Social Custom Book Reviews

2010-07-29T12:39:00.001-07:00

Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture. By Alice Echols.

New York: W. W. Norton & Company, March 2010. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-393-06675-3, $26.95; paper: ISBN 978-0393338911, $16.95. 368 pages.

Review by Joseph E. Morgan, Brandeis University

After dominating American popular culture for the lion’s share of the 1970s, Disco suddenly lost its chic. This once liberating music and culture was abruptly derided in the American mainstream for its shallow consumption and crass embrace of lavish glitz. More recently, the pendulum has swung back as scholars of popular culture have erected a romanticized view of the glitterball culture. In her new book, Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture, Alice Echols stops the pendulum. With a nuanced interpretation of disco that recognizes the movement’s ability to accommodate the diversity of the American experience, gay, straight, black, or female, Echols has written a sophisticated and thrilling investigation of this oft-simplified music and culture.

One of the best aspects of Echols’s approach is the way she integrates the musical and social aspects of disco culture. In her first chapter “I Hear a Symphony: Black Masculinity and the Disco Turn” which takes us from James Brown to Barry White, and tracks the emergence of Disco from the insistent and whomping beat of Detroit’s Motown through the sumptuous Philadelphia sound, Echols locates a new form of Black masculinity as well as the prototype for disco’s 4/4 thump in a single track—Isaac Hayes’s “Theme from Shaft.” This example is telling of Echols’s style; the strength of this text is not its comprehensive coverage of everything disco, but instead its interpretive focus and ability to unpack the multiple meanings built within individual cultural moments.

Chapters Two, “More, More, More: One and Oneness in Gay Disco” and Four “The Homo Superiors: Disco and the Rise of Gay Macho” focus on the role that the music, clubs, dance floors, and culture played in the outing and evolution of gay culture. From the club managers who left the air conditioning off to encourage men to remove their shirts on the dance floor, to the D.J.s who accommodated their playlists to the “week’s drug of choice,” Echols identifies the interactions that facilitated the liberation of the movement. Particularly interesting is Echols’s description of the fashion that characterized the new gay macho. A coded “uniform of the plaid shirt and bomber jacket,” the look emerged both as a pragmatic necessity, “to identify ourselves to other gay people in a populace that wasn’t gay” and in reaction to the traditional image of the homosexual (126).

However, her view of gay disco is neither simple nor uncritical. For example, unlike most modern writers that emphasize the inclusive aspects of Disco culture, Echols also points to the racial segregation in New York’s fashionable Tenth Floor club where “the vibe was if you’re white you’re right, if you’re black stay back.” Her nuanced approach to the culture is refreshing, neither romanticizing nor vilifying. She closes her discussion with an all-too brief account of the arrival of “Saint’s Disease” (later known as AIDS) in the popular Saint’s nightclub in New York City, ending with a strong introduction to the effects of the epidemic, and the common interpretation of the disease as (at least) a moral imperative against gay culture.

Echols’s chapter on women in disco “Ladies’ Night: Women and Disco,” sandwiched between her chapters on homosexuality in disco, argues that by foregrounding female desire, disco was essentially progressive for the women’s movement, this despite the irony that “for many women the biggest problem with discos was not sexual harassment but gay men’s sexual indifference” (78). For example, she points to at least two critics who describe the typical form of a disco song’s instrumental break as a musical imitation of the female orgasm. She locates this characteristic in the instrumental break from what is perhaps the first disco track, Eddie Kendricks’s “Girl You Need a Change of Mind.” Echols’s narrative then shifts to the emergence of the black diva in disco, and traces the roots of disco’s black feminism (as she had with disco’s black masculinity) from the R&B artists from the early seventies. Thus the public personalities and musical identities of artists like Donna Summer and Labelle are shown to be influenced by the work of Sylvia Robinson and Jean Knight.

The sixth chapter, “One Nation under a Thump?: Disco and its Discontents” describes the fall of disco. The blanching and suburban commodification are cited as the primary death blows, but the contribution of reactionary “discophobes” and the broader conservative movement are also given their due responsibility. However, her coverage of the “Disco Sucks” movement and its orchestration by rock d.j.s is also given nuance. Indeed, Echols breaks new ground in disco literature when she acknowledges that “the rhetoric of discophobia suggests that anti-disco rockers were also critical of what they saw as disco’s perceived innocuousness and conventionality” (213). This viewpoint resists the common trope in modern scholarship that writes off the entire anti-disco movement as stereotypically based on homophobia and racism. The chapter ends as Echols attempts to come to terms with the influence of disco, citing the disco-rock hybrid that comprised so much eighties dance music. One example of this influence is found in the androgyny of Madonna, Prince, Grace Jones, and Annie Lennox, who built upon the “implicit queerness of seventies’ disco” for their looks (229).

In all, the book is a wonderful read. Echols’s account is that of an informant, and although she is quite aware of her own bias, it is when she is describing the progressivism of the Disco movement that her narrative sparkles. The perfect combination of fan and scholar, Echols’s account of the era and the book is very well researched (with over 50 pages of notes) and will go a long way towards fairly documenting the history and impact of Disco on American popular culture.

2010-07-29T12:28:00.001-07:00

The Battle for America, 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election. By Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson.

New York: Viking, August 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0670021116, $29.95. 432 pages.

Reviewed by Amarnath Amarasingam, Wilfrid Laurier University, Toronto

“It was an election that took place against a background of two wars, the collapse of the world’s capital markets, a gathering global recession, soaring national debt, and pervasive doubts about the direction of the country from traditionally optimistic Americans” (xiii). This is how Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson begin their excellent book on the momentous 2008 election. Balz and Johnson, present at many of the events they discuss and having conducted extensive interviews, provide an informative history mixed with behind-the-scenes accounts of the long campaign season. The story is that much more interesting because we know how it ends. It was an election marked by a fairly impressive list of candidates, putting forth their message in the shadow of the Bush presidency. After 9/11, Bush’s approval rating hovered around 90 percent, the highest ever recorded. However, by January 2007, following the invasion of Iraq, the absence of WMDs, Abu Ghraib, and Hurricane Katrina, his approval rating was at 30 percent and falling.

Reacting to the Bush presidency, which had produced “some of the most daunting policy problems at home and abroad ever faced,” the new candidates embraced a message of change and attempted to rectify the political disaffection that was sweeping the country (13). The Battle for America is divided into five parts. Book One, containing three chapters, introduces personal life histories and the initial campaign plans of Obama, McCain, and Clinton. Book Two, entitled “The People,” contains only one chapter and explores the increasing pessimism and uncertainty expressed by voters during the election season. The people during this campaign season were looking for new solutions to the current economic crisis, to America’s diminished international standing, and to the lack of trust in government. The candidates, faced with a worried and suspicious public, were left to make their case.

The third and fourth parts of the book examine the election season from the perspective of Democrats and Republicans respectively. Hilary Clinton began her campaign with experience, money, and a vast network of connections obtained throughout her many years in politics. Obama, on the other hand, began with next to nothing. The televised debates between the two candidates drew huge audiences and increased interest in the election. There were more than two dozen debates between the Democratic candidates, and the Republicans had more than twenty over the course of the year.

Grassroots organizing in support of Obama was unprecedented in the Super Tuesday states. By the time Obama’s staff arrived in Idaho, for example, supporters in the state had already organized themselves. By late fall, Obama’s staff was present in sixteen of the twenty-two February 5^th states, while Clinton’s team was largely absent. During Super Tuesday, Clinton had taken New York, New Jersey, and even Massachusetts. Obama took Idaho and Illinois. After Super Tuesday, Clinton lost eleven consecutive contests. Then, she won Ohio and Texas. Ten days after Ohio and Texas, a grainy video emerged of Obama’s pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, screaming “God damn America” from the pulpit. Obama had described Wright in The Audacity of Hope as a calm and loving father figure. In the video, however, Wright sounded angry and divisive. Obama knew that he could not avoid the issue. As he told Balz and Johnson, “If we had not handled the Reverend Wright episode properly, I think we could have lost” (201). Despite the controversies, on June 3, the final day of the primary process, it was clear that Obama had won.

The Republican candidates in the meantime were searching for Ronald Reagan. The debates that took place between the candidates “symbolized the plight of a Republican Party that had fallen on hard times and was now looking back to one of its greatest heroes for inspiration” (228). In their search for the new Gipper, John McCain did not ideally fit the bill. However, he seemed to be the only one that had a chance of beating the Democratic candidate. McCain’s complicated position on the Iraq War plus his support of the surge put him in a precarious position. His fundraising was also not up to par, and his finances, unlike someone like Mitt Romney, were often in the red. McCain had to depend on the shortcomings of his opponents in order to succeed, and “had any of them seized command of the race, he would not have had a chance” (260). McCain’s victory in the Florida primary was decisive. Giuliani, Romney, and Huckabee slowly dropped out of the race following Florida and Super Tuesday. McCain was now the leader of the Republican Party.

Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was a success by any measure. The public was enthusiastic about the potential victory of the Democrats, about Joe Biden, and about their vibrant candidate. As the Democrats left Denver, everybody awaited John McCain’s choice for a running mate. His choice had the potential to divide the Republican Party. His choice of Sarah Palin stunned many in the Republican Party. When Obama learned of the choice he said, “Wow, that’s surprising. Why do you think he did that?” (337). Biden had never heard of her before. Some in McCain’s campaign did not know how to pronounce her name, while speechwriters scoured the internet looking for information about her to include in speeches.

Everything pointed to an Obama victory. As one individual on Obama’s campaign told Balz and Johnson, “I think we had the perfect balance of new technology, old-school organization, faith in the people that they hired, and trust they were going to get the job done” (366). On election day, America started to look different: “The eastern seaboard, save for Georgia and South Carolina, was a blue wall” (371). There were many surprising wins for Obama: New Mexico, which went Republican in 2004, went for Obama this time around; Colorado, which Bush won by five points, went for Obama by nine. The networks called the race at 11 p.m.

Balz and Johnson’s book is an extraordinary insider’s account of the recent American election. They were present at numerous events, and conducted interviews with a number of the key players. It should be noted, however, that the book does not provide much political or sociological analysis of the election, contains very little history, and reflects only briefly about Obama’s cosmopolitan significance. Even Book Five, dealing with the actual election, contains mostly anecdotal evidence taken from focus groups and interviews. To be fair, the purpose of the book is rather to provide the definitive account of the election season itself. To this end, The Battle for America is unparalleled and will likely remain so for some time.

2010-07-29T12:20:00.000-07:00

Witnessing Suburbia: Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture. By Eileen Luhr.

Berkeley: University of California Press, February 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-520-25594-4, $50.00; paper: ISBN 978-0-520-25596-8, $19.95. 280 pages.

Reviewed by Donna J. Drucker, Colorado College

Eileen Luhr’s Witnessing Suburbia narrates the transitions from the old Christian Right’s rejection of youth culture in the early 1960s, through the Jesus movement in the late 1960s, through the creation of Christian metal music and young fan culture in the 1980s, and concludes with the politicizing of conservative Christian activism by claiming public suburban spaces for “family values” or as “family friendly” in the 2000s. Luhr understands the impact of the shift from fundamentalism to evangelism over a forty-five-year period as a shift from believers creating and maintaining a separate pure Christian culture for themselves, as the Old Christian Right had, to their engaging directly in popular culture and creating their own brand of consumerism in order to draw new converts and support their own beliefs.

White evangelical Christians, Luhr argues, were “engaged in a values-based suburban activism expressed in a consumer vernacular” (6). The value system they supported is familiar to even the most casual observer of American culture and politics: the nuclear family headed by a patriarch in a detached suburban home, middle-class social status and income, whiteness, heteronormativity, obedience to authority, personal responsibility, privacy, and belief in a form of Christianity based less on theology than on personal witness and prayer. Rather than investigating local and national conservative political activism, as other historians and scholars have done, Luhr focuses on how youth-oriented evangelical cultural activism developed, changed over time, and then affected politics. She aims to show that such cultural activism “aided the conservative political surge by facilitating their entrance into national discussions about public morality and values” (7). Activism targeting Christian youths reshaped the practices of secular culture for purposes of witnessing, conversion, and group identity formation and maintenance.

Each of the four chapters focuses on a different aspect of the creation of Christian consumer youth culture. The book begins with a discussion of conservative criticism of leftist youth movements and music of the 1960s. While critics of leftist popular culture first argued that rock ‘n’ roll was an agent of the devil and for Christian separation from popular music, Christian parents of the 1970s and 1980s produced and consumed literature that assisted them in using their understandings of popular music to reassert their authority over their children. Young evangelicals of the 1970s and 1980s created their own fan magazines for Christian punk, rock, and pop music in order to create a distinct Christian identity that advocated strict morality and personal responsibility (86). They often used the magazines to witness to their classmates in lieu of being able to pray in their public schools. Christian punk and metal musicians likewise used their music and lyrics to reach unchurched young listeners in an attempt to instill them with doctrinally uncomplicated, conservative moral beliefs and respect for traditional authority. The book’s last chapter shifts to an analysis of the political implications of the conservative focus on youth culture in Orange County, California. Orange County residents deliberately framed the culture of their communities against leftist movements such as gay rights and women’s rights in order to create and to police “family friendly” values in public space. The most prominent among these efforts were Harvest Crusades. These evangelical concerts that took place in sports stadiums were designed to establish public commitment to Christianity, to claim consumer-oriented space for “family friendly” purposes, and to spark interest in activism for conservative political causes.

