Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers / Edition 8

by Sonia Maasik, Jack Solomon

Overview

Explore how popular culture affects our own cultural experiences as you learn to think and write critically on topics such as niche adversiting and minorities or the impact of the Internet on today's political climate in Signs of Life in the USA.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781457670251
Publisher:	Bedford/St. Martin's
Publication date:	01/09/2015
Edition description:	Eighth Edition
Pages:	536
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

The coeditors are successful textbook authors who, between them, have over fifty years of teaching experience in the college classroom. Sonia Maasik, a lecturer in the UCLA Writing Programs, has taught writing from developmental to advanced levels, and coordinates training for UCLA writing programs' teaching assistants. Jack Solomon, a professor of English at California State University, Northridge, teaches literature and critical theory, along with his graduate and undergraduate classes on popular cultural semiotics, and is often interviewed by the media for analysis of current events and trends. He is the author of The Signs of Our Time (1988) and Discourse and Reference in the Nuclear Age (1988).  The two together have published Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers, Sixth Edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009) and California Dreams and Realities, Third Edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005).

Table of Contents

	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