Humanities 320
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Important Popular Culture Course Materials
Dick Simon's Trash Culture thesis
What other examples of high and low are there, that demonstrate a close similarity between great books and popular entertainments that are only briefly described or not mentioned at all in Richard Simon's Trash Culture?
1. Here is the full plot of Oliver Stone's 1986 movie Platoon which Richard Simon argues in Trash Culture is based on Shakespeare's I Henry IV.
2. Here is the full plot of the first James Bond movie (from 1962) Dr. No which is extremely similar to the plot (but not the form) of Joseph Conrad's complex modernist novel Lord Jim
3. Here are materials for understanding Francis Ford Copola's Godfather movies as a brilliant and systematic reworking of Aeschylus's The Orestia.
Orestia and Godfather intial comparisons
Orestia and Godfather more detailed comparisons
4 Here are materials about the 1999 movie American Beauty, which is at once a brilliant reworking of Romeo and Juliet, and of the Ice Storm. Rebel Without a Cause is included here since it too is a cinematic reworking (also brilliant) of Romeo and Juliet, and American Beauty may make reference to it as well. American Beauty also manages a criticism of consumer society that is similar to the main ideas of The Society of the Spectacle.
American Beauty compared to Romeo and Juliet
American Beauty compared to The Ice Storm (movie)
4.The example of Jane Austen is important and ongoing because so many people rewrite Jane Austen in so many different ways.
The Historical Response to Jane Austen
Class in the novels of Jane Austen
Clueless plot summary
Emma plot summary
Past Passion, a typical Harlequin Romance
Craving Jamie, another typical Harlequin
Dark Heritage, another Harlequin
5. Here are materials for understanding the movie Seven as a brilliant adapation of Dante's Inferno:
A Starting Place (brief) by Richard Simon: How Seven reworks The Inferno
1996 Seven plot outline
Dante Inferno main plot elements
Comparison chart, Inferno and Seven
Key Critical Ideas for the Study of Popular Culture
(1) An Introduction to the Study of Popular Culture
Go to Popular Culture Intro
(2) The Function of Communication
James Carey Communication as Culture 1989
(3) The Function of Entertainment
Richard Dyer Entertainment 1992
(4) The Function of Art
Selections from Raymond Williams The Long Revolution 1961
(5) The Function of Play
Schiller's concept of Play and its Relation to Plato
(6) The Function of Sport
George Carlin, Football and Baseball
Bart Giamatti, Take Time for Paradise 1989
(7) The Dangers of the Media
(8) The Rise of a Consumer Society 1880-1900
Warren Susman on Rise of Consumer Culture
Jackson Lears on Culture of Consumption 1983
Alan Trachtenberg on Department Stores
Susan Benson on History of Department Stores
William Leach on: Land of Desire 1993
(9) How Advertisers see America
the VALS Categories
(10) The Debate over Pornography
(11) The Problem posed by Children's Stories
Cinderella Grimm Brothers version
Snow White, Grimm Brothers version
(12) Influential Critic on Story Design (esp for filmmakers)
Joseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces
(13) The Debate over Hollywood. Three film scholars Robert Sklar, Thomas Schatz, and . take very different positions on the nature of the classical Hollywood film period.MORE COMING HERE
Sklar City Boys
(14) Arguments over Romance Stories. A brief introduction to the debate between Tania Modleski and Janice Radway over the nature of romance, and its good or bad effects on women readers.
REFERENCES
CRITICS, Current, many brief introductions
The Arguments Over Mass Culture, by time period
THE ARGUMENTS over mass culture, popular culture, entertainment, mass media, the culture industry, and related issues from antiquity to the early 21st Century. Emphasis is on the debates within the United States after 1900. Along with critical essays and books, this chronology also includes relevant novels, plays, and films that are about the entertainment industry in some substantial way. A chronology prepared by Richard Keller Simon.
| Antiquity | |
| 1400-1799 | late 18th century American critics (work in progress) |
| 1800-1859 | 1800-1859 (work in progress) |
| 1860-1879 | 1860-1879 (work in progress) |
| 1880-1899 | 1880-1899 (work in progress) |
| 1900-1909 | 1900-09 (work in progress) |
| 1910-1919 | 1910-1919 (work in progress) |
| 1920-1229 | 1920-1929 (work in progress) |
| 1930-1939 | Debates on Mass Culture 1930-1939 |
| 1940-1949 | Investigating Mass Culture 1940-1949 |
| 1950-1959 | Handwringing over Mass Culture 1950-1959 |
| 1960-1969 | 1960-1969 (work in progress) |
| 1970-1979 | 1970-1979 (work in progress) |
| 1980-1989 | 1980-1989 (work in progress) |
| 1990-1999 | 1990-1999 (work in progress) |
| 2000- | 2000 and beyond |
SPECIAL MENTION: Woody Allen Woody Allen produced, between Play it Again Sam in 1969 and Deconstructing Harry in 1997 an extraordinary sequence of movies, all of which were made in imitation of the great styles of moviemaking, many of which are explicitly concerned with the function and or meaning of popular culture (Interiors, for example), the power of movies (The Purple Rose of Cairo), the frustration of writing for television (Hannah and Her Sisters), and the enveloping nature of popular culture (Radio Days).
Allen and Ingmar Bergman
Woody Allen's substantial debt to Ingmar Bergman
Allen's work
1965 What’s New Pussycat?
1966 What’s up Tiger Lily?
1969 Take the Money and Run
1969 Play it Again Sam (the play on Broadway,
to compare to the 1972 movie)
1971 Bananas
1972 Play it Again Sam
1972 Everything you Always Wanted to Know about Sex
1973 Sleeper
1975 Love and Death
1977 Annie Hall
1978 Interiors
1979 Manhattan
1980 Stardust Memories
1982 Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy
1983 Zelig
1984 Broadway Danny Rose
1985 Purple Rose of Cairo
1986 Hannah and her Sisters
1987 Radio Days
Comparisons Hannah and Her Sisters /Radio Days
Allen's Debt to Neil Simon for Radio Days:
Neil Simon's play Brighton Beach Memoirs
Neil Simon's play Broadway Bound
Allen's use of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs for Radio Days
1987 September
1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors
Another Woman
New York Stories (with Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorcese)
Alice
1992 Shadows and Fog
1993 Manhattan Murder Mystery
For Manhattan Murder Mystery. See Lady from Shanghai
Manhattan Murder Mystery
1994 Bullets Over Broadway
Mighty Aphrodite
Everyone says I Love You
1997 Deconstructing Harry
For Deconstructing Harry, See Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries
Celebrity
Sweet and Lowdown
Small Time Crooks
Curse of the Jade Scorpion
Hollywood Ending
etc