Luhr demonstrates her understanding of and facility with the arguments of religious and American studies scholars and those of fellow historians, particularly Lizabeth Cohen on postwar American consumerism generally, Colleen McDannell on American Christian material culture, and Lisa McGirr on the rise of suburban political and cultural conservatism. Luhr could more clearly articulate her own conceptions of consumerism, commercialization, and consumer culture as a way to link the products and experiences that critics, parents, music fans, Orange County suburbanites, and Harvest Festival attendees consumed in the process of witnessing their faith.

Further, the voices of the consumers themselves are curiously missing from this narrative. Luhr largely depends on print culture in the forms of newspapers, independently produced ‘zines, and other fan publications for their views. However, as the book’s primary argument centers on the production of a suburban-based conservative Christian culture for and by young people, hearing only from those cultural participants who were motivated enough to create publications or to produce music or events like the Harvest Festival raises the question of what less-fervent consumers of that cultural fare actually thought of it. Luhr saves an accounting of Christian music sales for the epilogue ($920 million in 2001), so clearly Christian music and related products are being widely consumed (193). A deeper understanding (perhaps through oral, phone, or e-mail interviews) of who those consumers actually are, what influences the products they purchase and the events they attend; how much money they spend; and how the products affect their faith and beliefs would add depth to Luhr’s depiction of the centrality of consumerism to modern Christian popular culture.

Lack of consumer voices aside, this book is important reading for those interested in the intertwined histories of music, popular culture, fundamentalist and evangelical Christianities, suburbia, and conservatism in the late twentieth-century United States. It would be a worthwhile addition to graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses in American studies, religious studies, or modern American history.

2010-07-28T17:52:00.001-07:00

Stories of Oprah: The Oprahfication of American Culture. Edited by Trystan T. Cotton and Kimberly Springer.

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, December 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-1-60473-407-2, $50. 240 pages.

Review by Katie Ellis, University of Western Australia

Trystan Cotton and Kimberly Springer’s edited collection Stories of Oprah starts with the very simple question “What would Oprah do?” (vii). This is a popular question amongst both journalists and bloggers who’ve noticed the pervasiveness of her favorite things and book club and their increasing influence on American and international culture. Even as Oprah’s influence over contemporary American culture increases, this volume shows us that there is no universal Oprah despite what we may think (xi).

The term “Oprahfication,” often invoked throughout this collection, was first used during the 1990s to denounce TV sensationalism (133). The online urban dictionary defines it in several ways: highlighting constructions of masculinity and femininity, the division between public and private spheres, and becoming a “better person” by following Oprah’s advice regarding her favorite things and people (doctors, celebrities, etc). The essays compiled in Stories of Oprah investigate these aspects of the so-called Oprah Winfrey Cultural Industry to present an important and timely contribution to “Oprah Studies” (xiii). Yes, Oprah Studies really exist—academics have investigated the impact of Oprah on culture for a number of years.

This collection distinguishes itself from others via a focus on “interdisciplinary methods and interpretative frameworks” (xiii) and is divided into three sections. Part I, Oprah the Woman, Oprah the Empire, looks at the ways Oprah selectively foregrounds certain aspects of her upbringing and beliefs to appeal to a certain type of audience. Part II, Contesting the Oprah Experts, examines a variety of topics favored by the Oprah show as they and she highlight personal agency as crucial to success. This section also considers sections of Oprah’s audience and how she influences them. Part III, The Oprahfication of the Media, outlines Oprah’s influence on news media, politics, and the movie industry again through her depoliticized focus on personal agency.

Oprah’s personality and life story are key aspects of her success. Viewers of her day time talk show are familiar with the sexual abuse she suffered in her early life, as well as her belief in the importance of teachers and hard work, as she refers to these events and values often during interviews with guests on her show. Part I opens with an essay by John Howard which argues that Oprah’s back story is a careful construction that fits into the American myth of success. For Howard, Oprah’s story is depoliticized and deracialized and ignores the structural inequalities experienced by black Americans.

Likewise, in her chapter “Oprah Winfrey and Feminist Identification,” Jennifer Rexroat argues that Oprah rejects any association with radicalism. Rexroat invokes Patricia Misciagno’s framework of de facto feminism to analyse where Oprah fits in relation to feminism. De facto feminists such as Oprah agree with the goal of feminism but do not identify as feminists themselves. By removing her goal of “empowering women” from the rhetoric of feminism, Oprah’s project is more comfortable to Americans who may reject the feminist label. Rextroat encourages the reader to decide for themselves whether Oprah promotes feminist ideology and practice. While I’m not sure that this chapter is as open-ended as it purports to be, it does raises an important point about the limits of feminism for everyday women and whether de facto feminism is the logical outcome of the women’s movement.

Throughout this section, all of the authors critique Oprah’s personal solutions to political problems as problematic, and the final chapter, “Gendered Translation of New Age Spirituality” by Karlyn Crowley, details the ways Oprah repackages new-age spirituality within a neoliberal rubric by invoking the rhetoric of both race and gender. Crowley argues that Oprah positions herself both as “one of the girls” and a leader in a church of her own making. As an everywoman she again seeks to heal her audience from trauma without addressing systemic oppression.

Part II moves more towards audience participation and begins with an essay by Sherra Schick which examines Oprah’s message board online community as an elastic, not essentialized metaphor of the ways women use the web. As Schick asserts, without the internet, that interactive global community of Oprah’s audience would not exist. Following from Crowley’s chapter, Schick concentrates on Soul Stories as an example of the internet increasing the complexity of culture by allowing women a voice. After the message board was hacked—subjected to a “male intrusion” and closed down—Schick argues that women were driven further into the margins.

While Oprah’s message board appeared to have a positive impact on the lives of the women participating in this forum and prompted them to create a community outside the designated Oprah space, Adriana Katzew and Lilia De Katzew surveyed a sample of Chicana women and, interestingly, most saw Oprah as having little impact. For Katzew and Katzew, Oprah is successful in both a white and man’s world with the potential to reach an international or global audience with the assumption that women’s issues are universal. All those surveyed knew who she was, some value her independence, and most see her as “whitewashed.”

In her examination of the ways Oprah constructs female teenaged heterosexuality, Katherine Gregory argues that The Oprah Winfrey Show has shifted from a carnivalesque to an individual orientation to a more recent focus on changing your life. Teen sex is constructed as detrimental to self-improvement on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The result is a moral panic which pathologizes teen sexuality and for Gregory doesn’t teach teen women how to negotiate their physical and emotional needs. This topic, popular throughout Oprah’s television history, continues to subject the female teenager to regulatory forces.

Heather Talley and Monica Casper then shift the focus to Oprah’s philanthropic work in Africa, considering it as part of a tradition of celebrity causes. Although Oprah’s work in Africa can be seen as being all about Oprah (p.107), the authors encourage us not to just write it off. After discussing how philanthropy in Africa can distract from the real issues, do more harm than good, and neglect to acknowledge what happens after the celebrity leaves, the authors then use Oprah’s work in Africa to invite a consideration of how philanthropic consumption facilitating agency can work.

The final section consists of four chapters which consider Oprah as a media brand which permeates news, literature, cinema, and global politics. Like the chapters in Part I, Kathleen Dixon and Kacie Jossart’s chapter Oprah and the News Media argues that Oprah maintains a political distance and relies on melodrama. The Oprah Show repackages news as entertainment with narrative structure and drama. Through her political distance, Oprah is mildly reformist and again foregrounds personal agency. For Jaap Kooijman, this is problematic particularly in relation to Oprah’s treatment of 9/11 and the war in Iraq. In his chapter, Kooijam argues that by emphasizing personal agency Oprah translates international political issues into personal experiences. This in turn leaves little room for a dissenting voice and likewise assumes American values are universal. This chapter demonstrates the ways Oprah’s persona has reshaped politics and news media to draw in a previously neglected (female) perspective.

The final two chapters of the book extend this discussion to consider the ways Oprah’s literary favorites are repackaged—interpreted through her—for a broader audience. Edith Frampton focuses on Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon to argue that while Oprah’s book club has been criticized for depoliticising a number of texts, these critiques may in fact be born from a limited conception of the political. As a number of other writers in this collection note, Oprah emphasises the importance of personal experiences in political ways (although never overtly). For Frampton the book club’s focus on the centrality of breast feeding in Song of Solomon subverts the hegemony, particularly as this central aspect of the book was critically ignored.

Throughout the collection, writers often refer to Oprah as whitewashing certain issues for her predominately white audience, and Trytan Cotton’s examination of the Harpo produced screen adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God expands on this idea. He argues that by emphasizing romance at the expense of race, Oprah’s production company, Harpo, neutralizes the novel’s social commentary. In addition, the filmic narrative promotes Oprah’s ideology that self initiative and hard work bring success (167).

Each chapter in this collection successfully contributes to the overall argument that Oprah has created an ideology that emphasizes personal solutions to political problems. This ideology is communicated through Oprah’s widely encompassing cultural industry and infiltrates understandings of race, sexuality, gender, spirituality, politics, and class, but without interrogating systemic oppression too closely.

This collection sets its self apart from previous writing on Oprah’s cultural impact, which tends to concentrate the ways Oprah panders to a white audience and/or contributes to a marginalization of fat people. While Stories of Oprah acknowledges these areas, its focus on Oprah as a cultural industry encompassing television, magazines, film, literary publishing, and international philanthropy offers a unique, in-depth and interdisciplinary perspective. Stories of Oprah covers a huge range of ideas and issues arising in the face of Oprah’s reach across media and cultural industries. In light of Oprah’s recent overt political backing of Barack Obama and her announcement that she will end her talk show, it will be interesting to see whether the Oprahfication of American (indeed global) culture will remain when her cultural output no longer includes the confessional mode of a daily talk show.

2010-07-28T17:52:00.000-07:00

Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture. By Feona Attwood.

London, New York: I. B. Tauris, April 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-1-84511-827-3, $29. 224 pages.

Review by Maheswar Satpathy, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

This book by Feona Attwood has emerged as a reflection of modern critical perspective dissecting the nuances of an intricate culture of incessant sexual consumerism. As is evident from the title “Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture,” the book promises to vividly portray the reaction formations and rationalizations people use regarding sex.

The author in the preface succinctly and precisely assesses recent trends. The breach between the concepts of public and private, the emergence of “public intimacy” reflected in more public displays of affection, and “striptease culture” involving self-revelation and exposure all receive a thorough treatment. The book integrates diverse themes of a sexed approach to the construction of western culture in its multifarious manifestations. Issues such as sex professionals as “architects of our sexual lifestyles,” and sex more as a form of recreation than a mechanism of reproduction or relationship have been elegantly canvassed.

The book raises important questions about the role of media, technology, leisure, commerce, education, and popular culture in the production, consumption and reproduction of sexual identities, relationships, ethics, and in a way our very ethos. It presents sex as a constantly changing concept, with its values and configurations being subjected to continuous reinterpretation, resulting in the creation of diverse meanings. Some of the prominent themes addressed are the gendering of sexualization, the epistemological undercurrents required for making sense of the ever-changing concept of sex, the question of sexual ethics, sexual citizenship, and the politics of intimacy.

Attwood systematically develops three themes: Pornographication, Sexualization, and mainstream Media and Striptease Culture. In the first chapter, she examines pornography and the mainstreaming of sex. She provides penetrating discussion of issues such as Gonzo Culture and its role in blurring boundaries between reel and real; amateur sex; the role of technology in structuring our expectations, experiences and desires; purchased intimacy; realcore and hardcore; and the incitement of desires for selfhood through sex. Reflections on preferred masochism and pornographic short fiction and several stories published in Forum Magazine with vivid descriptions prove stimulating for a reader. Pornography is examined in a “postfeminist” framework. The author argues that Hyper-Sexualization of culture has desensitized us. She presents compelling arguments on the objectification, and commodification of the female, and a new feminist advocating the sexual confidence and autonomy in the sexual politics reigning over the scene.

The second part of the book deals with the role of media in sexual representations. It contains three fascinating chapters dissecting diverse issues. The exploration of private lives and fantasies is something readers can identify with. The chapter on themes of media representations of the choices and desires of women presents how the media has become an instrument of Foucauldian (sexual) subjectification, and in turn an empowering device. Treatment of intricate issues like sex advice and the changing roles of “agony aunts,” the concerns and dilemmas of today’s youth regarding sex and sexual identity, and the politics of advice-giving in the twenty-first century are dealt with extremely well.

The third section, i.e. striptease culture, deals with four diverse themes, namely media and impact on sexual learning, erotica, liberating women, and a new revolution in sexual history. Chapter eight is very self-consciously balanced, and refreshing for its emphasis on analysis based on research, advocating honesty, happiness, and personal freedom, rather than following externally imposed eternal ethical constraints in sexual knowledge and identity search. Another theme glorifies erotica over pornography and examines differential preferences of males and females and the pivotal role of consumption of various sexual resources in the construction and organization of sexual selves and lives in contemporary society. Attwood discusses the intricate pleasures derived by women through pole dancing. Some women find that activity liberating, stimulating, and sublimating, and find that it equips women with agency, freedom, and liberty for a freer expression of self in an ultra-modern society. The addition of a Film and TV guide is definitely useful to arouse curiosity in the minds of readers to dig further.

