Journal of European Popular Culture - Current Issue
Volume 14, Issue 2, 2023
- Editorial
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- Articles
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Between the Bogside and boy bands: Pop music and place-based identities in Derry Girls
More LessThe British teen sitcom Derry Girls has been noted for its unique spatial and historical setting: the Northern Irish city of Derry in the 1990s. These coordinates furnish a number of intersecting transition narratives in which place-based identities are negotiated against the backdrop of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland as well as neo-liberal globalization and European integration. The role of pop music is of vital importance in narrating and structuring the teenaged protagonists’ identity formation processes. Through a recognizable mix of commercially successful pop, Eurodance and hip hop songs, the show inscribes the main characters’ experiences into a wider social fabric – one marked by post-ideological, post-nationalist and consumerist undertones. This social fabric is shown to be delineated by middle-class Whiteness, thereby reflecting the role of, in particular, Europop as the soundtrack of a (perceived) 1990s post-cold war liberal hegemony. The inclusionary and exclusionary aspects of western popular music are also shown to work in tandem with pre-Brexit nostalgia and the renegotiation of gendered power structures vis-à-vis local traditionalism. Overall, Derry Girls employs popular music in ways which foster accessibility for universalized adolescent transition narratives built around White cosmopolitanism.
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North African immigration in France: The aftermath of the Algerian War in graphic narratives Les Mohamed and Une Famille Nombreuse
More LessThe Algerian War (1954–62) has had a lasting impact on Arabs living in France since the First World War, whether they are Algerians or not. This article focuses on North African immigrants and ethnic minority lived experiences using Les Mohamed by Jérôme Ruillier (2011) and Une Famille nombreuse by Chadia Chaibi Loueslati (2017), two graphic narratives that depict the North African immigrants’ contribution to a more diverse French history and the family/communities’ memories. Throughout this article, I analyse the various framing strategies used in Les Mohamed and Une Famille nombreuse that seek to change French readers’ perception of the North African identity and ultimately speak against the myth of cultural assimilation. By telling personal stories, Ruillier and Loueslati succeed at creating a collective memory that promotes a discourse in favour of integration. By designing his characters in a minimalist fashion, Ruillier combats existing stereotypes and invites his readers from diverse backgrounds to identify with the characters. By using humour and metatextual comments from her siblings, Loueslati emphasizes the diversity of immigrant and second-generation experiences. Using those framing strategies, both authors expose the normalcy of mistreatments and discrimination towards immigrants and their descendants in France.
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Dealing with the post-war menace: Creating transnational film memories in the shadow of the Holocaust
By Bryan MeadTraditional scholarship in social film history views groups of films from a certain time period as encapsulations of the overriding national mindset of that time. However, film scholarship has challenged this notion of what sociologists term ‘collective memory’, insisting instead that a wider range of films be included and several ‘collective memories’ be formulated in order to broaden the understanding of time-specific societal beliefs. In addition, research in memory studies has challenged the insistence on ‘national memories’, preferring instead the exploration of ‘transnational memories’. Most prominent among transnational memory scholarship is the work being done on the Holocaust. This article examines four films produced in three different national cinemas from the early post-war period (1946–49), all of which deal with the aftermath of the Holocaust in some way. Analysing these four films (The Murderers Are among Us, Rotation, The Stranger and The Third Man) and these three national cinemas (East Germany, America and Great Britain) shows how a specific transnational event such as the Holocaust can produce several aesthetic and narrative signifiers internationally while also being specifically formulated to meet local, national sensibilities.
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Black bodies and French colonial history: Beyoncé and Jay Z’s ‘Apeshit’ at the Louvre
More LessIn June of 2018, Beyoncé and Jay-Z (under the name The Carters) released the music video for their song ‘Apeshit’, from the album Everything Is Love, set in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Through an agreement with the Louvre, The Carters were given free rein to film in front of some of the most famous art pieces in the world. This article focuses on five instances, within the music video, where the juxtaposition between either The Carters and/or their dancers, and certain works of art, merits analysis within the French colonial and postcolonial context. Under consideration are the following scenes: first is the dance scene in front of David’s The Coronation of Napoléon (1807); the second is in front of the Great Sphinx of Tanis (2600 BCE); the third is in front of Géricault’s The Charging Chasseur (1812); the fourth is a scene in a locker room that pans to a bedroom (‘Apeshit’ 00:02:31–00:02:36); the fifth and final is ‘the hair-combing scene’ in front of DaVinci’s Mona Lisa. Each of these scenes speaks to pivotal moments in French colonial and postcolonial history, and through the analysis of the lyrics of the song and the historical context, I provide insight into the rich and deep meaning behind the specific art choices made by The Carters, within the Louvre, for their music video.
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New lyric writing: Blurring the boundary between popular and high culture
By John SannaeeThis article aims to give an overview of the new forms of lyric writing by minorities in the United Kingdom, France and beyond. In the context of a globalized, postcolonial, internet era, a variety of forms and modes of broadcasting – from hip hop lyrics to instapoetry via verse novels and more traditional poetry collections – are characterized by an intersubjective lyricism that aims to transform and valorize the experiences of marginalized and minority writers. Out of the diversity of voices and forms, this article shows the shared poetics and features of this lyric writing as well as the solidarities across borders and different forms of marginalization that are often present and opens up lines of reflection and theorization, notably in relation to the role of internet and the developing cultural context of converging popular cultures and national and postcolonial literary traditions.
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