Browsing by Subject "Popular Culture"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Ciphering nations: performing identity in Brazil and the Caribbean.
    (2011-06) Wood, Naomi Pueo
    This dissertation explores the interaction of theories of hybridity, mestizaje, mestiçagem and popular culture representations of national identity in Cuba, Brazil, and Puerto Rico throughout the 20th century. I examine a series of cultural products, including performance, film, and literature, and argue that using the four elements of Hip Hop culture—deejay, emcee, break, graffiti—as a lens for reading draws out the intra- American dialogues and foregrounds the Africanist aesthetic as it informs the formation of national identity in the Americas. Hip Hop, rather than focus solely on its characteristic hybridity, calls attention to race and to a legacy of fighting racism. Instead of hiding behind miscegenation and aspirations of romanticized hybridity and mixing, it blatantly points out oppressions and introduces them into popular culture through its four components—thus reaching audiences through multiple modalities. Tropes of mestizaje or branqueamento—racial mixing/whitening—depoliticize blackness through official refusal to cite cultural contributions and emphasize instead a whitened blending. Hip Hop points blatantly to persistent social inequalities. Diverse and divergent in their political histories, the geographic and nationally bound sites that form the foci of this study are bound by their contentious relationships to the United States, an emphasis on the Africanist aesthetic, and a rich history of intertextual exchanges. Rather than look at individual nation formation and marginalized bodies’ performances of subversion, this study highlights the common tropes that link these nations and bodies and that privilege an alternative way of constructing history and understanding present day transnational bodies.
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    Entertaining Education: Teaching National History in Mexican State-Sponsored Comic Books and Telenovelas, 1963 to 1996
    (2013-09) Huska, Melanie
    Abstract This dissertation examines the political nature of history and popular culture in late-twentieth-century Mexico. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)'s maintained a monopoly on political power for seven decades (1929-2000). It bolstered its political legitimacy by revising the history of the Revolution of 1910 into a unified national pantheon of heroes who formed part of the party's origin myth and by forging a unified post-Revolutionary identity. Cultural historians of Mexico have demonstrated the fundamental role that the PRI's cultural projects played in its political success and its ability to maintain authority for so long; however these studies examine the period before 1968. My dissertation draws on this field's concern with popular culture and political power and extends it by recognizing the centrality of history to Mexican identity and by asking how the PRI employed history and popular culture as a way to mitigate the political consequences of the changes underway in the 1980s and 1990s, a period of neoliberal reforms that alienated large numbers of voters. Furthermore, it asks, did neoliberalism alter the political nature of history, and if so, how? To answer this question I examine the narratives conveyed by two series of historically themed comic books, produced by the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) and nine historical telenovelas, produced by Televisa in cooperation with various state ministries, particularly Mexican Institute for Social Security (IMSS). The dissertation focuses on three themes in order to illuminate vital features of cultural politics in Mexico at the end of the twentieth century. First, it examines the interplay between historiography and the politics of historically themed entertainment. In other words, it asks how rival interpretations of the past were incorporated into the entertainment-education (edutainment) projects, if at all, and how politics influenced these historical interpretations. Second, the dissertation charts Televisa's and the PRI's progress in learning how to narrate Mexican history in a way that satisfied multiple interests: generating support for the ruling party and profits for Televisa, capturing the interest of audiences, and withstanding the scrutiny of professional scholars. In this endeavor they sought a careful balance between fact and fiction. The dissertation demonstrates not only the continuing political nature of historical narratives in Mexico, but also argues that their impact could not always be anticipated. Consumed in different political contexts, the didactic repetition of appeals to the past highlighted the PRI's departure from revolutionary ideals instead of linking their legitimacy to it. Finally, the dissertation examines the relationship between the public and private cultural sectors, through an analysis of state ministries - SEP, IMSS, National Defense, National Lottery - and the private sector, particularly Televisa. Together IMSS and Televisa produced four telenovelas, but economic changes in the 1990s created conditions that made further projects untenable. For Televisa, these economic changes were the result of increased industry competition, internal concerns, and depleted financial government sponsorship. For the PRI, the expenditure no longer generated legitimacy as a link to the nation's past, but symbolized the waste of a party that had maintained its power through corporatism. Though the PRI and Televisa attempted to use the past to generate political legitimacy, ultimately it was unable to mitigate the fracturing that occurred in the late twentieth century as a result of their transition from corporatism to neoliberalism.
