Cover songs operate as a form of cultural discourse across various musical genres and different societal, historical and political conditions. Employing both textual and contextual analysis, cases studies include a comparative analysis of Jimi Hendrix's and Whitney Houston's versions of ""The Star-Spangled Banner"" as well as mapping the trajectory of ""(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"" from the original version by the Rolling Stones through cover versions by Otis Redding, Devo and Britney Spears. The radical deconstruction of pop and rock songs by the Residents and Laibach is also examined, with additional case studies of cover songs ranging from Van Halen, Kim Wilde, Rufus Harley, the Four Tops, Pat Boone and Johnny Cash. Rather than questions of quality and how a given cover song measures up as ""better or worse"" than other versions, this book focuses on the ideological implications and social stakes of the ""same old songs"" as they are reconfigured in numerous ways to consider, comment on and confront political issues of gender, sexuality, race, the nation-state and the generation gap.

This political analysis of teen culture examines the historical and ideological development of American youth society, the economic and ideological relationship between television and popular music, and the industry and ideological rivalry between Nickelodeon and Disney. More than mere entertainment, teen sitcoms and pop music portray a complex and often contradictory set of cultural discourses engaged in an ongoing process of ideology marketing and ""hip versus square"" politics. Case studies include Saved by the Bell, Britney Spears, the movie School of Rock, early ""pop music sitcoms"" like The Monkees and The Partridge Family, and recent staples of teen culture such as iCarly and Hannah Montana. What is occurring in teen culture, this study reveals, not only remains significant as cultural and political discourse, but has a crucial bearing as today's teens become adults and the dominant generation in the impending decades.

An examination of the cinematic and cultural discourse surrounding work, the worker, organized labor, and the working class in 20th century America, this book analyzes a number of films within the historical context of labor and politics. Looking at both comedies (Modern Times, Gung Ho, Office Space) and dramas (The Grapes of Wrath, On the Waterfront, F.I.S.T., Blue Collar, Norma Rae, and Matewan), it reveals how these films are not merely products of their times, but also producers of ideological stances concerning the status of capitalism, class struggle, and democracy in America. Common themes among the films include the myth of the noble worker, the shifting status of the American Dream, and the acceptability of reform versus the unacceptability of revolution in affecting economic, political, and social change in America.

This work examines the unique and ever-changing relationship between politics and comedy through an analysis of several popular American television programs. Focusing on close readings of the work of Ernie Kovacs, Soupy Sales, and Andy Kaufman, as well as Green Acres and The Gong Show, the author provides a unique glimpse at the often subversive nature of avant-garde television comedy. The crisis in American television during the political unrest of the late 1960s is also studied, as represented by individual analyses of The Monkees, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, and All in the Family. The author also focuses on more contemporary American television, drawing a comparative analysis between the referential postmodernism of The Simpsons and the confrontational absurdity of South Park.

The convergence of rock music, counterculture politics and avant-garde aesthetics in the late 1960s underscored the careers of the Beatles, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and the Velvet Underground. This book examines these artists' relationship to the historical avant-garde (Artaud, Brecht, Dada) and the neo-avant-garde (Warhol, Pop Art, minimalism), considering their work in light of debates about modernism versus postmodernism. The author analyzes how the performers used dissonance and noise within the framework of popular music, the role of social commentary and exploration of controversial topics in songs, and how experiments with concert and studio performance proceeded in an era of intense cultural and political unrest. Albums discussed include Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, Freak Out!, We're Only in It for the Money, The Velvet Underground and Nico and White Light/White Heat, as well as John Lennon's collaborations with Yoko Ono, the Zappa-produced Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, and Nico's The Marble Index.

Following the national and international upheaval and tragedy in 1968, Mexican ?trash cinema? began to shift away from the masked wrestler genre and towards darker, more explicit films, and disturbing visions of the modern world: films which can be called ?avant-exploitation.? This work covers six of those films: El Topo, Mansion of Madness, Alucarda, Guyana, Crime of the Century, Birds of Prey, and Santa Sangre.