popular culture

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• SOURCE: Forward
  10/14/2021
  

  The Most Important Band of the 80s Broke Up a Decade Before

  "For all the reams that have been written about the band in recent decades, nothing has so succinctly dissected the Velvet Underground's dark magic as Haynes’ new documentary."

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• SOURCE: Vox
  10/14/2021
  

  The Lies of TV's Abortion Storylines

  by Tanya Melendez

  "Looking back on how abortion came into our living rooms starting in the 1960s and persisted into our audience-fragmented streaming era can teach us how these stories taught, shaped, and contributed to today’s public discourse about abortion."

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• 10/17/2021
  

  Passing Time and the Challenge of Catching "Eyewitnesses to History"

  by Thomas Doherty

  Historians have only recently wised up to the need to capture eyewitness remembrances of events. As the "Greatest Generation" passes and the Baby Boomers age, a cultural historian urges: talk to people while you still can. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  10/1/2021
  

  New "Wonder Years" Revives a 1970s Tactic for Diversifying TV. Will it Work?

  by Kate L. Flach

  The technique of "racial inversion" was intended in the 1970s to encourage white viewers to empathize with Black characters. Today, as then, the results show that TV alone can't bridge the nation's racial divisions. 

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• SOURCE: Public Seminar
  10/6/2021
  

  Why Hollywood Can't Change a Diaper

  by Janet Golden

  While Hollywood portrayals of motherhood have adapted to incorporate single and working mothers, popular culture images of fatherhood have remained stubbornly stuck in the past. Would supports for child care and parental leave in the budget reconciliation bill help bring movie dads up to date? 

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• SOURCE: Far Out
  10/3/2021
  

  The Beatles vs. the KKK

  John Lennon's notorious "bigger than Jesus" comment prior to the group's 1966 American tour brought out right-wing protestors and helped push the band to stop touring permanently. 

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  9/29/2021
  

  Muscle Motion:

  by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

  A 1983 home workout video featuring the Chippendales dancers reflected the convergence of multiple cultural changes in home video, fitness culture, pornography, and the mainstreaming of female desire. Everything has a history!

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• 10/3/2021
  

  At 82, Dion Offers a Rock and Roll Light in the Darkness

  by Richard Aquila

  Dion's new recording isn't just a work of Baby Boomer nostalgia; it reaches to the past to understand the present, says a historian of rock in American culture.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/28/2021
  

  Bob Moore, Key Pillar of the "Nashville Sound", dies at 88`

  "Over 40 years Mr. Moore elevated the bass in country music from a subordinate timekeeper to an instrument capable of considerable tonal and emotional reach."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/29/2021
  

  What Young People's Embrace of "The Sopranos" Says about a Changing Culture

  "The show’s depiction of contemporary America as relentlessly banal and hollow is plainly at the core of the current interest in the show, which coincides with an era of crisis across just about every major institution in American life."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/26/2021
  

  How the Drive-By Truckers Hacked the Music Industry

  by Stephen Deusner

  Through lineup changes, record label hassles, and fans upset with their political lyrics, the Truckers have used the internet and social media to build support and survive for decades. Their story is a history of the changing business and a map for younger acts. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/22/2021
  

  Climate Anxiety and the Return of Arctic Horror

  by Bathsheba Demuth

  As climate change driven by capitalism threatens the polar ice caps, new miniseries return to the themes of arctic exploration, where cold and ice threaten humans and commerce, rather than the other way around. 

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• SOURCE: Vox
  9/17/2021
  

  "The Eyes of Tammy Faye": When the GOP Got in Bed with the Christian Right

  The scandals involving the PTL television ministry of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker allowed Jerry Falwell to expand the inluence of the Moral Majority and connect the religious right more firmly to the Republican Party. A new film highlights that moment. 

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• SOURCE: The Drift
  9/14/2021
  

  XOXO, Ruling Class​: Gossip Girl, The O.C., and the New Gilded Age

  David Klion looks at TV producer Josh Schwartz's jump from "The OC" to "Gossip Girl" and argues that, after the 2007 financial crisis, popular culture was able to show the sociopathy of the super-rich. `

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  9/15/2021
  

  The Significance of Yasuke, the Black Samurai

  by Warren A. Stanislaus

  "While media coverage of Afro-Japanese encounters overwhelmingly focuses on incidents of racism or misunderstandings, Yasuke’s interaction with Japan has helped illuminate a rich but overlooked history of Afro-Japanese connectivity." 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/15/2021
  

  The 70s are Back, But Not How You Think

  by Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff

  "In the coronavirus era, disco themes resonate. People long for community and wonder if leaders have our backs. Social media offers some of the trappings that defined disco — from the clothes to the allure of being seen in a new way."

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/13/2021
  

  "Negotiated Authenticity" and the Precarious Position of Black Creators in Television History

  "Since its invention, television has shaped this country’s self-image. To the extent that we share notions of “normal,” “acceptable,” “funny,” “wrong,” and even “American,” television has helped define them. For decades, Black writers were shut out of the rooms in which those notions were scripted."

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• SOURCE: CNN
  9/9/2021
  

  "Impeachment" Shows How Different the Clinton Scandal Looks with Women at the Center

  by Nicole Hemmer

  "Monica Lewinsky fits squarely in this retelling of the work and experiences of women in the 1990s, as well as broader efforts to grapple with the influence of the decade on our current political travails."

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• SOURCE: Vanity Fair
  8/30/2021
  

  Why Hip Hop Conquered the World: The Smithsonian Anthology of Hip Hop and Rap Drops

  The new anthology "tells the story of American history from 1979 to 2013 through the eyes of the young Black Americans who changed it profoundly."

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/27/2021
  

  The "Candyman" Reboot Subverts Cinematic Tropes of Black Suffering

  Director Nia DaCosta, with co-writers Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, has turned the problematic racial framing of its predecessor on its head, and casts critical light on the treatment of Black characters throughout the history of film.