The book is unique because of its rich blend of academic spirit with interesting issues which it touches, and promises to take them forward, by creating curiosity, making readers to stay with it, reflect, ponder, and ask questions every moment. The book definitely challenges many prevalent social representation of sex. Though the book is a candid reflection of the mainstreaming of sex in western culture, still, the scanty discussions of alternative sexualities (e.g., LGBT culture), it suggests that these have not made their way to mainstream culture, remaining a kind of add-on practice. A chapter on the themes of LGBT sexuality would have certainly enriched the value of the work. To an onlooker, the book may appear to be a new feminist manifesto, but it has an interesting discussion of the end of the war between the sexes and a reconciliation of the binaries in the society. I recommend this work to all.

2010-07-28T17:51:00.000-07:00

The Tube Has Spoken: Reality TV and History. Edited by Julie Anne Taddeo and Ken Dvorak.

Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, November 2009. Cloth: ISBN: 978-8131-2553-4, $40. 275 pages.

Review by Katie Ellis, University of Western Australia

Popular debates around reality TV often center on the longevity of the genre, the potential for audience fatigue, and whether the participants are really being themselves. Academic analyses of this genre are growing but, as Julie Anne Taddeo and Ken Dvorak, the co-editors of The Tube has Spoken argue, most often come from a media or communications studies framework. Taddeo and Dvorak bring together an eclectic collection of essays in The Tube Has Spoken in an attempt to investigate the genre from an historical view point through an examination of the social, political, and cultural forces that influence the production and reception of this hybrid format.

The book is divided into three sections: Reality TV as Social Experiment, which looks at the origins of this format in social experiment; Class, Gender and Reimaging of Family Life, which examines reality TV along social lines and the ways the family is invoked as a boundary between the public and the private (a line reality TV often blurs); and a final section on Living History as a subset of reality TV that attempts to return the genre to its documentary roots through historical manipulations.

Part I explores the somewhat innocent motivations of early reality TV as a social experiment documenting how it has evolved in order to prevent audience fatigue of the format. Fred Nadis in his opening chapter argues that reality TV can be traced back to Cold War programming such as Candid Microphone (on radio) and the television equivalent Candid Camera. This format, which questioned public conformity, emerged out of a changing technological environment and advances in the area of psychology, yet Allan Funt (creator of Candid) quickly realised that real drama and entertainment surfaced not through observing but through directly influencing the course of action.

Similarly, Barron, and Leggott and Hochscherf, examine the producer’s manipulating influence in Big Brother and Jamie’s School Dinners respectively. While these programs open a space for the investigation of social problems, they often invoke and perpetuate stereotypes of race, class and gender while directing the course of the “celebritising” process. Cassandra Jones’s investigation of the ways The Biggest Loser draws on the American Frontier myth to advance the notion that a patriotic American is thin was my favorite chapter in this section, yet it did not examine why patriotism was particularly important to the American psyche in 2006.

The second section on class, gender, and the family begins with an interesting piece by Laurie Rupert and Sayanti Ganguly Puckett which argues that the 1973 PBS produced “thesis-documentary” An American Family had a significant impact on the reality TV format. For the authors, An American Family emerged during a time of social change and advanced the producer’s agenda that the American dream was turning into a nightmare and that the institution of marriage was dying. This is an important piece that reveals the ways both reality TV and documentaries manipulate everything, a concept that is picked up in later chapters. Following the success of An American Family, the BBC created The Family for British audiences in 1974.

Rather than focus on a wealthy family in the same vein as the American production, the British producers were influenced by the political and social context to follow an extended working-class family living together in one small council flat. This is the subject of Holmes’s chapter as she investigates the ways individuals are used to stand in for society at large and the cultural anxiety of being on display. Through admissions of infidelity, premarital teenaged sex and interracial marriage, The Family was perceived by some to be not truly representative of its time.

The next chapter, which investigates the Canadian example of makeover reality TV, like the first two chapters of this section, encourage the reader to interpret the programs of this genre as not simply reinforcing the hegemony. Via an examination of the carnivalesque aspects of humor invoked by the Canadian hosts of Plastic Makes Perfect, Matheson argues that Canadian productions disrupt dominant discourses of gender and nation by invoking the pleasure derived from American style makeover formats in a way that provokes a rethinking of the discourse.

Up to this point, the collection distinguishes itself from other discussions on the topic by considering the social and historical influences of reality TV formats and productions without dismissing the genre as the worst television has to offer. This focus shifts quite dramatically in Olson’s investigation of Kid Nation as a commodification of childhood. Olson notes that Kid Nation reconstructs childhood in a mediated space and then destroys it by forcing children to take on adult qualities. Although one of the strongest entries in this collection due to its rigorous content analysis, something surprisingly absent from a number of the other chapters, the social and cultural construction of childhood was not considered in this paper, with twenty-first-century ideals of childhood described as “natural.”

The final section consists of three papers which consider the living history subgenre of reality TV, whereby participants are taken back in time and encouraged to live with historical authenticity. Taddeo and Dvorak’s analysis of 1900 House explores the idea of historical inaccuracy to revisit the notion that reality is not as important as drama in this genre. The program reinforces idealized images of family togetherness, gender, and class, and uses fictional artefacts (such as Jane Austen novels) as points of reference rather than pursuing historical accuracy which contemporary participants would likely struggle with.

In the next two chapters, which deal with Australian programming including The Colony and Outback House, the authors explore the ways national myths and realities are forgotten and remembered in an attempt to rehabilitate a shameful colonial history. Each chapter in this section reveals the ways a social memory of the past is learned through books, movies, and other media. Thus, every participant in reality TV is influenced by what they already know about social identities, something that becomes particularly important when producers attempt to reconstruct history. In Schellings’s analysis of her frustrating attempt to produce a Making of documentary of The Colony, we are reminded that in the attempt to make history accessible, manipulation is inevitable.

Throughout the collection, writers often invoke the discourse of documentary theorization to situate the criteria for a social and historical investigation of reality TV beyond the notion of a “cultural wasteland.” The analysis of older forms and trends successfully address the political and social contexts, but the newer formats are not as illuminating. While I was encouraged by the readings that prompted critics to interpret this genre beyond the hegemonic, I did find myself yearning for more of a content analysis of the texts themselves. However perhaps that is not the aim of the book. The tools of historical analysis offered throughout the collection are important and provide a way to consider the intertextual influence of this genre and the texts themselves as historical documents.

2010-04-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Lottery Wars: Long Odds, Fast Money, and the Battle Over an American Institution.
By Matthew Sweeney.

New York: Bloomsbury, March 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-1596913042, $25. 304 pages.

Review by Amanda Harmon Cooley, North Carolina A & T State University

In The Lottery Wars: Long Odds, Fast Money, and the Battle Over an American Institution, Matthew Sweeney provides a comprehensive and interesting discussion of the often polarizing issue of lotteries in the United States. Peppered with anecdotes that range from the story of the first American lottery winner to woeful tales of the lost winning ticket, Sweeney primarily takes a chronological approach to the structure of his volume. The threads that tie each of the explored eras together are the reiterations of the proponents and opponents of the ideology and actuation of lotteries, as well as an examination of the transformative effect—both negative and positive—that winning the lottery can have on people. By undergirding his narrative in this way, Sweeney provides continuity to his extensive history of the lottery.

Chapters 1 and 2 feature a historical account of the lottery in America from colonial times until the turn of the twentieth century. A key portion of this discussion focuses on the speculative lottery fever of the early 1800s and the backlash against it, which started in the 1830s and which began the process of the outlawing of the lottery in many states until the mid-1960s. Here, the book highlights a primary foundation of lottery proponents’ view, which argues the importance of lotteries as a way to bring needed money into governmental coffers, as well as a conflicting view of lottery opponents, which focuses on the negative moral, ethical, and socioeconomic components of such systems. Chapters 3 and 4 of the book detail the post-Prohibition resurgence of the lottery—first, as an underground enterprise, and, later, starting with New Hampshire in 1964, as a legal, state-endorsed and -run operation. Sweeney illustrates in these chapters the swift resulting rate of state legalization of the lottery and the meteoric rise in potential jackpots among these states, the fueling influence of media coverage of mega-wins, and how all of these factors have resulted in the creation of a bevy of peripheral businesses (from lobbying firms to corporate lottery operators to lottery cash advance companies).

From this macro-analysis, the author then turns to one state’s struggle with the issue of the lottery—that of North Carolina, which provides a microcosmic view into this complicated issue: “The North Carolina Education Lottery nearly tore the state in two on its way to being passed. As it approached its one-year anniversary, the nation’s newest lottery left scandals and recriminations in its wake, along with several hundred million dollars for education” (112). This chapter provides the most compelling discussion of the book’s overriding issues as it hones in on the divisiveness that a lottery can engender within a state and among that state’s stakeholders. Significantly, this chapter details how after eighteen years of resistance, North Carolina, which was surrounded by all sides by states that had legalized lotteries and which had potential revenues flooding out of the state into those neighboring states’ lottery systems, legalized a lottery with the one tie-breaking vote of the lieutenant governor. The discussion of the extensive lobbying efforts throughout the legislative process, the significant political fallout that resulted from the passage of the lottery bill, and the socioeconomic realities of the operation of the lottery in North Carolina cover so many of Sweeney’s themes.

In the final chapters of the book, which slightly pale in comparison to Chapter 5, the author explores the workings of GTECH, the largest corporate operator of lotteries in the United States; the issues surrounding gambling addiction; some of the actual statistics, rather than the marketing claims, of the revenues generated by state lotteries; and the fact that several states have begun regarding the allowance of private lotteries. In this final area of coverage, Sweeney concludes that if states adopt this type of lottery system, then it will result in “history repeating itself” (Ch. 9).

This book provides a fascinating look at an issue that has generated, and will likely continue to generate, a tremendous amount of conflict. Like any complex issue, the lottery is a substantial one to take on in a single volume. Sweeney does an effective job of providing broad coverage to this thorny subject matter, but his prose is at its best when the author dedicates an entire chapter to the complex intricacies of one state’s debate over the lottery. The themes in this detailed discussion can be significant precedent for future state lottery issues. As such, given how prevalent lotteries currently are in the United States—with all but 8 states having legalized them in some form—and the gravity of the derivative issues that can arise as a result of the adoption and implementation of a lottery, this is an important volume for policymakers, consumers, business professionals, and academics.

2010-02-28T15:36:00.000-08:00

Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America.
By Anne-Marie Cusac.

New Haven, London: Yale University Press, March 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-300-11174-3. 336 pages.

Review by Henrike Lehnguth, University of Maryland

Anne-Marie Cusac’s Cruel and Unusual is ambitious in the attempt to illuminate what she calls the “culture of punishment.” The book aims at presenting how this culture emerged historically, while also detailing the pervasive imperative to punish today. Cusac argues that it is above all American Christian thought and practices that have shaped the excessive investments in penalization from the seventeenth century onward and initiated a shift towards more severe prison sentences and harmful control technologies in the late 1970s.

While some of Cusac’s attempts to ground ideas about punishment in religious thought are promising, the ties she establishes between excessive penalization and Christianity are ultimately inconclusive. Since social developments involving early white settlers in colonial America were unequivocally shaped by Christian beliefs and interpretations, the ways in which punishment was conceived would be expected to link to religious thought. This connection should, however, not, as Cruel and Unusual suggests, lead to the conclusion that American Christians understood penalization and its place in the social arena univocally. Cusac herself mentions with the “passionately religious” Benjamin Rush and the Quakers moderate Christian voices that dissented from status quo agendas on corporal punishment. Connections between “the culture of punishment” and Christian thought are therefore more ambiguous than Cusac’s initial arguments let us believe.

Cusac also places Christianity at the heart of the late 1970s shift towards harsher criminal laws. While the rise of the Christian Right in the late 1960s certainly factored into the changes in cultural attitudes that Cusac discusses, Cruel and Unusual offers no systematic analysis of how these changes came about. This omission is problematic, when not only the Christian Right but the Civil Rights Movement drew on Christian inspiration during the 1960s for what were very different social agendas. When Cusac thus ties the notions of “essential criminals” that evolved in the late 1970s to Christian traditions, one is left wondering what happened to those other Christian discourses that inspired struggles for social justice and racial equality.

To delineate a historical trajectory is, however, only one of two larger aims of the book that, overall, attempts to demonstrate that “the culture of punishment” is a viable construct. The second half of the book is therefore more concerned with contemporary facets of this culture. Cusac sketches these facets with a detailed discussion of popular television crime shows, stunning technologies, and Christian spanking manuals that leave no doubt that these are her areas of expertise and interest that she has long been familiar with in her work as a journalist.

While her case studies work well as resources on specific topics such as stunning, the ways in which Cusac selected her examples as evidence for a larger cultural trend is not apparent. Her discussion of Christian spanking manuals, for instance, overdetermines the relevance of the manuals for the United States at large, when child abuse is, after all, a serious legal offense. It is in this context unclear why Cusac attributes larger significance to the existence of spanking manuals than the legal structure within which they operate.

