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- Volume 37, Issue 1, 2018
European Journal of American Culture - Volume 37, Issue 1, 2018
Volume 37, Issue 1, 2018
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The philosophy of the Ramones
More LessAbstractThis article traces the history and influence of The Ramones, an American rock & roll band that founded the ‘punk rock’ movement, which then spread to England and such bands as The Sex Pistols, The Clash, along with many other similar groups. Although they never achieved mainstream success during their more than twenty year career, The Ramones are now are considered by many to be one of the most important pop music groups of the later twenty-century, transforming 1970s rock & with a stripped-down style that combined speed, simplicity, and a confrontational approach to performance. Though all the members of the group have died, their music has become part of the fabric of American pop culture, inspiring such contemporary bands as Green Day, Nirvana and Metallica.
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The rock band KISS and American Dream ideology
Authors: Kieran James, Susan P. Briggs and Bligh GrantAbstractThis article is a collective effort on the authors’ part to remember KISS, one of the most important hard-rock bands of the 1970s and 1980s. Influenced by the glam-rock movement that preceded its rise, arguably KISS was the first major act in rock music history to present rock music as Entertainment Product first and music only second. We discuss the original, democratic concept of the Fab Four – Gene, Paul, Ace and Peter – as well as Gene Simmons’ and Paul Stanley’s subsequent American Dream ideology. We go on to analyse the current version of the band in the light of the original line-up and appearance. We find that the KISS fan base is divided with some fans accepting Simmons’ current view that the four masked personas can be utilized by anyone chosen by the band’s leadership; a second group that tries to correct the alleged historical injustices committed against former band members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss; and a third group that is cynical about the current version of KISS but finds it fruitless to rehash old debates (since any proffered solutions not supported by the current band leadership are unlikely to come to pass).
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Camp revamped in pop culture icon Lady Gaga: The case of ‘Telephone’ and ‘Born this Way’
More LessAbstractThis article addresses the ultimate pop icon Lady Gaga; in particular I will analyse how camp sensibility informs her gender and sex discourses as well as her acts of transgression and commodification. Using as a framework Pamela Robertson’s feminist camp in the 1990s and its revision by Helen Shugart and Catherine Waggoner in the 2000s, it is my main contention that Gaga problematizes camp and its subversive potential yet again. Thus, drawing on and contesting J. Jack Halberstam’s queer reading of the artist in Gaga Feminism, this article proves how her campy outfits and her videos ‘Born this Way’ and ‘Telephone’ open feminist camp to new concerns, especially through her affective engagement with her fans, which converts the artist into a hypermodern product. In featuring herself as ‘Mother Monster’ followed by her ‘little monsters’, she updates Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway 2004) to revamp Otherness and belongness as culturally significant concepts.
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The girl, nature, goddess, or how Marilyn Monroe became ‘the queen of glamour’?
By Agata ŁukszaAbstract‘Did you ever see anything like her?’, Cleveland Amory asked Hedda Hopper while they were both watching the making of the famous ‘bathtub scene’ in The Seven Year Itch (Wilder, 1955). How can one explain the phenomenon of Marilyn Monroe – the ‘queen of glamour’, as her contemporaries called her? This research examines the case of Marilyn Monroe with reference to the model of glamorous femininity which has emerged in modern consumer societies. Monroe is understood as a ‘representative character’, not a real person, and the study aims at reconstructing and deconstructing her public image, not at establishing the ‘truth’ about her personal life. The most influential components of Monroe’s persona are indicated and analysed based on press material from her lifetime and her repertoire, i.e. the pin-up context, the association with nature and the ‘goddess’ aspect. It is maintained that these components accounted for Monroe’s lasting status as an icon of glamour but also best corresponded to the changes in morality and sexuality that American society experienced in the 1950s.
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Reviews
AbstractWar Noir: Raymond Chandler and the Hardboiled Detective as Veteran in American Detective Fiction, Sarah Trott (2016) Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 221 pp., ISBN: 9781496808646, h/bk, $65
Manga in America: Transnational Book Publishing and the Domestication of Japanese Comics, Casey Brienza (2016) London and New York: Bloomsbury, 214 pp., ISBN: 9781472595874, p/bk, £21.99, h/bk, £63.00, e/bk, £19.79
Manga and Anime Go To Hollywood: The Amazing Rapidly Evolving Relationship between Hollywood and Japanese Animation, Manga, Television and Film, Northrop Davis (2016) London and New York: Bloomsbury, 410 pp., ISBN: 9781623561444, p/bk, £20.99, h/bk, £80.00, e/bk, £18.89
Keywords for Southern Studies, Scott Romine and Jennifer Rae Greeson (eds) (2016) Athens: University of Georgia Press, 336 pp., ISBN: 9780820340616, h/bk, $89.95, 411 pp., ISBN: 9780820349626, p/bk, $32.95
Emmett Till in different genres
The Blood of Emmett Till, Timothy B. Tyson (2017) New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, New Delhi: Simon & Schuster, 218 pp., ISBN-13: 9781476714844, h/bk, $27.00, ISBN-13: 9781476714851, p/bk, $17.00, ISBN-13: 9781476714868, e/bk, $12.99
Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File, John Edgar Wideman (2016) New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, New Delhi: Scribner, 193 pp., ISBN-13: 9781501147289, h/bk, $25.00, ISBN-13: 9781501147296, p/bk, $16.00, ISBN-13: 9781501147302, e/bk, $11.95
Emmett Till in Different States, Philip C. Kolin (2015) Chicago: Third World Press, 72 pp., ISBN-13: 9780883783603, p/bk, $18.95
The ongoing crisis in American colleges
The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem, Joel Best and Eric Best (2014) Berkeley: University of California Press, 248 pp., ISBN: 9780520276451, h/bk, $34.95, £27.95; p/bk, $26.95, £21.95
The Capitalist University: The Transformations of Higher Education in the United States, 1945–2016, Henry Heller (2016) London: Pluto Press, 264 pp., ISBN: 9780745336589, h/bk, $35.00, £22.37
Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream, Suzanne Mettler (2014) New York: Basic Books, 272 pp., ISBN: 9780465044962, p/bk, $27.99
No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies, E. Patrick Johnson (ed.) (2016) Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 422 pp., ISBN: 9780822362425, p/bk, $28.95
Tennessee Williams, Paul Ibell (2016) London: Reaktion Books, 192 pp., ISBN: 9781780236629, p/bk, $19
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 42 (2023)
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Volume 41 (2022)
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Volume 40 (2021)
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Volume 39 (2020)
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Volume 38 (2019)
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Volume 37 (2018)
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Volume 36 (2017)
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Volume 35 (2016)
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Volume 34 (2015)
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Volume 33 (2014)
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Volume 32 (2013)
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Volume 31 (2012)
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Volume 30 (2011 - 2012)
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Volume 29 (2010 - 2011)
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Volume 28 (2009)
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Volume 27 (2008)
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Volume 26 (2007 - 2008)
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Volume 25 (2005 - 2007)
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Volume 24 (2005)
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Volume 23 (2004)
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Volume 22 (2003)
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Volume 21 (2002)
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Volume 20 (2001 - 2002)