Best of
Pop-Culture

1992

Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock And Out


Bill Graham - 1992
    As a child, Bill Graham fled Europe to escape Hitler's armies. He grew up on the streets of New York and in the dining rooms of the hotels in the Catskills. After failing as an actor, he headed for San Francisco right before the Summer of Love where he founded the Fillmore and launched the rock icons of a generation--Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, the Grateful Dead, and more. He was a complex, caring, compassionate whirlwind of energy who rock stars either loved or hated. In his own voice and those of the people who knew him--Jerry Garcia, Keith Richards, Grace Slick, Ken Kesey, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, and Carlos Santana--we hear Bill's story as well as the scoop on the major events in rock for more than three decades, ending with his tragic death in a 1991 helicopter crash.

Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture


Henry Jenkins - 1992
    Yet, as Textual Poachers argues, fans already have a "life," a complex subculture which draws its resources from commercial culture while also reworking them to serve alternative interests. Rejecting stereotypes of fans as cultural dupes, social misfits, and mindless consumers, Jenkins represents media fans as active producers and skilled manipulators of program meanings, as nomadic poachers constructing their own culture from borrowed materials, as an alternative social community defined through its cultural preferences and consumption practices.Written from an insider's perspective and providing vivid examples from fan artifacts, Textual Poachers offers an ethnographic account of the media fan community, its interpretive strategies, its social institutions and cultural practices, and its troubled relationship to the mass media and consumer capitalism. Drawing on the work of Michel de Certau, Jenkins shows how fans of Star Trek, Blake's 7, The Professionals, Beauty and the Beast, Starsky and Hutch, Alien Nation, Twin Peaks, and other popular programs exploit these cultural materials as the basis for their stories, songs, videos, and social interatctions.Addressing both academics and fans, Jenkins builds a powerful case for the richness of fan culture as a popular response to the mass media and as a challenge to the producers' attempts to regulate textual meanings. Textual Poachers guides readers through difficult questions about popular consumption, genre, gender, sexuality, and interpretation, documenting practices and processes which test and challenge basic assumptions of contemporary media theory.

Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film


Carol J. Clover - 1992
    Carol Clover argues, however, that these films work mainly to engage the viewer in the plight of the victim-hero - the figure, often a female, who suffers pain and fright but eventually rises to vanquish the forces of oppression.

Morrissey Shot


Linder Sterling - 1992
    A photographic portrait of Morrissey which offers an insight into life on the road and the private world of a pop performer.

Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood


Rudolph Grey - 1992
    The author recalls the '50s, when the invasion of movie houses by monsters became a national youth craze. 140 photos.

Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of Casablanca--Bogart, Bergman, and World War II


Aljean Harmetz - 1992
    Little did Humphrey Bogart know when he uttered the final line - "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship" - that he had just closed what would be one of the most enduring and popular movies ever. Aljean Harmetz believes that "every movie is a creature built from accidents and blind choices - a mechanical monster constructed of camera angles, the chemistry between actors, too little money or too much and a thousand unintended moments." Her portrait of the making of an unmatched classic reveals some of the accidents: how the stars of the movie almost weren't Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman; how "As Time Goes By" nearly didn't make it to the final cut.

Action Figure!: The Adventures of Doonesbury's Uncle Duke


G.B. Trudeau - 1992
    A chronicle of the adventures and misadventures of the Doonesbury character, Uncle Duke, in trouble spots throughout the world, is accompanied by a five-inch action figure complete with cigarette holder, Uzi, martini glass, and bourbon bottle.

Lost Ballparks: A Celebration of Baseball's Legendary Fields


Lawrence S. Ritter - 1992
    Now the author of The Glory of Their Times has brought 22 of these grand old open-air, wood-and-concrete stadiums back to life in a beautiful, big-hearted book filled with over 250 vintage photos of parks, players, games, and fans.

The New Roadside America: The Modern Traveler's Guide to the Wild and Wonderful World of America's Tourist Attractions


Mike Wilkins - 1992
    250 photographs; line drawings.

The Art of Cinema


Jean Cocteau - 1992
    He also comments on the movie stars he admires—Marlene Dietrich, James Dean, Brigitte Bardot—together with such great directors as Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles.