Cusac’s analysis of popular culture follows a similar pattern. Although her discussion of Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist persuasively supports her arguments about the shift in cultural attitudes in the late 1970s, some of her other findings are not as generalizable. Her investigation of crime television shows, for instance, presumes that all crime programs engage in the same ideological work. While tough sentencing and physical punishment are advocated in some shows like Fox’s 24, various cable television programs present a different kind of picture. HBO series The Wire, which ran from 2002 to 2008 and thus partially coincided with Fox’s 24, went at length to present audiences with multi-dimensional, likeable characters—be they involved in crime or law enforcement. The series repeatedly pointed to the structural factors that contribute to crime, such as the lack of political will and financial backing to address poverty and better schooling.

In spite of these challenges that Cruel and Unusual comes with, the notion of a “culture of punishment” is an important one. A culture of punishment assumes a pervasive investment in particular thoughts and practices that cherish penalization. The notion draws important interdisciplinary connections between different fields of study that, as Cusac successful shows, should be considered alongside and in dialogue with each other. Overall, Cusac’s book thus presents a necessary starting point for further research on the various manifestations of and investments in punishment.

2010-02-28T15:29:00.001-08:00

Bite Me: Food in Popular Culture. By Fabio Parasecoli.

Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers, October 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-1845207625, $115; paper: ISBN 978-1845207618, $31. 192 pages.

Review by Rossella Ceccarini, Sophia University, Japan

Food studies is an interdisciplinary field into which Bite Me by Fabio Parasecoli fits cozily. The book delves into representations of food in popular culture and is divided into six chapters, looking at the relationship between food and: 1) brain, memory, and senses; 2) ingestion, digestion, and refusal; 3) politics of production, distribution, and consumption; 4) body and diet; 5) body and race; and 6) tourism. Issues of consumption form the common thread throughout but, having gone through the introduction, readers can read each chapter independently according to their main interest. In fact, portions of the chapters have already been previously published in academic journals and edited books. Therefore, those curious about neurosciences can read the first chapter; readers interested on the social and cultural construction of what can be or cannot be eaten can focus on chapter two and three; those interested in issues of body shaping can read chapter four; readers interested in race stereotypes represented through food in popular culture can jump to chapter five; and those interested in culinary tourism can go directly to chapter six.

Parasecoli draws for the most part on theories from semiotics and media studies, and introduces theoretical frameworks from other disciplines as well (e.g. sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, etc.). Some theories are described in the introduction and taken up later in each chapter. Other theories are presented little by little as the reading progresses. However, while explaining some theories in depth in the introduction, Parasecoli neither quotes nor explicitly mentions them later in the book, as in the case of Antonio Gramsci’s theory. Certainly, glimpses of Gramsci can be caught in the book and in the final afterword, but because of the importance given by Parasecoli to the concept of cultural hegemony in the introduction, the readers would expect to find Gramsci’s name mentioned again in the volume.

The outstanding feature of the book is that popular culture examples such as movies, magazines and novels always support the theories. For instance, the author analyzes the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (chapter one) and the Atkins diet (chapter two) through the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Pierre Bourdieu’s and Marcel Mauss’s theories fit well with Marvel Comics and science fiction (chapter three). Some chapters are more prone to give detailed examples than others. For instance, chapters one to three give meticulous plots of movies (e.g. the Matrix, Island, Woman on Top, Chocolat) and novels (e.g. Interview with the Vampire, The Man in the High Castle, and 1984). Chapter four details the Atkins diet with quotes from Dr. Atkins’s book. However, the final chapter devoted to tourism seems somehow detached from the rest. Though rich in number, the examples lack the detail of the preceding chapters. Parasecoli often mentions special dishes, authentic food, and localities attractive to the gourmandizing tourist, but details remain sketchy. Focusing on an example that tourists crave by detailing one particular cuisine and/or one specific culinary destination would have been appropriate. Moreover, focusing on food representations in travel magazines, travel novels, and documentaries would have made the chapter consistent with the rest.

The book ends with the author’s afterword on food studies, more examples, and a short research agenda. According to Parasecoli, food studies could benefit from the tools of media studies. The impact of communication on the way we perceive, consume and produce food should not be underestimated. In doing so, not only acclaimed films centered on food (e.g. Babette’s Feast or Like Water for Chocolate) but also B-movies and cartoons could be fertile case studies.

Parasecoli leaves the reader without a strong conclusion to wrap up the numerous cases and guiding theories found in the volume. In addition, a glossary of food and unique dishes would have been useful for readers not familiar with every ethnic and local specialties mentioned. On the other hand, he succeeds in making available complicated theories to a more popular audience. The variety of examples (movies, novels, magazines etc.) and topics (race, gender, tourism, masculinity and femininity, etc.) makes Bite Me interesting for a broad and heterogeneous audience. Finally, the volume is useful in at least two ways: as a tool to approach social science theories through contemporary popular culture (and vice versa); and to grasp the many facades of the interdisciplinary nature of food studies.

2010-02-28T13:38:00.001-08:00

Attack Politics: Negativity in Presidential Campaigns Since 1960.

By Emmett H. Buell, Jr. and Lee Sigelman.

Second Edition, revised and updated. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, September 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0700616794, $39.95; paper: ISBN 978-0-7006-1680-0, $19.95. 392 pages.

Review by Derek Charles Catsam, University of Texas of the Permian Basin

Elections continue to get nastier and nastier even as the campaign seasons grow longer and longer. The next Presidential election will be more negative than the last, which was more negative than the one that preceded it. Millions of Americans would likely embrace these seeming truisms. Yet is it the case that presidential elections get more negative with each passing quadrennial? This is the fundamental question at the heart of Attack Politics.

Buell and Sigelman actually pursue two goals in Attack Politics. One is to provide something of a synthetic overview of American presidential elections since 1960, albeit not ordered chronologically and without ever really explaining why they choose 1960 as their earliest election. The second of their aims is the titular goal of the book—to discern the nature of negative campaigns since Kennedy and Nixon faced off in their down-to-the-wire 1960 race. Arguably they accomplish the first goal better than the second despite their putative purpose.

After a general introductory chapter on “Negativity and Presidential Campaigns,” rather than follow a chronological path, Buell and Sigelman organize their chapters based on how closely contested particular elections were. They thus group the elections of 1964, 1972, and 1984 together as “Runaway races.” 1988, 1992, and 1996 fall under “Somewhat Competitive.” 1968 and 1976 were “Comeback Races.” 1960 and 1980 each warrant their own chapter as “Dead Heat” races while the authors bundle 2000 and 2004 into another “dead heat” chapter. 2008’s “Dead Heat and Somewhat Competitive” race occupies the last election-focused chapter, making this an especially timely book. They close with a chapter of summary and synthesis, though they also include a somewhat inexplicable appendix on the “Cold War Background to 1960 Presidential Context,” as if the 1960 campaign was the only one that fell against a backdrop in which the Cold War or other major events played a significant role.

The overviews of each election are fantastic. Clear and concise, balancing analysis and description, the summaries are the strongest element of the book and will be especially welcome in classes. Buell and Sigelman include fine assessments of the major players, prevailing issues, the dynamics, and the trends in each campaign while providing sound historical context. They make the elections come alive and provide a useful reference and overview even for specialists.

But the book’s raison d’etre is its investigation of negative campaigning, and on this issue the results are mixed. Part of the problem is inherent to the effort. Political scientists seem to believe that all things can be quantified and that quantitative analysis is better than its qualitative equivalent (even though the best parts of this book, by far, are the qualitative sections). They also tend to place tremendous faith in models. But human activity is not a math problem, the world does not adhere to models, and models rarely explain the world as it is lived.

The problem of quantification in this case is not one of high-level mathematics, to be sure. But there is something perplexing about Buell’s and Sigelman’s decision simply to add up all moments of negative campaigning in ads and speeches and to have them all count equally. I would imagine that the number of negative campaign moments tells us something, but it is far from certain that those numbers tells us all that much about tone and intensity, about which negative ads or sound bytes stick and which do not, and perhaps most significantly, which qualify as being dirtier than the others, and thus more poisonous. For when most people think about negative campaigning, they are not simply referring to candidates’ criticisms of one another. They are also referring to a noxious air of personal attacks and misrepresentations. There is a difference between saying that Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists” and saying that he is too inexperienced for office. Buell and Sigelman do not make that differentiation, to the detriment of their analysis.

The problem with modeling in the book is slightly different. The authors do not freight their argument with their own model. Instead they rely on someone else’s model and test to see if it applies in presidential campaigns since 1960. This reactive methodology may well be of some use to other political scientists, and that could prove important in pushing the scholarship forward, but given the accessibility of the election summaries, this book ends up being a peculiar hybrid of specialist scholarship and generalist accessibility.

Buell and Sigelman want to test one of the prevailing theories, the “Skaperdas-Grofman Model,” which asserts that candidates choose to go negative when the benefits outweigh the potential drawbacks. This seemingly obvious conclusion provides a series of circumstances as to when a candidate is likely to go negative, with the most prevalent being that a candidate is most likely to engage in negative campaigning if they are behind in the polls. Using Skaperdas-Grofman as their springboard, Buell and Sigelman assess the presidential elections since 1960 in their various configurations of closeness. And their conclusion is: Skaperdas-Grofman is sometimes accurate. Except when it is not.

This seems like a pretty apt, if unintended, summation of predictive models as a whole: They work except for when they do not. This seems an argument for steering clear of models and for trusting more subjective but also more humble analytical approaches. Buell and Sigelman are at their strongest when they steer clear of models and when they simply describe and analyze the presidential campaigns themselves. Their book is weakest where the interpretive framework is seemingly more rigorous.

Nonetheless, despite its shortcomings Attack Politics represents an important contribution to our understanding of negative campaigning in American presidential elections in the last half century. Students will welcome the treatment of the individual elections and practitioners will appreciate another contribution to our understanding of modern electoral politics. Perhaps future scholars will draw from Buell and Sigelman but will learn to trust their own interpretations, shorn of the artifice of creating models that can only statically (and thus falsely) capture the dynamic and theory-defying world of politics.

2009-11-29T16:09:00.000-08:00

9/11 Culture.

By Jeffrey Melnick.

Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, April 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-1405173728, $79.95; paper: ISBN 978-1405173711, $19.95. 200 pages.

Review by Waleed Mahdi, University of Minnesota

As its title suggests, 9/11 Culture: America Under Construction advances a framework that captures the ongoing formation of the U.S. cultural landscape, which has been primarily triggered and shaped by the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001. With an awareness of the interwoven complexity of the social, the political, and the personal in the U.S. cultural fabric, Jeffrey Melnick offers an interdisciplinary reading of various genres in the U.S. post-9/11 popular and literary repertoire in light of the discourses of grief, memorialization, nationalism, race, gender, and religion. This is expressed in the span of two hundred pages, and layered in seven chapters, structured thematically to reinforce the post-9/11 narratives that continue to construct the U.S. cultural products, namely, rumors and the search for 9/11 truth, appeals to the rhetoric of national healing and unity, practices of censorship, and attempts to commodify “9/11.”

In this work, the author articulates a critical argument that significantly contributes to the current attempts to theorize, if not guide, the post-9/11 cultural production. He emphasizes that stressing the singularity, or what he calls “the exceptionalism,” of 9/11 is conducive to generating a “reflective” rather than a “reactive” mode of thinking that translates into works of arts, both popular and literary, which are mainly contingent on the resonance of the 9/11 attacks. This, he argues, severely limits the construction of “9/11 culture” as it threatens to eventually hinder the continuity of producing cultural works appealing to 9/11 and to perpetuate the parameters of several dominating narratives that render the many “9/11 cultures” into a homogenous one. Reflecting on 9/11, therefore, serves as an important approach to generate works of arts that continue to re-examine 9/11 in view of the socio-political and even racial composition of the United States.

Alongside the strengths of 9/11 Culture, which include its use of jargon-free language, profundity of argument, and in-depth of analysis, there are two concerns that may require more attention. First, the subtitle “America Under Construction” raises the question of accuracy in using “America” as a proper descriptive term of the United States of America. This is particularly important as scholars in the field of American Studies continue to reflect this concern in their works. Second, Melnick’s analysis, though broad in perspective, seems to blur the lines between popular culture and arts. Considerations of the distinction between the two components of the U.S. culture may help the reader to further comprehend the complexity and limitations of approaches that each presents.

Those concerns, however, can be considered as part of the significance of 9/11 Culture, which lies in its power to inspire future research, inquiry, and instruction. In this book, Melnick sets a broad scope for analysis, but chooses to reflect only on certain genres across the cultural spectrum, though he does claim that his analysis of music, film, photography, and fiction does not imply their primacy. Future research is needed to dwell on other cultural genres such as television drama, painting, and even photoshopping. The work opens doors not only for scholars, but also for creative artists and others involved in the cultural production arena. Following the central argument necessitates continuity of a re-consideration of 9/11 culture and its interrelationship with the social and political dimensions. And finally, the work is written by a professor experienced in teaching the U.S. since 9/11. The book can serve as an excellent primary text assigned to students taken courses related to the same field. The “Note to Teachers” letter attached at the end of the book, and the bibliography as well as the appendixes listing many 9/11 films and music, are good resources that would help guide both prospective teachers and students.

2009-11-29T14:38:00.000-08:00

From The Heart: Movement, Gender, And Cook Islands Globalization.

By Kalissa Alexeyeff.

Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, May 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-8248-3244-5, $55.00. 206 pages.

