Trump TV: The Trump Campaign's Real News Update as Competitor to Cable News

With social media, presidential figures can communicate directly with citizens without filter, and the self-selecting nature of social media ensures that supporters will comprise the majority of that figure's social media following. This project examines an example of visual content aimed at a president's supporters: the Real News Update. Produced by the Trump reelection campaign, the Real News Update mimics the color designs and structures of cable news and uses female anchors to soften messages while emphasizing conflict with the press. In a polarized climate aided by the popularization of outlets like Fox News, the Real News Update apes the style of the press to offer an in-house digitally distributed alternative.     

The Good Will Hunting Technique

“The Good Will Hunting Technique” analyzes and enacts rhetorical paradigms present in popular culture. The main objects of examination are Gus van Sant's film, Good Will Hunting, and Eminem's music video “Mosh.” The author extracts positive aspects of popular culture to feature a rational-affective approach to rhetoric. The notion of mind–body rhetorical collaboration, which stems from Behavioral Doctrine developed during Germany's Weimar era, combines an emphasis on exteriority with traditional notions of rhetoric to establish a method for progressive action in lived reality.     

Lord of the Rings,Star Wars,and participatory fandom: mapping new congruencies between the internet and media entertainment culture

The culture of media entertainment, as exemplified in the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars film franchises, is being infused with new modes of authorship, production, marketing, and consumption that are characterized by Internet fan clubs, online producer‐consumer affiliations, and real‐world legal controversies over the proprietary ownership of digital bits of information. To analyze these new interactive patterns being employed by two competing media franchises, Bourdieu's theory of cultural production is supplemented with Jenkins's study of participatory fandom. Then, the contested nature of computer‐mediated communication is explored using a model that brackets the opposing potentialities of Internet influence on offline society.     

Rope Sluts,and Bottoms,and Subs,Oh My: 50 Shades of Grey and the Shifting Discourse on Female Submission in Feminist Kink Porn

To date, feminists have conflated (and continue to conflate) historical understandings of bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism (BDSM) as pathological and representations of BDSM in literature and popular media with the lived experiences of feminist BDSM practitioners. Feminist BDSM practitioner Madison Young’s pornographic film 50 Shades of Dylan Ryan (2012) takes the recent resurgence of the ongoing debate on women, submission, and popular literature as a starting point for reconsideration and possibility. By adapting the discourse surrounding 50 Shades of Grey, Young’s pornographic film points to the ways in which feminism also contributes to that which makes pleasure possible. Young’s film reimagines the dualities that have traditionally dominated feminist cultural critique through concepts the author calls “mediated authenticity” and “formal simultaneity.” Beginning with a brief, rigorous examination of the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon, this article analyzes Madison Young’s 50 Shades of Dylan Ryan and seeks to provide a critical intervention in feminist studies of pornography and popular culture.     

All Things Cultured: An Analysis of Popular Culture Coverage on National Public Radio's All Things Considered

National Public Radio's flagship news program All Things Considered has long been known for its sophisticated style of political and cultural news coverage. In past years the program has increased the number and types of popular culture stories covered to reflect the changing interests of listeners. This content analysis found that coverage of popular culture significantly increased in relation to the more traditional “high” culture stories, such as opera and art. The results suggest that All Things Considered is working to bring more popular culture coverage to the program while not losing focus on its traditional style of news coverage.     

“What is an author?” Contemporary publishing discourse and the author figure

Martin Amis’ novel The Information was published in paperback in May 1995. For a number of convergent reasons, the publication became, in itself, a major media event. In examining this occasion., the economic and cultural imperatives that shaped the marketing of The Information and the wider context of contemporary book publishing and its relation to other media, this paper problematises the relationship between cultural and economic value. It considers the discourse around what an author is “worth” in a late capitalist society of fiercely competitive consumer choice, and how the representation of an avowedly “literary” author is mobilised in the marketplace in ways that aim not to threaten to compromise the investment in the difference between literary and popular fiction.     

Evil Literature

Much of the focus on the closure of the News of the World in 2011 was in the context of the newspaper as a national publication in the UK. The News of the World, however, had a significant history in Ireland. This article focuses on one aspect of that history culminating in the banning of the newspaper in 1930 at a time when it was the best-selling title in the Irish market. The prohibition followed an almost two-decade campaign against ‘dirty’ publications led by the Catholic Church and its supporters so as to safeguard sexual morality in Ireland against ‘alien’ influences. Understanding the rationale for targeting the News of the World and other popular British newspapers is central to fully considering the censorship campaign as well as the work of the government-appointed Committee on Evil Literature in 1927. Given the emboldened outlook of the Catholic Church following independence from the UK in 1922, the highly effective censorship campaign met little public or political resistance despite the popularity of the News of the World. Along with offering a deeper understanding of this specific censorship campaign against the press, this article also explores the role of British newspapers beyond their core domestic market.     

