Ever since Norman Lear remade the BBC series Till Death Us Do Part into All in the Family, American remakes of British television shows have become part of the American cultural fabric. Indeed, some of the programs currently said to exemplify American tastes and attitudes, from reality programs like American Idol and What Not to Wear to the mock-documentary approach of The Office, are adaptations of successful British shows. Carlen Lavigne and H...

Trenchantly on point and bursting with insight, anthropologist Grant McCracken shows American corporations how keeping a finger on the pulse of contemporary cultural trends can change their business practices for the better -- and ahead of the curve.Levi-Strauss, the jeans and apparel maker, missed out on the hip-hop trend. They didn't realize that those kids in baggy jeans represented a whole new -- and lucrative -- market opportunity, one they could have seen com...

Welcome to Culturematic: How Reality TV, John Cheever, a Pie Lab, Julia Child, Fantasy Football, Burning Man, the Ford Fiesta Movement, Rube Goldberg, NFL Films, Wordle, Two and a Half Men, a 10,000-Year Symphony, and ROFLCom Memes Will Help You Create and Execute Breakthrough IdeasA Culturematic is a little machine for making culture. It’s an ingenuity engine.Once wound up and released, the Culturematic acts as a probe into the often-alien world of contemp...

Brings together the highlights of a decade and a half of groundbreaking research into the cultural life of media consumersHenry Jenkins's pioneering work in the early 1990s promoted the idea that fans are among the most active, creative, critically engaged, and socially connected consumers of popular culture and that they represent the vanguard of a new relationship with mass media. Though marginal and largely invisible to the general public at the time, today, med...

A discussion of pop culture messages about masculinity, their impact on boys, and the benefits of introducing more gender balance to boys lives.When most people think about gender stereotypes and children, they envision princesses, dolls, and pink clothing. Few consider the warriors, muscle-bound action figures, and T-shirts covered in graffiti and skulls that are assumed to signify masculinity.The pop culture environment that surrounds boys introduces them...

The twentieth anniversary edition of Henry Jenkins’s Textual Poachers brings this now-canonical text to a new generation of students interested in the intersections of fandom, participatory culture, popular consumption and media theory.Supplementing the original, classic text is an interview between Henry Jenkins and Suzanne Scott in which Jenkins reflects upon changes in the field since the original release of Textual Poachers. A study guide by Louisa Stein helps...

Adam Sandler movies, HBO's Entourage, and such magazines as Maxim and FHM all trade in and appeal to one character-the modern boy-man. Addicted to video games, comic books, extreme sports, and dressing down, the boy-man would rather devote an afternoon to Grand Theft Auto than plan his next career move. He would rather prolong the hedonistic pleasures of youth than embrace the self-sacrificing demands of adulthood.When did maturity become the ultimate tab...

Television entertainment rules supreme, one of the world’s most important disseminators of information, ideas, and amusement. More than a parade of little figures in a box, it is deeply embedded in everyday life, in how we think, what we think and care about, and who we think and care about it with.But is television entertainment art? Why do so many love it and so many hate or fear it? Does it offer a window to the world, or images of a fake world? How is it political and how does ...

Since first going on the air in 1972, HBO has continually attempted to redefine television as we know it. Today, pay television (and HBO in particular) is positioned as an alternative to network offerings, consistently regarded as the premier site for what has come to be called "quality television."This collection of new essays by an international group of media scholars argues that HBO, as part of the leading edge of television, is at the center of television studies’ interests in...

Thought-provoking and "undeniably interesting" essays on this cultural institution of comedy and what it says about our society ( Booklist).Since 1975, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" has greeted late night–TV viewers looking for the best in sketch comedy and popular music. SNL is the variety show that launched the careers of countless comedians, including Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Adam Sand...

Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen is a detailed look at the depiction of teens on film and its impact throughout film's history. Timothy Shary looks at the development of the teen movie – the rebellion, the romance, the sex and the horror – up to contemporary portrayals of ever-changing youth. Films studied include Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Splendor in the Grass (1961), Carrie (1976), The Breakfast Club (1985), and American Pie ...