Review by Matthew J. Forss, Goddard College, Vermont

Kalissa Alexeyeff's study of expressive culture in the Cook Islands of the South Pacific highlights the various interrelated roles of sexuality, gender, religion, politics, and economics. For the most part, Alexeyeff's fieldwork was aided by an Aitutaki woman named Mamia, for which the prologue was dedicated. Mamia died from breast cancer in 2002, but not before passing along Cook Island dance traditions to Alexeyeff, while also supplying her with arranged interviews with dancers, and a place to live throughout the fieldwork period. Most of the research was conducted at the administrative and economic capital of the islands in Rarotonga from 1996-1998. The introduction provides an overview of anthropology, dance, and expressive culture, while incorporating Alexeyeff's summarization of dance by exploring "song texts and the themes they raise…analysis of dance choreography and music compositions given by their creators and talk that surrounds dance--the evaluations of dance performances and of dancers, and the gossip, commentary, and other verbal narratives that dance produces" (13).

The notion behind the title of "dancing from the heart" expresses the Cook Island "spirit" of happiness coming from the soul. Alexeyeff's interviews with numerous Cook Islanders found that motivations for dancing were clearly for happiness or enjoyment. In simple terms, dancers that were happy were truly “dancing from the heart.” Furthermore, Alexeyeff goes beyond simple, direct dance observation and notes dance expression may be an “extralinguistic” medium for grief, sadness, and other forms of communication not normally served with verbal responses. These dance forms and expressions of culture are influenced by the global-local web of social mobility, modernity, femininity, and politics.

Chapter one follows the religious, social, and political developments of expressive culture practices beginning with the London Missionary Society's involvement from 1823-1888, and the first European missionary, Charles Pittman, to settle on Rarotonga in 1827. The Cook Islands were part of the New Zealand colony from 1901-1965, which impacted expressive culture as a gradual changeover to Europeanization took place. Alexeyeff provides an interview with Jane Tararo and her dealings with dance and the impact of colonization, mobility, and femininity. Additionally, issues of tourism, culture, and revivalism from the 1970's-1998 was closely linked with the establishment of the Ministry of Cultural Development that attempted to "preserve…enhance the Cook Islands Cultural Heritage in order to uphold tradition…enrich cultural art forms…[and] maintain the unique cultural identity of the people of the Cook Islands" (54). Alexeyeff focuses on historical records with personal interviews and ethnographic research to create a more than adequate volume that traces the early to modern steps of expressive culture in the Cook Islands. Chapter two primarily focuses on the tourism industry in contemporary settings. The problem with tourism and dance is dependent on the observer and the performer, as native Cook Islanders want to maintain cultural identity without invalidating traditions. The older population is more likely to view tourism as a negative change for contemporary dance culture, while the younger generation views it as re-innovation. Chapter three investigates the relationship between femininity through dance and the Miss Cook Islands beauty pageant. This study analyzes the behavior of women with regards to morality, social obligations, and public performances. Throughout the book, Alexeyeff inserts poignant observations and critiques of comparable research, including alternatives to, and current limitations within, the data. The boundaries of normative genders and dance performance are contested with the analysis of a 1998 Drag Queen competition. The interrelated roles of men and women cross-dressing seem to be secondary in importance over "familial status and community maintenance" (114). Chapter five discusses the nightclub culture and musical activities in village centers. The nightclub etiquette of barmanning involves one person that dispenses small amounts of alcohol in a single cup and passes it around to a group of people. The practice of “outing,” or “going out,” which is the more familiar term for Westerners, mixes the same elements of drinking, dancing, and music familiar to Western audiences. Dancing From The Heart is as much about dancing as it is about social customs, order, and identity. The final chapter provides directions for the future outlook of Cook Islands dance activities and other expressive forms of culture. Dance is a medium with a variety of historic, political, religious, cultural, and gendered influences that have, and continue to shape its existence. At times, Dancing From The Heart reads like a diary of an ethnographer, which allows readers to learn about an understudied topic of dance culture in a very localized geographic area. The text does include a few Cook Islands Maori (Rarotongan) words, but they are used sparingly and defined effectively. It should be noted that complicated dance notation, otherwise known as “Labanotation,” is not used. Rather, the ethnographic and anthropological components related to dance and other expressive displays of performance are the primary themes of Dancing From The Heart. Lastly, the epilogue is an ode to Mamia's guidance and involvement throughout the text.

An appendix provides additional information on drum dances, action songs, chants and commemorative songs. Chapter notes, a glossary, extensive bibliography, and an index are included to help aid the reader in finding additional resources on the topic of Cook Island expressive culture. Overall, the Cook Islands have received much less “global” attention than other areas in the South Pacific, unlike Tahiti, Fiji, and Samoa. A smattering of black-and-white photographs, drawings, and maps provide additional clarifications accompanied with the text. All in all, this is an invaluable reference for undergraduate and graduate students interested in South Pacific cultural studies. However, anyone interested in learning about expressive culture and its affiliated components (i.e. gender, politics, sexuality, religion, etc.) should find Dancing From The Heart to be an informative and pleasurable read.

2009-10-30T12:27:00.001-07:00

Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture.

By Baz Dreisinger.

Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, November 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-1-55849-675-0, $24.95. 224 pages.

Review by Jackie R. Booker, Winston-Salem State University

Recently, scholars have witnessed an outpouring of works concerning racial passing in American society: for example, George Hutchinson’s excellent biography, In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography; Martha A. Sandweiss’s Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line; and now Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture by Baz Dreisinger.

In five succinct chapters, Dreisinger takes readers through the various mechanisms in which whites have used to imitate black culture. Her thesis, that some whites “chose blackness or brownness merely as a way to escape the stigma of whiteness and to avoid responsibility for owning whiteness is still very much an act of whiteness” (149). She also argues that whites seldom give attention to or pay respect to the very blacks they seek to emulate or copy. She wants whites, as self-identifiers, to be cognizant of the historical perspective in which they operate, to recognize it for its validity and give credit where it’s due—to black culture—rather than prostitute black culture, that is, earn money from appropriating black culture.

Dreisinger uses a number of filters through which to describe near-passing. Some novels and historical texts that cover slavery and Reconstruction, for instance, include William Wells Brown’s Clotel and Ellen Craft’s Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom. In these works, Dreisinger describes the physical passing from white to black. In chapter two, she turns to whites who make an effort to become black through various means, including tanning or oil-skin dyeing. Chapter three continues the theme of some whites who pass for black via physical means, but Dreisinger also addresses how some white women pass. According to the author, passing on the part of white women usually occurs through interracial sex. Here, she uses narratives about interracial relationships but exhibits her best analysis through films. In Jungle Fever, Zebrahead, Save the Last Dance, and Black and White, she clearly demonstrates how and why these unions take place. Although she explores music and how some white women seek out black musicians for passing, this filter in chapter three is not as useful as her analysis of films. Nevertheless, her point is persuasive: some white women operate as “passers” to acquire sex from black men in a way that shocks and challenges white culture.

Chapter four moves the analysis to American music, especially jazz, rock-and-roll, rap, and hip-hop. Here, Dreisinger presents her strongest case for racial passing. Beginning with examples from the 1920s, she shows how whites initially referred to jazz as uncivilized music but as its popularity grew, some white jazz artists crossed over. Two prominent examples were Mezz Mezzrow and Johnny Otis, both of whom not only passed as black men in their music but also in their written works. Dreisinger does miss a key point when she fails to discuss bebop. Black jazz musicians developed this form of music to protect it from whites. Although she analyzes Elvis Presley as a passer, she did not elaborate on his interracial affair resulting in a bi-racial child. This section would have also benefited with a discussion of Alan Freed, the white disc jockey during the 1950s who coined the phrase rock-and-roll and played black music for white audiences.

The author brings out her best in an analysis of rap and hip-hop music. Born in the streets of Brooklyn and Harlem, rap personifies black masculinity and sexuality, so powerfully that once congressional hearings were held to discuss its impact on American culture. White rappers, among them Vanilla Ice, Fred Durst, Boss, and Eminem all embraced this genre of music when it became more socially accepted and whites in suburbs became the major consumers of rap and hip-hop. Quick to seize on the lucrative genre, some white rappers turned out to be frauds. Boss, for example, a female rapper from Los Angeles, came from a wealthy suburb and did not possess the authentic linkage of black rappers from rough areas like Watts and Compton. In addition, while white male rappers sometimes have sexual affairs with black women that help them in passing, it is more important for white male rappers to have links to black male rappers. Thus, white rappers like Fred Drust, Paul Walls, and Paul Barman have found “blackness” in collaborations with Method Man, Chamillionaire, and Prince Paul of De La Soul respectively. Some readers of Near Black may quibble about its unbalanced nature: for instance, its lack of discussion of Mick Jagger, a rocker known for racist comments but one who appropriates black music. Some may also question Dreisinger’s focus on mostly white male passers with less emphasis on white women as crossovers. Her use of the concept “post-racial society” also presents a problem. Racism remains a deep societal ill, despite the election of the nation’s first black president.

Overall, Near Black is a good read and highly recommended for scholars and lay persons alike. It would also make a good text in most American culture courses. Finally, the book makes a significant contribution to the growing genre of works focusing on racial passing.

2009-10-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

Fabricating the Absolute Fake: America in Contemporary Pop Culture.

By Jaap Kooijman.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, December 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-90-5356-492-9, $45. 224 pages.

Review by Laurence Raw, Baskent University, Ankara

Fabricating the Absolute Fake offers an incisive look at how American culture – as represented by Hollywood cinema, television and popular music – has penetrated the world. Kooijman argues that “Americanization” has less to do with politics and more with “an imagined America, an imagined community that goes far beyond the boundaries of the nation-state USA” (143). Drawing on Umberto Eco’s concept of the absolute fake, Kooijman shows how American pop culture consists of fakes that succeed as “the real thing”—in other words, improved copies of the “real” originals. This is particularly evident, for instance, in the way Dutch popular culture appropriates artefacts based on an original, and presents them as their own version of “America.” Kooijman avoids making any value-judgments on such appropriations, but rather invokes Thomas Elsaesser’s concept of “Karaoke Americanism” to show how “America” can be represented in different ways in culture-specific contexts, ranging from “explicit hyper-Americanness to implicit mimicking of an American original in which the association with ‘America’ is almost lost” (144).

The book is divided into two sections. The first, comprised of three chapters, uses specific case-studies to show how “America” and Americanism now dominates the world. Such terms are often synonymous with universalism; this is evident, for example, in USA for Africa’s single “We are the World” (1985) whose ostensible purpose was to broaden awareness of the Ethiopian famine, but nonetheless “invest[ed] its ideal of global human universalism with the star myth and the American Dream, both based on a belief in meritocracy which promotes individual agency and self-reliance.” The video bears strong visual resemblances to the famous “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” commercial, produced by Coca-Cola in 1971; this turns “an act of benevolence into an act of consumption” (140). Koijman subsequently analyzes how American television disseminates a view of the world based on individual and personal choice (through shows like Oprah). The third chapter treads a familiar path by showing how the American media constructs a hyperreal world, in which the first Gulf War of 1991 becomes a major television event, and where occasions such as the Super Bowl are transformed into patriotic celebrations of the American war effort in Iraq: “the intertwining of sports, the military, patriotism and popular entertainment presents a combination that is difficult to resist” (83). Hollywood cinema assumes such a dominant position in popular culture that it now influences the media’s presentation of current affairs: the 9/11 catastrophe played out on television like a disaster movie. Koijman quotes Jean Baudrillard, who argues that “the American experience as fiction . . . shapes . . . imagination into the form of reality” (90).
The second part of Fabricating the Absolute Fake looks at how Dutch popular culture has appropriated American images. He cites the example of Lee Towers (né Leen Huyzer), a popular crooner described as a cross between Sinatra, Presley and Tony Bennett. While performing standards such as “You’ll Never Walk Alone” or “I Can See Clearly Now,” he has translated his hyper-Americanness into a local and national idiom: “[Towers’] star image is rooted in Rotterdam working-class culture, exemplified by his identification with the Rotterdam harbor and the local soccer club Feyenoord” (102). Towers’s example parallels that of the 1950s British rock ‘n roll singer Tommy Steele (né Thomas Hicks) who established his own version of the genre rooted in Cockney culture. Kooijman also focuses on the Moroccan-Dutch hip-hop artist Ali B (“the American rapper that never was”) who uses the imagery of African-American gangsta rap to assume the persona of a streetwise rapper (113). The author believes that such performers have indulged in Karaoke Americanism, “an active performance of mimicking and mockery, based on the clichéd conventions of pop culture, yet also paying tribute to the [American] original in a specific local or national manner” (117).

Despite Richard Dyer’s claims in the publicity blurb that Fabricating the Absolute Fake is a “daring and persuasive” piece of critical analysis, the book actually covers familiar ground by showing how non-American artistes have adapted American cultural icons for their own purposes. Ali B’s example resembles that of Sacha Baron Cohen, who began his career by assuming the comic persona of Ali G, the streetwise rapper from the quiet London suburb of Staines. Kooijman’s argument depends on familiar binary oppositions (global/local, American/non-American), which tend to minimize the capacity of individual artistes to respond to American popular culture in different ways. Kooijman is well aware of this, as he points out that “Not all American viewers will be hailed successfully into the position of ‘docile patriot,’ or ‘infantile citizen,’ and not all non-American viewers will be seduced by the uncritical portrayal of America as the Beacon of Freedom and Democracy” (66). Nonetheless some evidence of how viewers react to shows like Oprah—in the form of surveys, ethnographic studies or blogs—might have given a sense of how (or even whether) dominant images of American culture as disseminated through the media affect individual consumers.

