popular culture

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• SOURCE: The New Atlantis
  6/12/2023
  

  Hollywood Has Abandoned the Citizen-Inventor

  After generations of populist inventors making the things they need, Hollywood has framed our relationship to invention as receiving the gifts bestowed on us by plutocrats. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/30/2023
  

  WGA Strike Latest Example of Cultural Workers Joining Together as Entertainment Technology Changes

  by Vaughn Joy

  The development of television and online content have historically forced multiple Hollywood unions to join forces to secure a share of the returns of new techology or risk being frozen out entirely. 

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  5/28/2023
  

  Professor Helps Rescue "Lost" Asian American Silent Film

  Denise Khor's research on film culture seemed to show that the prints of the 1914 film "The Oath of the Sword" had been lost. But one museum had a decaying copy in a vault, and a restored version has premiered as the oldest known Asian American film. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/25/2023
  

  How Tina Turner Escaped Abuse and Reclaimed her Name

  by Gillian Brockell

  She escaped Ike Turner's abusive and controlling grasp with 36 cents in her pocket. Escaping the marriage required her to surrender all claim to their shared assets in exchange for the rights to use her stage name and have a second chance at stardom on her own. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  5/18/2023
  

  The Hollywood Blacklist, Screenwriters and Free Expression Under Attack

  by Larry Ceplair

  The current screenwriters' strike is occasion to look back at the targeting of writers by HUAC in the 1950s, the politics of moral panic, and the impact of political fear on the content of popular culture.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/19/2023
  

  For the Shakurs, Black Liberation Became the Family Business

  Santi Elijah Holley traces the lines connecting Afeni Shakur's Black Panther Party activism to the musical and political messages of her son Tupac. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
  5/19/2023
  

  The Writers' Strike Opens Old Wounds

  by Kate Fortmueller

  The plot of each sequel of negotiations between the producers and writers has followed a formula of compromise for mutual self-preservation. Technological advances have convinced studio heads that they no longer need the labor of writers enough to keep compromising. 

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• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  3/29/2023
  

  Lizzo's Duet With History (and Madison's Crystal Flute)

  by Grace B. McGowan and Ravynn K. Stringfield

  Performing with the treasured national relic of a slaveholding President forced Americans to ask who owns antiquities, and has the right to tell their story. The controversy over the event shows that these are still contested questions. 

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• SOURCE: CNN
  3/31/2023
  

  What You Need to Know About Captain America's Secret Identity

  by Roy Schwartz

  "You know the story: a young, undersized, aspiring artist from New York’s Lower East Side who loves his country and hates bullies uses a superhero persona to take on the Nazis and becomes a war hero. It’s the origin of Captain America. It’s also the origin of Jack Kirby, his co-creator."

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  3/19/2023
  

  We Miss Dr. Strangelove now that We've Learned to Stop Worrying and Forget the Bomb

  by Andrew Bacevich

  Kubrick's classic film forced viewers to confront the possibility that the controls of the world's nuclear weapons were held by fools, fanatics, and outright lunatics. Today, it's too easy to ignore it altogether. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/10/2023
  

  What Anna May Wong's History Tells us About Oscar's Asian and Asian American Moment

  by Katie Gee Salisbury

  The first Asian-American film star got her break when a film company cast ethnic actors in a 1922 film made to test out the new Technicolor technology. But Hollywood's racial politics and commercial imperatives kept other Asian actors from stardom. 

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• SOURCE: LitHub
  3/6/2023
  

  How Superman Became a Christ-Figure

  by Roy Schwartz

  How did the comic book creation of two American Jews, whose origin story incorporates Moses, come to be understood as a stand-in for Jesus? Mostly through the movies. 

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• SOURCE: Financial Times
  3/7/2023
  

  20 Years Later, What is the Cultural Imprint of the Iraq War?

  The US war against Vietnam sparked a broad array of artistic responses, and more importantly became a litmus test for a future generation of leaders. Despite disagreements about the invasion and its serious consequences for the Middle East, the war seems to have left no trace on the West. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
  2/26/2023
  

  30 Years Later, "Falling Down" Still Shows the Shallowness of Suburbanites' Views of the City

  by Carl Abbott

  Set in a moment of economic upheaval, racial conflict, and media-driven fear of crime, Joel Schumacher's film reflected the degree of separation between America's suburbs and cities. Today, it's necessary to recognize that its portrayal of hostility and alienation isn't inevitable. 

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• SOURCE: JSTOR Daily
  2/26/2023
  

  How (Some) of the Hip Hop Generation Learned Black History

  Historian Pero Dagbovie traces shifts in hip hop's political messages and says that, to some extent the glorification of materialism replaced a focus on Black history and politics as the genre developed. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/27/2023
  

  20 Biopics Worth Watching

  It's rare for a biopic to attempt artistic innovation. A critic offers a list of those that succeed. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/2/2023
  

  The Case for Blondie as the Sound of the 70s

  by Kevin Dettmar

  While the decade's pop scene was undeniably eclectic, there's an argument to be made that the New York group was at the center of the most lasting trends of the 1970s. 

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• SOURCE: WTTW
  1/27/2023
  

  Prof. Hasan Kwame Jeffries on Consulting for Hip Hop at 50 Documentary

  The Ohio State professor served as a consultant for the four hour documentary produced by Public Enemy's Chuck D, which begins January 31. 

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• SOURCE: Oxford American
  1/24/2023
  

  Who Gets to Sing About Revenge in Pop Music?

  by Jewel Wicker

  Do the racial politics of musical genre explain why songs about revenge are celebrated in country music and turned into evidence for the prosecution against hip hop artists (even when the songs in question are fiction)?

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  1/19/2023
  

  11 Movies and Shows that Document the March of Technology

  From the office-sized computer to the landline, plot points that hinge on obsolete technology are a fun way to track how technologies structure our lives and our anxieties.