Comedy about the new boy in town whose self-aggrandizing lies come home to roost. Sam Leonard (Ryan Pinkston) is the new kid at Bridgeport High and - sporting a Neil Diamond c.1971 haircut and having just been dropped off from an Isuzu sedan - his work is cut out for him in the making pals dept. Sam's counsellor advises him that twisting the truth might be the way to make friends so he becomes a full-on pants-on-fire case. By lunchtime, as far as everyone is concerned, his Porsche is in the shop, his dad is a pretty big rockstar and a few hot babes including one blonde young teacher are even taking a shine to him. His worries about being found out are soon allayed by dint of the fact that his lies, after a magical mirror breaking incident, start to come true. His dad is a washed-up hippie muso who signs him a beer now and then, there's a red Porsche in the garage belonging to him and he's the top shooter on the school basketball team. Only one girl sees through it all - the one girl who liked him without the lies anyway...

This collection of essays presents a sampling of film and television texts, interrogating images of U.S. masculinity. Rather than using "postfeminist" as a definition of contemporary feminism, this collection uses the term to designate the period from the late 1980s on-as a point when feminist thought gradually became more mainstream. The movies and TV series examined here have achieved a level of sustained attention, from critical acclaim, to mass appeal, to cult status. Instead of beginning with a set hypothesis on the effect of the feminist movement on images of masculinity on film and television, these chapters represent a range of responses, that demonstrate how the conversations within these texts about American masculinity are often open-ended, allowing both male characters and male viewers a wider range of options. Defining the relationship between U.S. masculinity and American feminist movements of the twentieth century is a complex undertaking. The essays collected for this volume engage prominent film and television texts that directly interrogate images of U.S. masculinity that have appeared since second-wave feminism. The contributors have chosen textual examples whose protagonists actively struggle with the conflicting messages about masculinity. These protagonists are more often works-in-progress, acknowledging the limits of their negotiations and self-actualization. These chapters also cover a wide range of genres and decades: from action and fantasy to dramas and romantic comedy, from the late 1970s to today. Taken together, the chapters of Screening Images of American Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism interrogate "the possible" screened in popular movies and television series, confronting the multiple and competing visions of masculinity not after or beyond feminism but, rather, in its very wake.

This collection of essays presents a sampling of film and television texts, interrogating images of U.S. masculinity. Rather than using "postfeminist" as a definition of contemporary feminism, this collection uses the term to designate the period from the late 1980s on-as a point when feminist thought gradually became more mainstream. The movies and TV series examined here have achieved a level of sustained attention, from critical acclaim, to mass appeal, to cult status. Instead of beginning with a set hypothesis on the effect of the feminist movement on images of masculinity on film and television, these chapters represent a range of responses, that demonstrate how the conversations within these texts about American masculinity are often open-ended, allowing both male characters and male viewers a wider range of options. Defining the relationship between U.S. masculinity and American feminist movements of the twentieth century is a complex undertaking. The essays collected for this volume engage prominent film and television texts that directly interrogate images of U.S. masculinity that have appeared since second-wave feminism. The contributors have chosen textual examples whose protagonists actively struggle with the conflicting messages about masculinity. These protagonists are more often works-in-progress, acknowledging the limits of their negotiations and self-actualization. These chapters also cover a wide range of genres and decades: from action and fantasy to dramas and romantic comedy, from the late 1970s to today. Taken together, the chapters of Screening Images of American Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism interrogate "the possible" screened in popular movies and television series, confronting the multiple and competing visions of masculinity not after or beyond feminism but, rather, in its very wake.

Popular American fiction has now secured a routine position in the higher education classroom despite its historic status as culturally suspect. This newfound respect and inclusion have almost certainly changed the pedagogical landscape, and Teaching Tainted Lit explores that altered terrain. If the academy has historically ignored, or even sneered at, the popular, then its new accommodation within the framework of college English is noteworthy: surely the popular introduces both pleasures and problems that did not exist when faculty exclusively taught literature from anestablished "high" canon. How, then, does the assumption that the popular matters affect teaching strategies, classroom climates, and both personal and institutional notions about what it means to study literature? The essays in this collection presume that the popular is here to stay and that its instructive implications are not merely noteworthy,but richly nuanced and deeply compelling. They address a broad variety of issues concerning canonicity, literature, genre, and theclassroom, as its contributors teach everything from Stephen King and Lady Gaga to nineteenthcentury dime novels and the 1852bestseller Uncle Tom's Cabin. It is no secret that teaching popular texts fuels controversies about the value of cultural studies, the alleged relaxation of aestheticstandards, and the possible "dumbing down" of Americans. By implicitly and explicitly addressing such contentious issues, these essays invite a broader conversation about the place of thepopular not only in higher education but in the reading lives of all Americans.