The book contains distracting proofreading errors that could easily have been avoided: Capital instead of Capitol Building (44), NYDP instead of NYPD Blue (53), Bagdad for Baghdad (81), and Top of the Pop rather than Top of the Pops (104). Nonetheless, Fabricating the Absolute Fake is an entertaining read, lucidly argued with a wealth of examples from both Dutch and American popular cultures. What we understand from the book is how “pop culture can be both manipulative and empowering,” allowing for the creation of an imagined America that opens up new spaces for “a shared sense of belonging across different cultural and ethnic identities” (124).

2009-10-19T11:28:00.000-07:00

Popular Culture Values and the Arts: Essays on Elitism versus Democratization.

Edited by Ray B. Browne and Lawrence A. Kreiser Jr.

Jefferson, NC: McFarland, June 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-0-7864-3944-7, $39.95. 230 pages.

Review by Stephen Gennaro, York University, Toronto

In their current collection of essays, Popular Culture Values and the Arts: Essays on Elitism versus Democratization, editors Ray Browne and Lawrence Kreiser Jr. examine the question, is art democratic? More precisely, the collection seeks to explore if the interpretation of art is (or can be) a democratic process, or if “the full range and depth of the arts and aesthetics should be left with and controlled by the elite in power” (21). In order to do so, the editors provide the reader with a collection of thirteen essays , divided into five sections, which further illuminate the history of folk , high, and low (popular) culture and the role that technological and socio-cultural changes have played in the democratization of the arts; that is, the process by which art, as a communicator of ideas, values, ideologies, and expressions of the surroundings in which it is created, is made available to all—or restricted in access.

In examining the relationship between the high/low divide, Browne and Kreiser are participating in a larger discussion in academia that continues to assess (and re-assess) the value of this type of binary distinction in the study of popular culture. The popularity of the Birmingham School’s adaptation of Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony over the last quarter century has created a widely recognized interpretation of the relationship between the individual and the culture industries, which accounts for the agency of the individual even in the midst of a mass consumer society. According to recent work in the field of Cultural Studies, the text is not a site of domination, nor is it a site for the reproduction of dominant ideologies. Rather, the text is viewed as a meeting place where meaning is negotiated (and re-negotiated) between the dominant ideologies of production and the active agents of consumption. This optimistic approach to the relationship between the individual and the culture industries provides the readers, viewers, and consumers the agency to resist, subvert, or accept the text’s explicit and implicit ideologies, and has replaced earlier discourses of the dangers of mass society, which were often entangled in larger and more problematic representations of power and privilege through its use of terms such as high (elite) and low (popular or folk) culture.

One of the interesting ways that Browne and Kreiser’s collection of essays attempts to deal with the high/low divide is to problematize the binary by suggesting that the categories for research and appreciation are actually three-fold; and that popular and folk culture, both categories often grouped into the meta-category of low culture, are each deserving of their own “space.” As such, the collection of essays attempts to provide spaces for discussing popular and folk culture as separate entities, and does so quite successfully in the first three sections of the book on “Folk Roots,” “Developing the Oversized Spirit,” and “Breaking the Cast” through an examination of both the current American society and its historical roots. The collection is less successful in providing a space for critiquing the high/low divide in the last two sections of the book, “Promoting the American (and World) Dream” and “Outsider Views of American Cultures,” which deal more specifically with the imperialistic elements of American popular culture and in many ways buy directly into the very elements of the high/low dichotomy that the collection seeks to problematize.

The discussions surrounding American popular culture found in the last two sections of the book are the low point of this collection and take away from the excellent insight to be gained in the scholarship of high, low, and folk, culture that the first ten essays offer the reader. For starters, the pieces chosen for the discussion of American popular culture do not appear to fit with the earlier themes of the collection. Whereas earlier pieces such as Urish’s “Cultural Aesthetics: Anthropology and the (In) Visible Values of “Art” or Crawford’s “Who Gets to Play? The Hegemony of Copyright and Trademark in Art and Popular Culture” are well-written, thoughtful pieces that not only survey the field of contemporary scholarship but then add to that with insightful case studies, essays such as Batchelor’s “Selling Culture to the People: Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations in a Changing World” appear lacking in scholarship. The article is grounded in generalizations and assumptions and fails to connect with any existing work in the field. For example, within Batchelor’s discussion of advertising and marketing as education, he quote’s Irene Costera Meijer’s use of the term “positive realism” and then proceeds to uses it as an anchoring term for his own work. However, nowhere in either the text, or the notes to the essay is there any discussion of how Costera Meijer borrows this term from advertising historian and cultural critic Michael Schudson’s work on “capitalist realism.” Equally frustrating is how Batchelor grounds his discussion of the current social role of advertising on Christopher Lasch’s 1991 work The Culture of Narcissism, and Batchelor’s referring to Lasch as the “brilliant cultural historian” (177). Missing from Batchelor’s piece is any reference to the significant amount of work over the last eighteen years in this field by scholars such as Kellner, Giroux, or McChesney, just to name a few.

Despite these weaknesses late in the volume, this collection can and should be viewed as an excellent resource for scholars interested in folk art, visual arts, popular culture, the high/low divide, and democracy. The collection provides the reader with a current and thought-provoking discussion of the connection between art and democracy, grounded in an excellent history of the relationship between the two entities. Whether it is Browne and Kreiser’s excellent essay “Garden of the Folk Arts” or Neal’s extremely well-thought-out discussion of “Values, Popular Culture and Social Change,” the collection explores the subject of the democratization of arts from multiple disciplines and a variety of viewpoints and only really falls short of its mandate, to “outline some, though not all, [of the] battlefields between the cultures in control and those in rebellion, in art enjoyment” (31), in the last two sections where the essays appear more interested in re-affirming the high/low divide than in discussing the spaces for both enjoyment and resistance

2009-08-11T13:08:00.001-07:00

The Garden and the Fire: Heaven and Hell in Islamic Culture

By Nerina Rustomji. New York: Columbia University Press, November 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-231-14084-3. $45. 240 pages.

Review by Brooke Sherrard, Florida State University

Nerina Rustomji’s The Garden and the Fire makes a valuable contribution to the field of Islamic studies by identifying, translating, and analyzing traditional Islamic texts’ descriptions of the afterworld. Rustomji contrasts conceptions of heaven and hell, conceived of in the Islamic tradition as a garden and a fire, to Christian conceptions, arguing that Christians have tended to conceive of an afterlife defined by relationships between humans, angels, and the divine, while Muslims have conceived of an afterworld that is above all a material world. Rustomji argues that using a material culture lens to look at Islamic conceptions of the afterworld demonstrates that Muslims’ discussions and writings about the afterworld “culminated in a distinct religious aesthetic that has shaped Islamic culture” (xxii). Muslims, by elaborating on the materials to be found in the garden and the fire, were active shapers of this afterworld.

Rustomji reads a variety of textual productions, including the Qur’an, the hadith, eschatological manuals from the ninth through the sixteenth centuries, and buildings like the Dome of the Rock and the Taj Mahal, which are not only inscribed with texts but which also act as physical foretastes of the garden. The multiplicity of the texts comes through. Some of them described humans enduring punishments in the fire for the smallest of infractions, such as a mustard seed of pride. Others declared that humans would attain the garden if they had in their lifetimes said the shahada—or the Islamic declaration of faith in one God and the prophethood of Muhammad—or if they had just a little goodness, even if it was, repeating a trope, goodness only as small as a mustard seed.

The garden and the fire were discussed often in the Qur’an and early Islamic texts, and were one of the factors that distinguished the new faith from others in the Arabian Peninsula. Rustomji argues that many early believers struggled to accept the idea of a material afterworld because it reconceived of relationships between humans. First, it focused on individualism, in that humans would be judged as individuals. Second, it privileged family units, with whom one would be reunited in the garden, over the tribal ties so critical to pre-Islamic Arabian society. The fire was a place of various types of punishment—such as women guilty of loose behavior being hung by their breasts—but one of the most striking was that humans would be kept in cells in complete isolation.

The materiality of the garden led to criticism from Christians, who interpreted the focus on fine garments, jewels, wine, and honey as proving that Islam was not a spiritual faith. And of course Christian criticism of the Islamic afterworld continues, especially of the idea that Muslim men will enjoy the companionship of virgins—one interpretation of the term “houri,” a large-eyed pure female being—there. Though Rustomji does not elaborate on Western critics, she points out that some contemporary ones even suggest that Muslims who adhere to a sexualized idea of the garden are not “rational and modern” (161). Her tracing of ideas of female companionship in the garden and the ways these ideas have changed is perhaps her most interesting contribution. She does not back away from “the popular understanding of the houri,” which, as she writes, “was (and continues to be) a sexual one” (96). However, she shows that the conception has become more sexualized over time. Earlier texts described the garden as a place populated by servant boys and houris who served reunited families. Over time, the servant boys largely disappeared and the idea of family reunification became marginalized, leaving males and the houris—who increasingly became described with words like “virginal”—in a world “that caters to individual (male) desire” (89). While admiring Rustomji’s unwillingness to join Western critics by explaining away the sexuality of the garden or simply criticizing it, it would have been helpful to read more analysis of what the implications of the increasingly sexualized garden are for Muslims’ gender relations on earth.

The epilogue includes a few contemporary comments, recounting, for example, that Iranian children in the 1980s were given “keys of Paradise” (160) to wear around their necks when they cleaned up landmine fields. The paradise they expected to go to at any moment was one that, even at a young age, they had had ample opportunity to imagine.Rustomji’s clear and accessible text will be of interest to those in Islamic studies, religious studies, and cultural studies, especially those interested in material culture. A portion of it could serve well in undergraduate courses on Islam to evoke the ethos of the Islamic afterworld.

2009-07-16T15:00:00.001-07:00

Breaking the Ashes: The Culture of Illicit Liquor in Sri Lanka

By Michele Ruth Gamburd. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, November 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-8014-4660-3, $65; paper: ISBN 978-0-8014-7432-3, $22.95. 266 pages.

Review by Rupa Pillai, University of Oregon, Eugene

In her latest publication, Breaking The Ashes: the Culture of Illicit Liquor in Sri Lanka, Michele Ruth Gamburd presents a holistic examination of alcohol use in a Sri Lankan village. Considering family dynamics, societal norms, and economic implications, Gamburd navigates the reader through the complexities of the illegal drinking that plagues this village. To direct her analysis, Gamburd employs the following themes: the relationship between consumption and identity, the political economy of alcohol, and how problem drinking is defined and handled. In tackling this project, she immediately situates herself as a non-drinker who remains committed to delivering an objective study that avoids passing judgment or proselytizing teetotalism. She confesses the personal nature of this endeavor spurred through observing and experiencing the effects of overindulgent drinking during her years of fieldwork, but confines this narrative to the introduction and conclusion, thus allowing the bulk of her research to be unprejudiced. The resulting text is an illuminating and enjoyable ethnography of alcohol consumption in Sri Lanka that empowers the reader to arrive at his or her own conclusions.

Over the course of nine chapters, the reader is introduced to the village of Naeaegama where Gamburd has conducted her research for years. In this Sinhala-Buddhist village, the proclivity towards drinking is attributed to the nation’s colonial past. In an attempt to mimic the colonizers and local elites, individuals began to drink in excess to elevate their status. The resulting colonial hangover led to a myriad of social issues, from domestic violence to the reworking of gender roles. The increase of alcohol use and abuse in recent years is largely understudied because of its illicit nature. While alcohol is legally permissible in Sri Lanka, much of the society cannot afford legal forms of alcohol because taxation drives up the cost. Kasippu, the drink of choice of the working class, is the illegal and cheap alternative. By writing this ethnography, the author hopes to provide a more accurate portrayal of alcohol use that NGOs and governmental organizations have failed to capture in their studies.

Utilizing her unique position as an anthropologist, the author accomplishes her goal by demonstrating how ethnographies can be a useful tool to study an illegal aspect of society. Without fear of punishment, informants spoke candidly about alcohol habits. Gamburd deftly weaves these conversations together to illustrate how drinking is altering Naeaegama’s community. Alcohol occupies an ambiguous position in the village. It builds and strengthens relationships as well as alienates and isolates individuals. As a symbol of masculinity, men shared drinking stories about how drinks are purchased among friends, eluding the police, and drunken misbehavior. Women discussed how alcohol abuse affected the family by limiting household funds and prompting many women to become the breadwinner. These changing gender roles correspond to the relaxing attitudes towards drinking and the increase of alcohol abuse during the past years.

An additional strength of this text is Gamburd’s employment of current scholarship on alcohol use to inform her analysis. Including cross-cultural comparisons, the author demonstrates how the use of alcohol exists in many cultures, but the motivation, methods, and perception of drinking varies. Of considerable interest are the varying views of alcoholism. In Western societies, alcoholism is conceived of as a disease. However, in Sri Lanka, the disease conception is rejected; “villagers therefore view alcohol-dependent individuals as morally weak” (183). This rejection of alcoholism as a disease complicates how individuals address alcohol abuse. Villagers seek out various approaches such as medical treatment and religious rituals to combat this problem. The inclusion of Kali rituals as a deterrent is particularly fascinating. Kali worship, considered socially unacceptable in certain segments of society, occasionally requires alcohol to invoke and converse with the goddess. To pledge sobriety to her is ironic and leads to questions about religious and ethnic identity in the village.

