CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland
Consolidation. New Trend(s) in Cultural
Studies & Popular Media
Organisers: Joke Hermes and Jaap Kooijman
Ripmeester, Leenke (University of
Amsterdam, the Netherlands) TEENPOP. RETHINKING THE CONCEPT OF 'THE TEENAGER'
Since the 1990s, music television is flooded with a true revival of teen pop as
boy bands (Backstreet Boys, NSync) and pop princess Britney Spears are topping
the music and video charts. Although the notion of the teenager is often
regarded as a straightforward reference to the adolescence of both the teen pop
stars and their assumed audiences, it is actually a contradictory term. The
notion of 'the teenager' was invented in the 1950s and defined by its opposition
to the adult world, by its intergenerational difference. It was closely related
to a new market that appealed to teenage tastes and that was separate from and
marginal to the dominant adult entertainment market. Since the 1970s by
contrast, youth entertainment dominates the market, producing an idea or an
ideal of youth accessible to everyone. Youth started to lose its differential
meaning since adults could now also be part of youth culture. This paper will
study a particular teenpop music video and it will try to analyse how it
addresses the contradiction sketched above.
Smelik, Anneke (University of Nijmegen,
the Netherlands) FINAL FANTASIES. THE VIRTUAL BODY IN DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Dutch artists Inez van Lamsweerde, Micha Klein and Erwin Olaf employ digital
technology to realise representations of virtual bodies that would be impossible
in 'reality'. The body is digitally remediated in the interface between flesh
and machine. The simulations of virtual bodies produce an 'impossible' image: a
body both old and young; male and female; human, and machine; dead, yet alive.
Digital technology allows the artists to question power and desire,
simultaneously unsettling and reinforcing the myth of the 'body beautiful'.
Digital photography changes forever the myth of photographic truth. The images
are no longer documenting reality, because the indexical relation between the
photographic image and reality is foreclosed. The photograph becomes a
constructed representation, radically divorcing representation from reality.
Paradoxically, the photograph seems 'all too real' because the iconic relation
between the image and reality is sustained. In this paradox lies the disturbing
affect of these digital art works.
Goldstein, Philip (University of
Delaware (Parallel), United States of America) GENDER AND GENRE IN SARA
PARETSKY'S FICTION
Popular culture's generic critics claim that detective novels imitate the
established conventions of their type and ignore or deny their conventions'
tensions, incoherence, or ideological import; however, the changing social
contexts of the fiction, including the female readers of the 1970s and 1980s and
the growing influence of academic criticism, enable it to subvert its
established conventions. The detachment, brilliance, eccentricity, and other
virtues of the classic detective show that this fiction means to transfer the
natural scientist's methods to the domain of society. Hardboiled American
detective fiction reflects, by contrast, the social conditions of the fiction's
original, male, working class readers, who have since the 1920s and 1930s faced
fast-paced industrial production, increased women's independence, and
middleclass ideals. In the 1970s and 1980s Paretsky's hardboiled fiction turns
feminist because of the era's new, professional women and because of its
academic critics.
Hermes, Joke (University of Amsterdam,
the Netherlands) POST-FEMINIST TELEVISION COMING OF AGE. THE TRAGIC SUCCESS OF
FEMINISM
The last decade has seen the emergence of "post-feminist" texts, such
as the American television shows Ally McBeal and Sex and the City, dealing with
and addressing women in their thirties. Truly remarkable is how the success of
feminism is presented as a fact: all women characters have good jobs,
apartments, and friends. However, instead of a feminist Walhalla, the second
feminists wave's dream of a happier and more fulfilling life is presented as a
failure. The women express emptiness and loneliness when not in a relationship
with a man. This paper will question how we should read these underlying issues.
How does popular culture translate "the tragic success of feminism"?
These shows and how they are used by women audiences, can be read as instances
of cultural citizenship in the tradition of political philosophy scholarship-an
area of debate and articulation of questions around what constitutes the good
life, in this case especially for women.
Laine, Tarja (University of Amsterdam,
the Netherlands) SEX AND THE CITY AS LIFESTYLE PROPAGANDA
This paper studies the part of a "popular culture" that creates both a
"market" and the surplus value associated with cultural commodities,
through the usages of show business values, stars, and glamour-the way in which
products of popular media culture "sell" its audience a certain
lifestyle. The concept of lifestyle propaganda is most often associated with the
cinema of Nazi Germany, yet, as Thomas Elsaesser has stated, "Today, it is
democracy, still wearing the tiger, still smiling." Contemporary media
society is still very much underpinned by lifestyle propaganda and consumerism,
even though the political ideologies behind them have changed. As a case study
of a contemporary lifestyle propaganda, this paper focuses on the television
series Sex and the City in an attempt to answer the question in what ways
certain lifestyle commodities are appealing to the subject as a identity
building blocks, and how this forms the basis of the series' popularity.
Kooijman, Jaap (University of Amsterdam,
the Netherlands) READING RUPAUL. STANDING 6-FOOT-5 TALL AT THE CROSSROADS OF
GENDER, RACE, AND SEXUALITY
The immense popular mainstream success of African American drag queen RuPaul
during the early 1990s has drawn contradictory reactions from academic scholars.
While some argue that RuPaul reinforces hegemonic identities by presenting an
image based on the "mythic black mother," others believe that RuPaul
forces us to "re-think the limits of black masculinity in the light of the
limitations they pose." I will question these different interpretations by
positioning RuPaul at the nexus of three oppositions that are based on inclusion
and exclusion, namely male/female, white/black, and straight/gay. Instead of
merely focusing on RuPaul's commercial drag image, I also include RuPaul's
"underground" image (Jon Witherspoon's 1987 film Mahogany II) and
RuPaul's non-drag male image (Jamie Babbit's 1999 film But I'm A Cheerleader).
In this way, RuPaul proves to be a tool to explore the boundaries of gender,
race, and sexuality, resulting in a questioning of-rather than a reinforcing
of-these seemingly fixed, yet socially constructed categories.
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