "Los Angeles Times" once noted that a"I Love Lucy" is said to be on the air somewhere in the world 24 hours a day.a That Lucyas madcap antics can be watched anywhere at any time is thanks to television syndication, a booming global marketplace that imports and exports TV shows. Programs from different countries are packaged, bought, and sold all over the world, under the watch of an industry that is extraordinarily lucrative for major studios and production companies.

In Global TV, Denise D. Bielb and C. Lee Harrington seek to understand the machinery of this marketplace, its origins and history, its inner workings, and its product management. In so doing, they are led to explore the cultural significance of this global trade, and to ask how it is so remarkably successful despite the inherent cultural differences between shows and local audiences. How do culture-specific genres like American soap operas and Latin telenovelas so easily cross borders and adapt to new cultural surroundings? Why is aThe Nanny, a whose gum-chewing star is from Queens, New York, a smash in Italy? Importantly, Bielby and Harrington also ask which kinds of shows fail. What is lost in translation? Considering such factors as censorship and other such state-specific policies, what are the inevitable constraints of crossing over?

Highly experienced in the field, Bielby and Harrington provide a unique and richly textured look at global television through a cultural lens, one that has an undeniable and complex effect on what shows succeed and which do not on an international scale.

Tracing the historical trajectory of the pocho (Latinos who are influenced by Anglo culture) in pop culture, Medina shows how the trope of pocho/pocha/poch@, which traditionally signified the negative connotation of "cultural traitor" in Spanish, has been reclaimed through the pop cultural productions of Latinos who self-identify as poch@.

Winner of the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Winner of the American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation Winner of the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award Winner of the MAAH Stone Book Award A Pitchfork Best Music Book of the Year A Rolling Stone Best Music Book of the Year A Boston Globe Summer Read "Brooks traces all kinds of lines...inviting voices to talk to one another, seeing what different perspectives can offer, opening up new ways of looking and listening." -New York Times "A wide-ranging study of Black female artists, from elders like Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters to Beyonce and Janelle Monae...Connecting the sonic worlds of Black female mythmakers and truth-tellers." -Rolling Stone "A gloriously polyphonic book." -Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland How is it possible that iconic artists like Aretha Franklin and Beyonce can be both at the center and on the fringe of the culture industry? Daphne Brooks explores more than a century of music archives to bring to life the critics, collectors, and listeners who have shaped our perceptions of Black women both on stage and in the recording studio. Liner Notes for the Revolution offers a startling new perspective, informed by the overlooked contributions of other Black women artists. We discover Zora Neale Hurston as a sound archivist and performer, Lorraine Hansberry as a queer feminist critic of modern culture, and Pauline Hopkins as America's first Black female cultural commentator. Brooks tackles the complicated racial politics of blues music recording, song collecting, and rock and roll criticism in this long overdue celebration of Black women musicians as radical intellectuals.

Looking at the emergent industries of spectacle practices in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century mass culture, "Spectacle Culture and American Identity" investigates the immersive energies of American landscape and history as a fluid scene space. The changing dynamics of the American experience are viewed in relation to the ways entertainment technologies flourishing in spectacle attractions communicate iconic sites and scenes. Arguing the ways in which spectacle immersion enacts an on-going civilian dialogue with landscape, Tenneriello uses a series of case studies featuring panoramas, multimedia performance, theatrical spectacles, exhibition sites, and museum dioramas to trace the country's movement from agrarian to multinational economies.

In the twenty-first century, American popular culture increasingly makes visible the performance of African spirituality by black women. Disney's Princess and the Frog and Pirates of the Caribbean franchise are two notable examples. The reliance on the black priestess of African-derived religion as an archetype, however, has a much longer history steeped in the colonial othering of Haitian Vodou and American imperialist fantasies about so-called 'black magic'. Within this cinematic study, Martin unravels how religious autonomy impacts the identity, function, and perception of Africana women in the American popular imagination. Martin interrogates seventy-five years of American film representations of black women engaged in conjure, hoodoo, obeah, or Voodoo to discern what happens when race, gender, and African spirituality collide. She develops the framework of Voodoo aesthetics, or the inscription of African cosmologies on the black female body, as the theoretical lens through which to scrutinize black female religious performance in film. Martin places the genre of film in conversation with black feminist/womanist criticism, offering an interdisciplinary approach to film analysis. Positioning the black priestess as another iteration of Patricia Hill Collins' notion of controlling images, Martin theorizes whether film functions as a safe space for a racial and gendered embodiment in the performance of African diasporic religion. Approaching the close reading of eight signature films from a black female spectatorship, Martin works chronologically to express the trajectory of the black priestess as cinematic motif over the last century of filmmaking. Conceptually, Martin recalibrates the scholarship on black women and representation by distinctly centering black women as ritual specialists and Black Atlantic spirituality on the silver screen.

Questioning the psychiatric construction of mental distress as 'illness', and challenging existing studies of media stigmatization, Stephen Harper argues that today's media images of mental distress are often sympathetic, yet tend to reproduce the sexist, classist, racist and individualist ideologies of contemporary capitalism.