This insightful ethnography has a few drawbacks. While the author identifies the conception of the problem, she fails to suggest a possible approach or solution. Additionally, the text suffers from its limited examination of the issue of Sri Lankan identity and its civil war. Besides a few cursory mentions of the war, the author assumes the reader is acquainted and understands the struggle for a unified Sri Lankan identity. This raises questions regarding whether and how the dispute of the national identity is played out in drinking. While this text cannot address every angle of drinking in depth, the reader should remain aware that this ethnography examines effects in a Sinhala-Buddhist village; otherwise, the reader is liable to view Naeaegama as representative of all Sri Lanka, which may not be accurate. Moreover, the reader would have benefited from a deeper analysis of the religious dimension of alcohol consumption in connection to ethnic identity. Gamburd does include stories of how Buddhist text has been used to condemn and condone alcohol, but what are the implications of seeking sobriety through a Hindu goddess?

Regardless of these minor criticisms, this well-written book will appeal to an audience beyond the anthropological. The project may have been motivated by personal reasons, but the author successfully produced an objective book that will be an excellent text to teach. Her use of theory is productive and graspable. It also provides an excellent entry into Sri Lankan culture and society in addition to an introduction to the pertinent literature and debates concerning drinking behavior and habits. Gamburd has achieved a text that demonstrates the value of ethnography beyond the discipline where “[its] findings can prove useful in crafting treatment and public health initiatives” (6).

2009-07-16T14:38:00.000-07:00

Queer Visibilities: Space, Identity and Interaction in Cape Town

By Andrew Tucker. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, January 2009. Hardcover: ISBN 978-1405183031, $89.95; paper: ISBN 978-1405183024, $39.95. 256 pages.

Review by Nathan G. Tipton, University of Memphis

Perhaps no other issue, save that of abortion, is more contentious and provokes more passionate and vociferous opinions than that of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and queer (GLBTQ) rights. For example, recent governmental actions to legalize gay marriage in states such as Massachusetts, Iowa, and New Hampshire (or, conversely, the nullification of this legislation in California) have prompted nationwide consternation over what rights could or should be accorded non-heteronormative individuals. Lurking behind this socio-cultural hand-wringing is, of course, an ideological competition to determine exactly how visible queers should (or should not) be in heteronormative society. Put more bluntly, queer visibility is ultimately contingent on the heterosexual hegemony’s comfort level and what it feels is allowable and tolerable.

Andrew Tucker’s ambitious but problematic book Queer Visibilities: Space, Identity and Interaction in Cape Town acknowledges this omnipresent contingency while also exploring it through the decidedly non-Western lens of post-apartheid South Africa. Specifically, Tucker takes a geographical approach to his subject by linking the differing queer communities qua “gay spaces” that exist in Cape Town, South Africa to the legacy of apartheid that continues to influence race and class relations throughout the country. As Tucker explains, the ideological mechanisms deployed by the apartheid-era white South African government were utilized not only to justify racial control but also to suppress the eruption of other groups that had the potential to threaten heteronormative white rule.

In post-apartheid Cape Town, however, Tucker notes that these same methods used during apartheid (specifically, strict separation and segregation by race and class) are still tacitly enforced throughout Cape Town’s myriad gay spaces. In spite of South Africa’s concerted efforts, post-apartheid, to rewrite its constitution in order to enshrine equality for all citizens regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation, the racial and spatial history of apartheid still casts an ominous shadow, effectively compartmentalizing Cape Town’s queer communities along the same racial categories (white, colored/Afrikaner, and black African) that were formulated and rigidly regulated during the years of apartheid. This compartmentalization, Tucker argues, makes Cape Town unique among other worldwide gay meccas such as New York City, San Francisco, London, and Sydney.

Tucker marshals together an impressive array of both Western and non-Western race, queer, identity, and post-colonial theorists such as Marlon B. Ross, Charles Nero, and E.J. Popke to bolster his overarching argument that the legacy of apartheid-era racial policies has created in Cape Town a fluidity of queer desire that operates in contradistinction to the strict homosexual/heterosexual binary extant in Western models of queerness. For example, throughout Queer Visibilities Tucker repeatedly questions the epistemological efficacy of “the closet” by arguing that, because it manifests itself along this binary, the closet is a specifically Westernized construct and, therefore, does not apply to the more fluid racial and identity interactions that occur in Cape Town’s queer communities.

On the surface this argument works well, particularly in the exhaustive and fascinating exploration of Cape Town’s colored “moffies.” Moffies, Tucker explains, are cross-dressing men who were not only accepted by the larger colored society, but were also used to promote (and, hence, make visible) this same society. Tucker notes that, like the wider colored society, moffies exist in conflicting social and political positions, occupying the liminal space between black and white, while also limning the space between masculine and feminine by way of their “dragging.”

Complicating the moffies’ spatial placement even further is the curious existence of heterosexually-identified gang members known as “28s” who consciously choose to engage in sex with other men (specifically moffies) and make these men their “wives,” all the while disavowing any suggestion that they are anything but heterosexual. Moffies, in effect, serve as an anchor for these gang members’ judiciously presumptive, quasi-archetypal heterosexuality by insisting on being as authentically female as possible, thus effectively—if somewhat ironically—shoring up hetero-patriarchal social norms. Indeed, it is precisely this “non-queer queerness” that defines for Tucker the pronounced break between Western and non-Western epistemologies of the closet.

Tucker’s epistemological approach generally succeeds with regard to queer interactions occurring within the larger colored community, but it falters in his discussions of both white and black African—specifically Xhosa—queers. In fact, Tucker’s chapter on queer Xhosa men in the townships provides compelling evidence that the Westernized closet not only exists, but also holds powerful sway, over this community. He notes that, although in some black African communities there exists the possibility for qualified acceptance of queers, an equally real possibility of homophobic violence towards those “visible” queers still remains a constant threat. In the Cape Town townships, visible queer men continually run the risk of being subjected to violence precisely because their visibility conflicts with Xhosa and wider black African value systems, especially the widespread notion (voiced by many black South African leaders including Winnie Mandela) that homosexuality is “unAfrican.”

Given that homophobic violence acts as an extra-social regulatory function in heteronormative Western societies, it could easily be argued that the social pressures faced by queer Xhosa men might not only create, but also effectively force Xhosa queers back into, the closet. Tucker seems to anticipate this objection by arguing that, in response to this homophobia, these men have formed a network of social nodal homes in order to be both protected and visible. Still, this approach is problematic simply because, in spite of providing ostensible visibility, Xhosa queer social nodes seem to be nothing more than “hiding in plain sight” or, put more precisely, self-segregation. Thus, it appears almost as if Xhosa queers were merely trading one closet for another.

Queer Visibilities represents an important addition to anthropological, geographical, and queer studies of pan-African sexualities. However, it is not without its limitations, the most pronounced being Tucker’s insistence that South African queerness should be interpreted as distinct and uniquely separate from the prevailing Westernized (and, by definition, colonialist) model of queerness. Though queer sexualities in Cape Town are undoubtedly influenced and informed by apartheid-era colonial ideologies, they nevertheless operate under many of the same societal mores and strictures that legislate and mediate the visibility of all queer communities, regardless of geographical locale.

2009-06-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

Living as Equals: How Three White Communities Struggled to Make Interracial Connections during the Civil Rights Era

By Phyllis Palmer. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, July 2008. Cloth
[illustrated]: ISBN 978-0826515964, $69.95; paper: ISBN 978-0826515971, $27.95.
318 pages.

Review by Barclay Key, Western Illinois University

Scholarship on the civil rights era has been shaped in significant ways by white southerners from religious families who witnessed the injustices of the Jim Crow system during childhood and subsequently published books that reflected upon and interpreted their experiences. Timothy Tyson’s Blood Done Sign My Name and Charles Marsh’s The Last Days are just two examples of this compulsion to explain what now seems inexplicable. In the introduction to Living as Equals, Phyllis Palmer describes her similar background and, we might assume, comparable desire to explore the complexities of race and religion in recent history.

Living as Equals is not a memoir, but it does qualify traditional narratives of the civil rights era which focus attention on the recalcitrance of whites whose resistance to racial equality marks popular memory. However, Palmer reminds her readers that most white Americans were not violent racists, nor were they avid supporters of the civil rights movement. Historians have recently begun examining the actions and attitudes of the majority of whites who located themselves between these two poles, and Palmer’s work belongs in this discussion because it explores the efforts of “white Americans who responded hopefully to the civil rights era’s promise of a freer and more equitable nation” (6). If most white Americans did not actively participate in a civil rights movement, then “civil rights inspired some white Americans to become new kinds of white people” (13). Palmer aims to trace how and why these changes occurred.

Most whites did not respond as hopefully as Palmer’s subjects, but these three organizations, or “communities” as she calls them, warrant careful consideration for understanding the changing dynamics of race from the 1950s through the 1980s. Chapters 1 and 2 assess the National Conference of Christians and Jews’ (NCCJ) Brotherhood Camps. Inspired by religious imperatives of community and equality, these summer camps brought together teenagers from a variety of racial and religious backgrounds. Campers inevitably experienced a variety of “encounters,” as they shared living quarters, discussed current events, and pursued romances. Palmer emphasizes that camp leaders “had a more radically democratic ideal in mind than opening up a white world to a few nonwhites who could assimilate” (35). NCCJ counselors organized activities and discussions which facilitated interracial cooperation and dialogue in an environment where campers did not feel threatened. About twenty-five thousand young people participated in camps that were conducted in New York City, Newark, and Los Angeles between 1951 and 1974.

Chapters 3 and 4 evaluate Neighbors Inc. (NI), an organization composed of residents from four neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., which sought to “preserve the area as a first-class community of good Americans regardless of race and religion,” according to its founding document (98). NI included 175 households by the end of 1958, the year it was established. Homeowners who participated focused on three objectives. First, they actively opposed the convention of labeling real estate as “colored” in advertisements listed in the Washington Post and Washington Evening Star. The newspapers quietly dropped the descriptor in 1960. Second, NI worked to maintain open communication among residents by establishing and distributing a monthly newsletter. Third, NI marketed their interracialism, creating what Palmer calls “a narrative of middle-class, family oriented, multiracial achievement and security to compete with the idyll of white suburbia” (105).

Readers of the SJC might be most interested in Chapters 5 and 6, in which Palmer analyzes multiracial community organizing in San Antonio, focusing upon the quest by Mexican American and African American groups for greater political power. Early efforts to address the immediate needs of racial minorities were largely confined to the city’s Roman Catholic diocese, particularly Archbishop Robert Lucey, whose appeals to Anglo charity resulted in “acquiescence to policies that offered a bit of relief and left intact the racial norm: white people controlling public life” (181). The foundation of Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) in 1974 challenged this norm to such an extent that the 1977 city council elections resulted in victory for five Mexican Americans and one African American.

These three disparate narratives are loosely held together by several themes. Many figures who sought interracial connections were motivated in part by religious faith. Another theme involves the assertions of racial pride and consciousness in the late 1960s. Such expressions provided special challenges to the NCCJ’s efforts at facilitating racial harmony among teenagers, for example, while COPS ultimately benefited from greater Chicano consciousness. Palmer also makes concerted efforts to emphasize the roles of specific individuals in these stories, an objective made possible by her extensive use of oral histories. She notes that the organizations in her study enabled white Americans to cultivate new relationships and undergo “intellectual and emotional shifts” (12). Palmer contends that these new associations and perspectives were transformative and crucial for understanding how some whites awakened to the possibilities of interracial cooperation in the civil rights era.

2009-05-28T11:05:00.001-07:00

The Sacred and the Feminine: Imagination and Sexual Difference

Edited by Griselda Pollock and Victoria Turvey-Sauron. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, June 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-1845115203, $85; paper: ISBN 978-1845115210, $29.95. 320 pages.

Review by Gypsey Teague, Clemson University

The longer I teach Gender and Women’s Studies, the more I am made aware that there are two distinct types of books in the field. The first type is the fluffy book. This type of book says very little but has a glitzy cover, and blurb on the back promising the latest information, and usually a foreword by someone you have never heard of but who has been changed forever because of the content of the material. The second type of book is the scholarly tome. This book has little more than a title and an author on the cover, is usually a single color, often very thick with small print and too many references and citations; as though the author had little original to say and backed up what he could think of with someone else’s ideas.

The Sacred and the Feminine: Imagination and Sexual Difference, fortunately, is somewhere between these two polar extremes. Griselda Pollock and Victoria Turvey-Sauron have edited a delightful book that takes into account both the heavily scholared essay and interspersed a few lighter, more easily read articles. True, this book is tightly packed with information, there are very few illustrations [Editor’s note: the cloth edition is more fully illustrated], and the citations are lengthy; however, the information is pertinent to the subject area, the illustrations are specific to the essay and are there as augmentation, not as filler, and the citations are essential as a jumping-off point to more research.