Nico: Songs They Never Play on the Radio


James Edward Young - 1992
    In 1982 Nico was living in Manchester, alone and interested only in feeding her heroin habit. Local promoter Dr Demetrius saw an opportunity, hired musicians to back her, rented a decrepit van and set off with Nico and the band on a disastrous tour of Italy. Over the next six years, until her death in 1988, Nico toured the world with assorted thrown-together bands. They made next to no money, appalled many of their audiences and occasionally, on the rare nights when the music worked, pleased a few. James Young played keyboards for Nico throughout those years. In this book, he records the never-ending antics of a picaresque circus of addicts, outsiders and misfits who travelled the world - East and Western Europe, the United States, Australia and Japan - encountering an equally bizarre and extraordinary mixture of people: poets, artists, gangsters, losers and drifters. John Cale, John Cooper Clarke, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso are among those who appear in this story of Nico, the last Bohemian.

Black Popular Culture


Michele Wallace - 1992
    30 essays explore and debate current directions in film, television, music, writing, and other cultural forms as created by or with the participation of black artists. 30 illustrations.

Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius


Edward De Grazia - 1992
    De Grazia, the attorney who argued and won the Tropic of Cancer case before the Supreme Court, offers a narrative history of censorship--from the jailing of Emile Zola's English publisher through the suppression of Joyce's Ulysses, down to recent attempts to obstruct works by Miller, Burroughs, Nabokov, and Mapplethorpe.

Jane and Michael Stern's Encyclopedia of Pop Culture: An A to Z Guide of Who's Who and What's What, from Aerobics and Bubble Gum to Valley of the Dolls and Moon Unit Zappa


Jane Stern - 1992
    The bestselling author of The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste present their latest work--an encyclopedic overview of American popular culture from World War II to the present. The first and only reference book of its kind. 200 photographs; 50 line drawings.

Boobs, Boys, and High Heels


Dianne Brill - 1992
    The book is endorsed by such fans as Debbie Harry, Tama Janowitz and Jean-Paul Gaultier.

The Life And Legend Of Leadbelly


Charles Wolfe - 1992
    His close musical associations included such towering figures as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and John and Alan Lomax. He helped lay the foundations for blues, modern folk music, and rock 'n' roll. This definitive biography draws on a wealth of new archival material, interviews, and previously unknown recordings to detail Leadbelly's proud, tumultuous, and often violent life.

Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War


Glen H. Stassen - 1992
    Pacifism and just war theory, despite their noble purpose, have taken a horrible toll on the world of the past century. While debate has focused on whether or not to wage war, we have witnessed two world wars, the specter of nuclear annihilation, and the wholesale extermination of peoples, as well as numerous other tragic conflicts--all the time overlooking the positive, practical steps we can take to make peace. Enter Just Peacemaking. Mapping a course for individuals, grassroots groups, voluntary associations, and religious organizations--and showing people how to fan the flames of peace--this bold book challenges pacifists to be peacemakers and just war theorists to spell out the resorts that should be tried before the last. It explores our intentions to restore a just and enduring peace--and what we must do to live up to those intentions. Just Peacemaking is the product of 23 scholars who have collaborated annually since 1992 to specify the practical steps and develop the undergirding principles of this critical approach.

Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success


Joseph McBride - 1992
    Smith Goes to Washington or It's a Wonderful Life, a man of the people faces tremendous odds and, by doing the right thing, triumphs. But as Joseph McBride reveals in this meticulously researched, definitive biography, the reality was far more complex, a true American tragedy. Using newly declassified U.S. government documents about Capra's response to being considered a "subversive" during the post-World War II Red Scare, McBride adds a final chapter to his unforgettable portrait of the man who gave us It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Meet John Doe.

Spirit and Beauty: An Introduction to Theological Aesthetics


Patrick Sherry - 1992
    They include early Fathers like St Irenaeus and St Clement of Alexandria, as well as later writers like Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Sergius Bulgakov and Hans Urs von Balthasar. This text investigates what they said and why. In doing so, it also serves as an introduction to the whole area of theological aesthetics. Besides exploring the connection between the Holy Spirit and beauty, it ranges more widely by considering topics such as divine glory, inspiration and the eschatological character of beauty. Its discussions bring together two areas of lively interest in contemporary Christianity: the theology of the Holy Spirit and theological aesthetics.