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Instead of advancing women's social and professional empowerment, popular culture trends appear to be backsliding into the blatant sexual exploitation of women and girls at younger and younger ages. This study investigates the effects of mass marketed sexual images and cultural trends on the behaviors and attitudes of young girls and describes many ways in which young girls are increasingly taught to go to outrageous lengths in seeking male attention. Topics include the powerful effects of cultural phenomena such as revealing fashions, plastic surgery, and beauty pageants in influencing teen and preteen girls to willingly participate in and promote their own sexualization. These chapters also explore other cultural factors contributing to this early sexualization of young girls, including absentee parenting and material overindulgence. Later chapters focus on the sexual representations of females in the mass entertainment media, focusing specifically on how popular magazines, television programs, films, and the Internet prey upon, promote, and reinforce young girls' physical and sexual insecurities.
Professional wrestling revels in its exaggeration of masculinity. This hyper-masculinity is evident in the physical appearance of wrestlers, the sexuality-charged and violent moves used in and out of the ring, the role assigned to women and the extensive use of weapons such as chains, barbed wire and steel folding chairs. This study explores the link between watching televised wrestling matches and increases in verbal aggression, rebellion and propensity toward violence and retaliation. Wrestling is placed within the larger context of popular culture and other hyper-masculine entertainment. The book begins with a brief history of professional wrestling, a summary of the criticisms of the spo...
This book focuses on the “dark side” of stand-up comedy, initially inspired by speculations surrounding the death of comedian Robin Williams. Contributors, those who study humor as well as those who perform comedy, join together to contemplate the paradoxical relationship between tragedy and comedy and expose over-generalizations about comic performers’ troubled childhoods, addictions, and mental illnesses. The book is divided into two sections. First, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore comedians’ onstage performances, their offstage lives, and the relationship between the two. The second half of the book focuses on amateur and lesser-known professional comedians who reveal the struggles they face as they attempt to hone successful comedy acts and likable comic personae. The goal of this collection is to move beyond the hackneyed stereotype of the sad clown in order to reveal how stand-up comedy can transform both personal and collective tragedies by providing catharsis through humor.
This book explores how television and streaming services portray transgender characters who identify as male or nonbinary in television media. Transmasculinity on Television takes a closer look at transmasculine and nonbinary characters on broadcast, cable, and streaming services between 2000 and 2021. Significant changes have occurred since the release of the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry, and in particular through the increase in transgender producers, writers, and actors playing those roles. While a great deal of research has been published on gay, lesbian, and female transgender characters, very little analysis has been done on trans male representation in American media. This book examines the history of how film and television have portrayed transgender characters, how these depictions have developed over time and what impact these representations may have on audience attitudes. This accessible and engaging study is suitable for students and scholars in Gender Studies, Media Studies and LGBTQ Studies.
The numerous anti-bullying programs in schools across the United States have done little to reduce the number of reported bullying instances. One reason for this is that little attention has been paid to the role of the media and popular culture in adolescents’ bullying and mean-girl behavior. This book addresses media role models in television, film, picture books, and the Internet in the realm of bullying and relational aggression. It highlights portrayals with unproductive strategies that lead to poor resolutions or no resolution at all. Young viewers may learn ineffective, even dangerous, ways of handling aggressive situations. Victims may feel discouraged when they are unable to handle the situation as easily as in media portrayals. They may also feel their experiences are trivialized by comic portrayals. Entertainment programming, aimed particularly at adolescents, often portray adults as incompetent or uncaring and include mean-spirited teasing. In addition, overuse of the term “bully” and defining all bad behavior as “bullying” may dilute the term and trivialize the problem.
Tweencom Girls analyzes the different ways character tropes are portrayed in media targeted at eight- to twelve-year-olds, particularly female characters, over the last twenty-five years. The book focuses particularly on sitcoms produced by the cable giants Disney Channel and Nickelodeon because of their popularity and ubiquity. It provides extensive examples and alternative interpretations of the shows’ tropes and themes, particularly for those who are unfamiliar with the genre. The first section explores common tweencom tropes, focusing on different themes that are prevalent throughout the series. The second section includes a discussion of the big picture of how tropes and themes give insight into the female characters portrayed in the popular tweencom programming, as well as advice to parents and educators.
When the World Laughs is a book about the intersection of humor, history, and culture. It explores how film comedy, one of the world's most popular movie genres, reflects the values and beliefs of those who enjoy its many forms, its most enduring characters and stories, its most entertaining routines and funniest jokes. What people laugh at in Europe, Africa, or the Far East reveals important truths about their differences and common bonds. By investigating their traditions of humor, by paying close attention to what kinds of comedy cross national boundaries or what gets lost in translation, this study leads us to a deeper understanding of each other and ourselves. Section One begins with a ...
Launched in 1977 by the Christian Broadcasting Service (originally associated with Pat Robertson), the ABC Family/Freeform network has gone through a number of changes in name and ownership. Over the past decade, the network--now owned by Disney--has redefined "family programming" for its targeted 14- to 34-year-old demographic, addressing topics like lesbian and gay parenting, postfeminism and changing perceptions of women, the issue of race in the U.S., and the status of disability in American culture. This collection of new essays examines the network from a variety of perspectives, with a focus on inclusive programming that has created a space for underrepresented communities like transgender youth, overweight teens, and the deaf.
This collection of essays explores a wealth of topics in children’s and young adult literature and culture. Contributions about picture-books include analyses of variants of the folktale “The Little Red Hen” and bullying. Race and gender are explored in essays about picture-books featuring children as consumable objects, about books focused on African American female athletes, and about young adult dystopian fiction. Gender itself is further explored in articles about Monster High, Joyce Carol Oates’s Beasts, and The Hunger Games and Divergent. Essays about fantasy literature include an exploration of environmentalism in Rick Riordan’s The Heroes of Olympus, a discussion of Severus Snape as a Judas figure, an explication of Chapter 5 of The Hobbit, and an analysis of ghosts and nationalism in Eva Ibbotson’s The Haunting of Granite Falls. An essay about Horrible Histories explores television, genre, and the way history is coded. Other contributions explore how teaching literature to reluctant readers can be effective through multimodal texts and how Harry Potter has played a role in the popularity of young adult literature for adult readers.
Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Youth and Media -- 2 Then and Now -- 3 Themes and Theoretical Perspectives -- 4 Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers -- 5 Children -- 6 Adolescents -- 7 Media and Violence -- 8 Media and Emotions -- 9 Advertising and Commercialism -- 10 Media and Sex -- 11 Media and Education -- 12 Digital Games -- 13 Social Media -- 14 Media and Parenting -- 15 The End -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z