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    Korean American Creations and Discontents: Korean American Cultural Productions, Los Angeles, and Post-1992
    (2020-12) Chang, Michelle
    Korean American Creations and Discontents looks at Korean American subjectivity in Los Angeles after the 1992 Riots/Uprisings. This project begins with the LAPD beating of Rodney King and ends with the fatal Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. This dissertation is necessarily rooted in 1992 and 2020. Using Korean American cultural producers, this project examines the figure of the Korean American entrepreneur and Korean American subjectivity within the boundaries of model minority narratives, neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and post-racial rhetoric. Situated in Los Angeles, this project is grounded in the Riots/Uprisings as an event that shaped, transformed, and reified new cultural, racial, economic, and gendered assumptions of multiple categories, identities, and bodies. While some events leading up to the Riots/Uprisings are covered, this project looks more specifically at media representation and the consequences of a media-constructed Black-Korean conflict. Moreover, while this project shifts away from the Riots/Uprisings, it remains rooted in them as a spectral haunting, influencing racial dynamics in the contemporary moment, as well as Korean American cultural productions. I look at how 1992 was a pivotal moment that influenced and continues to inform how Korean American cultural producers view themselves and their work, whether consciously or unconsciously. Moreover, my own perspective as a 2nd generation Korean American instrumentally informs my work, appearing most explicitly in personal anecdotes and vignettes, inserted throughout the dissertation. Chapter one takes a broader look at the shifting Asian American figure, looking at how Asian American representation has shifted between yellow peril and model minority narratives, given the historical moment and events that are unfolding. Taking a contemporary look at the increase of Asian American representation in popular culture, I situate this idea of representation as a paradox. Chapter two then looks at the history of Korean immigrants/Americans in Los Angeles, and how generalized tropes of Asian Americans impacted Korean American figures. The second part of this dissertation takes a look at 1.5 or 2nd generation Korean American cultural producers, Justin Chon and his 2017 film Gook, Roy Choi, the creator of the Kogi Truck and the Korean BBQ taco, and Dumbfoundead, a Koreatown-based rapper and media creator. Chapter three looks at Justin Chon and Gook, alongside the 1992 Riots/Uprisings, news media representations, and the media-constructed Black-Korean conflict. Chapter four and five examine Roy Choi’s Korean BBQ taco and the Kogi truck and Dumbfoundead, respectiviely, within the context of rising multiculturalism, neoliberalism, and post-racial rhetoric.
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    The pedagogy of pop: implicit codes of conduct in the Weimar novels of Vicki Baum and Irmgard Keun.
    (2009-04) King, Adam Ryan
    Far from avoiding the controversies of contemporary reality and providing merely a means of pleasurable "escape" from one's dreary life--a characteristic that the cultural critic Siegfired Kracauer attributes to popular literature--I argue that the candid representation of controversial women's issues in Vicki Baum's stud. chem. Helene Willfueer and Menschen im Hotel, and Irmgard Keun's Gilgi, eine von uns and Das kunstseidene Maedchen provided a well-informed social critique to many non-university educated working- and middle-class women. I introduce the figures of the Kalte Persona, the Radar Type, and the Creature, which the German scholar Helmut Lethen argues emerge in the literature of the Weimar Republic and illustrate the desire for masking as a form of protection from the perceived dangers of society. I then apply Lethen's characterization to the protagonists of Baum's and Keun's novels in order to show that the presence of these figures are not limited to the realm of canonical literature from which Lethen draws his examples. Next, I argue against the gender bias of Lethen's analysis by showing how the women protagonists of Baum's and Keun's novels actively adopt the characteristics of the Kalte Persona that Lethen attributes only to men. The most pedagogically beneficial aspect of these novels, I argue, is that instead of telling their readers what to believe, both Baum and Keun give their readers the opportunity to formulate their own views on these complex issues. The public discussion of these novels provided women with the opportunity not only to discuss the novels themselves, but also to discuss the controversial issues raised. In my analysis of the critical and popular reception of Baum's and Keun's novels, I illustrate how these writings fostered a great deal of debate in the press about many contemporary controversies, allowing women to add their own often suppressed voices to the raging debates about the changing roles of women in the Weimar Republic.
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    The social construction of urban American Indian teen’s identity: how to be an Indian*
    (2012-05) Clark, Maureen Ann
    Abstract summary not available
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    A Visual Affair: Popular Culture and L'Affaire Dreyfus
    (2016-06) Trittipo, Kathryn
    This dissertation examines the popular culture and visual material connected to the Dreyfus Affair in nineteenth century France. The Dreyfus Affair was an important political and social event that took place in the 1890s in which Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, was wrongfully accused of treason and found guilty, despite a lack of evidence. In the aftermath of the verdict, French society split into opposing camps, largely based on social and political values. Newspapers and journals covered the Dreyfus Affair prolifically and a broad variety of materials were produced that related to the Affair, such as postcards, posters, novelties, and games. It is through these items that the public really engaged with the Affair, an aspect of it that has largely been overlooked. This dissertation posits that the material produced contained a variety of functions for the public, from didacticism to entertainment. An overview of common subjects and themes is discussed to provide a general framework before the more lengthy discussion of the materials possible functions. Also explored are the concepts of low-brow and high-brow material, especially as it connects to the figure of the collector.