Reading the Body on House,M.D.: Medical Surveillance as a Model of the Social

This article focuses on the representation of the body in House, M.D. and suggests its usefulness as a metaphor for the view of the social body on which the series relies. The body in House, M.D. is the central occupation of the narrative, and it is around the body that the paired oppositions certainty/doubt and body/speech occur. In House, confessional speech is a regime of false knowledge while the body is privileged as the foundation of true knowledge—the province of the expert interpreter of the body. Through an exploration of these paired oppositions in the show's representation of medical practice, the author explores the series' model of the social in which the visual mediation of bodies is privileged as social hermeneutic and the intensification of mutual surveillance is the means of authentic interaction.     

Manufacturing Authenticity: The Rhetoric of “Real” in Women's Magazines

Discourses of authenticity are symptomatic of an era of destabilized communication hierarchies, participatory media, and reality television programming. Women's magazines are an apt site to examine articulations of authenticity given the genre's traditional emphases on aspirational consumption and “making up” the external self. This study explores constructions of authenticity in the advertising and editorial content of two top-ranked publications, Glamour and Cosmopolitan. Drawing on a qualitative textual analysis of these magazines, the author conceptualizes three overlapping tropes of authenticity: (a) promoting natural, organic products; (b) the celebration of ordinary-looking women; and (c) the encouragement of inner-directed self-discovery. These striations of real products, real external beauty, and real internal beauty, respectively, allow authenticity to seep throughout the texts without fundamentally disrupting their traditional commercial function.     

Challenges & compromises in Spike Lee's Malcolm X

–This study looks at Spike Lee's Malcolm X as an important text in understanding Afrocentric perspectives that challenge the ideological stereotypes of mainstream Hollywood film. Malcolm X intervenes between Lee, the filmmaker, and the powerful media industry and is emblematic of the larger discussion of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic views in media culture. This film is not only an interesting case study but a significant part of an ongoing cultural discourse that is as relevant now as when Malcolm X lived. The relevance of this essay lies in its contribution to the discussion of media perspectives with a focus on furthering media literacy. It aids the viewer in understanding the social discourse surrounding a mediated racist ideology and the ongoing cultural work of social equality in the United States. This research finds that in the continuing struggle over media representation, Lee's film is an instrument of media politics, controversy, and commercialization.     

The Subtleties of Blatant Sexism

This essay examines The Man Show as a contemporary example of blatant sexism. A growing body of feminist criticism documents the emergence of subtle forms of sexism in popular culture. Such forms may be characterized as an accommodation or hegemonic negotiation in which dominant discourses must become flexible in the face of pressure from oppressed groups. Yet blatant sexism abounds in contemporary culture. I argue that The Man Show provides viewers with rhetorical resources to imagine their viewing practices as an act of protest against an imagined dominant female authority, and that those resources potentially allow viewers to accept the sexism of the program at face value.     

Reframing the Domestic Angel: Real Simple Magazine's Repackaging of the Victorian-Era “Angel in the House” Narrative

In this essay, I argue that a contemporized version of the “Angel in the House” narrative is present in Real Simple magazine. I demonstrate that nineteenth-century domestic themes have been reframed in Real Simple so that the home is no longer identified as a site intended for the pleasure of men; instead, it is identified as a personal sanctuary for the contemporary woman's respite and pleasure. I contend that while this revamped notion of the domestic angel may provide the reader with agency to privilege her own needs and desires, the modified narrative nevertheless reinforces the ideological notion of separate spheres—that the home is a woman's domain.     

“Now We Can Talk”

This paper explores debate within Puerto Rico's journalistic community regarding the journalistic role of La Comay, a full-sized puppet host of the popular information and entertainment show SuperXclusivo, which faced a boycott in late 2012 and cancelation in early 2013. Calls to boycott and shutter the daily TV show came from the island's LGBT advocates because of comments made by La Comay that they considered homophobic. This analysis of 58 texts from four of Puerto Rico's island-wide news outlets provides an opportunity to examine how a region's dominant cultural archetype—that of the motherly and controversial comadre, after which La Comay is named—appeared in boundary work conducted by local journalists as they determined whether La Comay should have been awarded journalistic status. This paper is not meant to be yet another examination of satirical journalism as much as it is a chance to explore the appearance of a region's culture in the construction or maintenance of its journalistic community.     

