| Preface for Instructors | v |
| Introduction: Popular Signs: Or, Everything You've Always Known about American Culture (But Nobody Asked) | 1 |
| Writing about Popular Culture | 21 |
Part 1 | Cultural Productions | 43 |
1. | Consuming Passions: The Culture of American Consumption | 45 |
| The More Factor | 55 |
| The Signs of Shopping | 62 |
| What's in a Package | 69 |
| Hard Bodies | 79 |
| Blue Jeans | 86 |
| The Semiotics of Home Decor | 94 |
| "Careful, You May Run Out of Planet": SUVs and the Exploitation of the American Myth | 105 |
2. | Brought to You B(u)y: The Signs of Advertising | 117 |
| The Parable of the Democracy of Goods | 129 |
| Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising | 137 |
| A Gentleman and a Consumer | 149 |
| Sex, Lies, and Advertising | 160 |
| How Advertising Informs to Our Benefit | 180 |
| The Fiction of Truth in Advertising | 188 |
| Web of Deceit | 194 |
| Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz | 202 |
| Portfolio of Advertisements | 210 |
3. | Video Dreams: The Signs of Music and Television | 223 |
| A Tale of Two Sitcoms | 236 |
| The Oprah Winfrey Show and the Talk-Show Furor | 241 |
| Plotting Paternity: Looking for Dad on the Daytime Soaps | 249 |
| Signs of Intelligent Life on TV | 260 |
| Rewriting Popularity: The Cult Files | 265 |
| Twentysomethings | 276 |
| Bad Sistas | 279 |
4. | The Hollywood Sign: The Culture of American Film | 289 |
| The Thematic Paradigm | 299 |
| Creating the Myth | 308 |
| Braveheart, Babe, and the Contemporary Body | 317 |
| Malcolm X | 328 |
| So You Wanna Be a Gangsta? | 337 |
| Asian Women in Film: No Joy, No Luck | 349 |
| The Return of Doris Day | 357 |
| Class and Virtue | 366 |
5. | It Was A Dark And Stormy Night: The Codes of Popular Literature | 371 |
| The ABCs of Popular Culture | 382 |
| Selection from Blade Runner | 385 |
| Roadside Bones | 393 |
| Cult | 398 |
| Grisham Succeeds in a Novel Way | 414 |
| The Traditional Romance Formula | 418 |
| Selection from Dangerous Passions | 425 |
| Hope I Die before Marcia Gets Old | 428 |
| Reading at Escape Velocity | 430 |
Part 2 | Cultural Constructions | 435 |
6. | We've Come A Long Way, Maybe: Gender Codes in American Culture | 437 |
| Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes | 447 |
| The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over? | 453 |
| Power at Play: Sport and Gender Relations | 460 |
| Boys-R-Us: Board Games and the Socialization of Young Adolescent Girls | 472 |
| The Beauty Myth | 481 |
| There Is No Unmarked Woman | 490 |
| Warrior Dreams | 496 |
| Women and Children First: Gender and the Settling of the Electronic Frontier | 505 |
7. | Constructing Race: Readings in Multicultural Semiotics | 515 |
| In Living Color: Race and American Culture | 526 |
| Put on a Happy Face: Masking the Differences Between Blacks and Whites | 538 |
| Funky White Boys and Honorary Soul Sisters | 549 |
| Goin' Gangsta, Choosin' Cholita | 562 |
| Baby | 568 |
| Being an Other | 570 |
| How to Tame a Wild Tongue | 575 |
| The Classroom and the Wider Culture: Identity as a Key to Learning English Composition | 583 |
| The Haves and the Have-Nots | 593 |
8. | Life on the Margins: Representing the "Other" in American Culture | 599 |
| Signs of the Street: A Conversation | 609 |
| The Mind of the Militias | 618 |
| Race, Sex, AIDS: The Construction of "Other" | 625 |
| Beauty and the Battle | 636 |
| American Dreams | 640 |
| The End of Adulthood? | 645 |
| Don't Further Empower Cliques | 653 |
9. | American Icons: The Mythic Characters of Popular Culture | 657 |
| Be Like Mike? Michael Jordan and the Pedagogy of Desire | 667 |
| What Makes Superman So Darned American? | 677 |
| Batman, Deviance, and Camp | 686 |
| Lara Croft, the Bit Girl | 702 |
| Our Barbies, Ourselves | 706 |
| Barbie, G.I. Joe, and Play in the 1960s | 710 |
| Snap! Crackle! Plot! | 716 |
| Larger Than Life | 720 |
10. | Popular Spaces: Interpreting the Built Environment | 733 |
| Disney World: Public Use/Private State | 744 |
| The Science of Shopping | 757 |
| The Man-Made World | 764 |
| Spatial Segregation and Gender Stratification in the Workplace | 771 |
| Alternating Currents | 778 |
| The Ghetto Cityscape | 784 |
| Manifest Congestion: Freeway Landscapes and Timescapes | 790 |
| Country Music Goes on the Road | 797 |
| Glossary | 803 |
| Citing Sources | 807 |
| Index of Authors and Titles | 819 |