The Gospel According to: A Theory of Transformative Discursive Allegory

The battle between secular culture and conservative religion is one that pervades modern society. In the face of this vehement clash, a curious collection of books has emerged that attempt to provide a means of reconciliation between faith and popular culture. The Gospel according to book series by Presbyterian publisher Westminster John Knox (WJK) Press pairs seemingly controversial artifacts of popular culture such as The Simpsons with the gospel message. These books function in a way that is similar to allegory but lacks allegorical form. This essay argues for the existence of a distinctive rhetorical strategy called transformative discursive allegory that functions to create an allegorical relationship between a secular and a sacred text. WJK's The Gospel according to book series is shown as an example of how transformative discursive allegory functions to allow the faithful to participate in popular culture while simultaneously affirming one's ideological beliefs as omnipresent in the world. The findings suggest that allegorical function and form are separate elements and that one can create an allegorical relationship without allegorical form or intent.     

Tracing the trails of a white knight: A glocal perspective on the academic and public heritage of Tamar Liebes

ABSTRACT

Tamar Liebes was a groundbreaking and fearless scholar who nurtured generations of media researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Groundbreaking, because she paved new trajectories in the study of popular communication and applied pioneering qualitative research methods to media studies. Toward the end of the 1970s, when only few perceived that popular culture was a legitimate field of inquiry and even fewer believed that interpretative efforts in the spirit of the humanities were worth institutionalizing in the social sciences, it was Tamar who swam against the stream and completed a pioneering study on the reception of the American soap opera Dallas among members of different cultural communities. Her book The Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Readings of Dallas (co-authored with Elihu Katz) soon became canonic and is still being taught in introductory media studies courses around the world. Fearless, because the same road Tamar paved to establish these lines of research and, indeed, to revolutionize the field of communication, was also rife with rivalries, battles, and struggles she never hesitated to engage in. Tamar was the white knight who never feared fighting the dragons, and in some cases (though not all) she even won.     

Bojale Drum: Material Culture in Living Contexts

This paper discusses the three phases of the lifecycle of the bojale drum: its custodianship by the queen of Bakgatla‐baga‐Kgafela; the drum's use in bojale (girls’ initiation ceremony); and its presence in Phuthadikobo Museum, a community institution. This lifecycle was observed by the author prior, during, and post initiation in bojale, a girls’ initiation school in 2009. The drum's use, its royal significance and sacredness, is barely documented in its museum record, which can result in its misinterpretation. The recommendations are that the drum's documentation, preservation, handling, and storage in the museum should incorporate its intangible cultural attributes if the museum is to be relevant to the Bakgatla‐baga‐Kgafela community. In conclusion, bojale drum is an example of how material culture can connect a museum with its community through the living culture of bojale.     

Notes on reconstructing “the popular”

ABSTRACT

Drawing on Stuart Hall’s influential “Notes on deconstructing ‘the popular’” [Hall, S. (1981). In R. Samuel (Eds.), People’s history and socialist theory (pp. 227–240). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.], this essay maps out some of the major shifts in cultural studies’ relationship to popular culture over the past several decades. It concludes with a call for cultural studies to find ways to work from the terrain of the popular, rather than merely studying that terrain, or trying to “translate” its scholarly analyses for popular audiences. This is a necessary path to fulfilling its mission as a political project.     

Examining the effects of hegemonic depictions of female bodies on television: a call for theory and programmatic research * This article was accepted by the previous CSMC editor,Dr. James W. Chesebro

Although the media effects literature was precocious in its development, appearing almost as soon as the object of its study, researchers have focused on a relatively narrow array of effects. Examples include the effects of violent, pornographic, and sexual content in the media and minority stereotyping. This review demonstrates the need for researchers to construct stronger theories and conduct more programmatic research on another important, yet often ignored, media effect–the effect of ideal televised images on females' perceptions of, and satisfaction with, their own bodies. To accomplish its purposes, the paper begins with a review of the body image literature, including a discussion of current televised representations of female bodies and their effects on body satisfaction. Next, the paper argues that researchers should refer to two prominent media effects theories (cultivation theory and social cognitive theory) to better understand the process by which television influences body image. This latter review leads to ethical considerations and conclusions regarding probable effects of television on women's body satisfaction.     

Heshang (River Elegy) a television orchestration of a new ideology in China

This paper analyses the extensive reactions and intensive discussions generated by Heshang, a six‐part documentary series aired in June 1988 in China. The documentary, advocating a ‘full‐scale adoption of Western ideas’, and ‘total abandoning of Chinese traditional culture’, stirred up party leaders' displeasure.

Furthermore, the paper also analyses the presentation rationale and strategy (such as use of symbols, emotional appeal, etc.) used in Heshang. The analysis suggests that the programme producers' experiment of conveying complex social, cultural and historical contents in a documentary format is successful and innovative. Additionally, Heshang has enormous implications for contemporary Chinese politics, in particular the use of television as a public forum on controversial issues. As such, this paper enhances our understanding of the role and impact of the mass media in China.