Turvey-Sauron is an art historian, and her work reflects that background. Pollock is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory, and History at the University of Leeds. She brings to the table a “social criticism” that is found in few works currently published. Between them they have chosen 13 essays, each adding one to this Baker’s Dozen, and have emerged with 15 critical pieces on the world of feminism and how that feminism coexists, at times, with current thought and dogma. The authors do not take themselves or their subjects either lightly or frivolously, but rather, apply themselves to answering specific questions that they have found important to the feminist movement.

I recommend this book to professors and instructors of feminist theory, or to gender constructionists. This is not a book to pick up lightly. It demands and expects attention to detail and a background in at least a couple of the waves of feminism to fully grasp what is being presented; however, once those foundations are attained, this book will become essential to all feminists’ and genderists’ libraries.

2009-04-29T12:08:00.000-07:00

The Modern Age: Turn-of-the-Century American Culture and the Invention of Adolescence

By Kent Baxter. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, October 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0817316266, $39.95. 232 pages.

Review by Stephen Gennaro, York University, Toronto, Canada

One of the unique qualities inherent to Childhood Studies is the discipline’s ability to draw the interest of scholars from a variety of subject areas. In fact, with the increased focus on re-examining the roles of children in history, the last ten years have borne witness to a significant number of cultural histories of youth, childhood, and adolescence. From Paula Fass and Colin Heywood to James Kincaid and Allison James, the repositioning of children in history and the unpacking of their representation has become en vogue and an area of interest to scholars of all fields. The recent publication of Kent Baxter’s The Modern Age fits nicely into this continuum of scholarship. Baxter, a Professor in English at California State University, Northridge, tries his hand at history in The Modern Age. In his cultural history of the developmental stage of adolescence, Baxter walks the reader through the emergence of adolescence as a social category in the fields of law, medicine, leisure, education, and literature at the end of the eighteenth century. Underpinning Baxter’s cultural history is an argument that adolescence emerged at the end of the eighteenth century as a response to rising tensions, fears, and anxieties at the fin de siecle.

Often, in cultural histories, authors spend the first chapter(s) providing the historical backdrop for their subject matter. However, Baxter retells the story of the invention of adolescence through multiple case studies. What is impressive about Baxter’s writing is how he manages to write each of his six chapters as a stand-alone case study, where the emergence of adolescence at the turn of the century is explained in the context of the subject matter of that particular chapter. And while the book reads very smoothly, presenting little difficulty in following the argument from chapter to chapter (even as the subject matter changes), the breadth of this work also serves to detract from its overall argument, since at times, Baxter appears to glance over key ideas. For example, the first chapter looks at the structural invention of adolescence found in legal and educational reform in the late 1800s and early 1900s. However, the book could have benefited from splitting this chapter into at least two chapters to more clearly set up the social, cultural, and political context of this history. Each of these areas could have been given greater treatment, where more primary documents were explored and with archival research above and beyond newspapers, periodicals, and census data of the period.

The real limitations of Baxter’s work are found in chapter two in his discussion of the construction of adolescence as a developmental stage in the field of psychology. Baxter does provide an excellent summary of G. Stanley Hall’s seminal work on adolescence; unfortunately, the work of Sigmund Freud does not receive the same attention. Furthermore, the chapter is almost completely void of the contributions of John B. Watson, the father of behaviorism, and one of the most influential psychologists in the creation of adolescent psychology in the early part of the twentieth century. In fact, it could be argued that Watson’s 1928 piece, Psychological Care of Infant and Child, was the single most influential text on adolescence in the first half of the twentieth century. It was the What to Expect when You Are Expecting of its time, and the text to which Dr. Spock responded to when he began to write his baby-rearing texts in the 1940s. Instead, Baxter focuses the chapter on the roles of G. Stanley Hall and Margaret Mead in the invention of adolescence. Arguably, there is a connection between Mead’s work and the discussion of Indian Reform in chapter three. Likewise, the careers of Hall and Mead are connected, since Meads’ work in Samoa called into question the arguments that Hall (and Freud) made about adolescence as a period of sturm und drang (storm and stress) being universally experienced. However, the choice of Hall and Mead as the two key figures to review is questionable, especially since Mead’s work comes almost a quarter of a century after Hall and nowhere near the turn of the century, where the heart of Baxter’s argument takes place. At best, Mead is the fourth most influential psychologist in the development of adolescent psychology and construction of adolescence in the early twentieth century, behind Hall, Freud, and Watson.

The middle two chapters of the book examine a secondary argument of Baxter’s work, that the invention of adolescence and the discourse surrounding it paralleled the discourse and practice of the Indian Reform Movement. This is perhaps the greatest contribution of The Modern Age to current scholarship. In his discussion of Indian Reform and adolescence, Baxter provides historical credence and new insight into previously under-explored areas of study in Childhood Studies. First, in exploring the similarities in the “treatment” of adolescents and “Indians,” Baxter’s work demonstrates how there is an historical antecedent to viewing children as social “others.” In fact, Baxter argues that adolescence itself was created precisely for this reason. The implications of this point in scholarship is that it reinforces current work that suggests children have their own indigenous culture and that researching children’s lives, histories, and culture should be done in a respectful and culturally sensitive fashion.

Baxter is a gifted writer whose prose is easy to follow and enjoyable to read. However, his scholarship gives somewhat short shrift to recent work in the field. A significant portion of his sources cited on childhood “as a construct” are from the 1990s and earlier. Without discrediting early contributions to the field of Childhood Studies, the work done over the last half-decade in areas such as the history, geography, and sociology of childhood has moved the discussion away from the question of whether age is a social variable of distinction and discrimination like race, class, or gender, to more productive discussions, such as who benefits from these representations of the child as “other.” In his discussion of the adolescent as “other,” Baxter’s work is a welcome addition to the field.

2009-04-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

Science Talk: Changing Notions of Science in American Culture

By Daniel Patrick Thurs. Cloth: ISBN 978-0813540733, $44.95; paper: ISBN 978-0813544205, $27.95. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, September 2007 (hardback), September 2008 (paperback). 237 pages.

Review by Amy L. Thompson, Austin Peay State University

In Science Talk: Changing Notions of Science in American Culture, Daniel Patrick Thurs explores how the American perception of science has been and continues to be shaped by popular and often controversial scientific topics. Thurs argues that these debatable issues have forced Americans to formulate their own idea and beliefs about science, often leading them to question the ideas and beliefs of others. Thurs suggests that although many Americans avoid science talk, nevertheless, a fascination with some science-related issues (medicine, astronomy, technology, new research) continues to occur, although the term “science” is not used to describe them. The author suggests that while the general population appreciates the importance of science, most people do not engage in “Science Talk” and seem to blindly accept scientific knowledge given to them. This underlying paradox between popular perception and the desire to understand and engage in “Science Talk” is a theme entwined throughout this work. Thurs concludes by bringing in modern-day examples, such as the debate over intelligent design, and makes suggestions for improving “Science Talk” among the non-science public.

Thurs relies on extensive resources to follow the evolution of science talk as outlined in his notes section, although he includes no separate bibliography. The use of these sources is evidenced throughout the book, with each chapter presenting a complete history of a topic including prominent figures of the time, their beliefs and ideas, and the ever-changing opinion of society as a whole. Although this book covers topics that the general public might be familiar with, it is not a work for the non-scientific, general reader. Each topic is presented as if the reader already has extensive knowledge of the subject with little to no background given regarding what terms such as phrenology (the study of bumps and grooves on the head) or relativity (physics theories proposed by Einstein dealing with space and time) actually mean. Also, the work is heavy in dates, people, and ideas. While this provides a complete treatment of the topic, it does not lend itself well to the leisurely reader. Fact after fact is presented in a mix of think pieces that require active engagement and attention.

There are numerous works that present single controversial aspects of science, including global warming, evolution, science and religion, and stem cell research; and several works provide a collection of discussions or debates that argue for or against various scientific ideas. Few exist, however, that tackle the concept of the perception of science and how it influences and has been influenced by American culture. Interestingly, a card game about science also called “Science Talk” encourages children to learn about and discuss different aspects of science, perhaps leading to a new revolution among young citizens. This academic treatment of “Science Talk” is a valuable tool for anyone interested in gaining an understanding of how scientific perception has changed throughout American culture.

2009-02-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

Frederick Douglass: Race and the Rebirth of American Liberalism

By Peter C. Myers. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, February 2008. ISBN 978-0700615728, $34.95. 272 pages.

Review by Debbie Clare Olson, Oklahoma State University

Peter C. Myers offers a timely exploration (particularly in light of the recent election of Barack Obama as the first African American President of the United States) into the ongoing conversation about race, politics, and natural rights liberalism. Myers revisits numerous perspectives from the Slavery era with a sharply insightful blend of objectivity and penetrating perception. The primary focus of Myers study is the slavery-era argument over racial equality and natural rights. Douglass was a staunch supporter of the belief in natural rights’ being embodied in natural law. Douglass “conceive[d] of the moral laws of nature as self-executing or naturally sanctioned[;] he held that in the nature of human affairs, justice and other virtues tend to be rewarded whereas injustice and other vices tend to be punished. . . .persistent virtue generally receives powerful reinforcement and persistent violations of the moral law generally prove self-defeating” (15). For Douglass, the Declaration of Independence’s doctrine that all men were created equal, was not just a politically based position, but was instead a universal Truth, a “moral prescription and sanctioned as moral law” (196). Myers’s book details the historical trajectory of natural law liberal philosophy in Douglass’s abolitionist discourse.

Chapter one explores the nature of slavery and the questions of black humanity as considered by both slavery supporters and abolitionists. Myers revisits a number of slave-holders’ philosophical perspectives, which are effectively followed by Douglass’s counterarguments to those ideals. For example, a letter published in the North Star in 1850 by W.G. Kendall protested slave accounts of brutal treatment by their masters as “so highly colored, as not to be recognizable” and that slavery was a “great blessing to the black race” (33). Another similar argument was that abolitionists merely sought an unrealistic “utopia” that threatened to destroy the black race by urging them to leave the protective paternal umbrella of the slave-holders (34). A further position was that slavery was a “natural” condition in black evolution towards their eventual emancipation. Douglass passionately responded to such positions by pointing out that though there had been some humane acts towards slaves, those few acts are not representative of the “true nature of the regime” of slavery. As Myers explains, Douglass maintained that slave-holders as a class are not capable of establishing “paternal character” because as a “natural rule” they cannot exercise “irresponsible power benignly” (37).

Chapter two begins with Dred Scott and the anti-slavery cause. For Douglass, his “invincible hopefulness” was at odds with his peers’ pessimism at the legal victory for slave-holder power. But Douglass truly believed that moral rightness will overcome slavery, that “Truth is mighty, and will prevail.” His adamantine conviction in the “laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”(49) gave fodder to his critics who charged that he “suffered from excessive idealism, closely linked to his excessive faith in the receptiveness of Americans to racial reform” (11).

Chapters 3 and 4 interrogate Douglass’s affirmation of the Constitution’s Natural Rights law and its support for anti-slavery views. Myers maintains that Douglass, who early on was heavily influenced by the militant abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, (founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society), was later horrified by the growing extremism and calls for violent revolution within the Garrisonian camp (83-84). Myers argues it was Douglass’s aversion to Garrison’s radicalism that motivated his staunch advocacy of non-resistance as a way to garner change; change which he knew would come through natural moral law: “As natural moral law required the support of human positive law, so the efficacy of natural law in America required the support of American law” (85). Douglass found support for this view in George Comb’s The Constitution of Man, a work which gave Douglass “the idea of a self-executing law of nature” (15). For Myers, “Douglass’[s] remarkable hopefulness concerning the demise of slavery and white supremacy in America was not naively or obtusely idealist but was instead marked by a substantial moderation and realism” (12). It is perhaps Douglass’s faith in the ultimate goodness of humanity that helped bolster some antebellum attempts at moral reform. As Myers points out, it is through America’s laws, based on the Natural Rights doctrine, that effect momentous change. In the book’s conclusion, Myers touches on Douglass’s influence upon other significant periods of changing attitudes towards race, such as WWII and the 1960s’ Civil Rights Movement (198-99).

There are many rich historical dialogues within Myers’s text; lively feints and thrusts between abolitionists and slavery proponents fill each chapter. However, at times Myers prefers to safely dance around the more intricate complexities of power matrices within slavery culture—titillating the reader with insights, but then stopping short of a deeper excavation. For example, he states that Douglass believed that the slave-holder Aaron Anthony may not “by nature” be a morally deficient man, but the fact that he had “grown accustomed” to the social “exercise of irresponsible power” had robbed him of his natural virtue (37). This case would seem to raise questions about the extent of social influences within antebellum power structures, and of Douglass’s seemingly paradoxical use of nature as an argument in defense of a slave owner’s culpability while at the same time arguing that a human’s “good nature” would eventually prevail. But aside from these periodic dead-ends, Myer offers a richly textured and compelling look at the evolution of Natural Rights, an evolution of thought most evident in our first African American President, Barack Obama, whose own belief in the inherent goodness of the American People reflects a fitting echo of Douglass’s own hope for humanity.

2009-02-11T14:38:00.000-08:00

Rebels Wit Attitude: Subversive Rock Humorists

By Iain Ellis. New York: Soft Skull Press, December 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-1-59376-206-3, $15.95. 256 pages.

Review by Justin Patch, University of Texas, Austin

In a world of crisis, chaos, globalization and panic, it is too often the outwardly serious and grave elements of culture that capture the spotlight and imagination of academics. More often than not, the humanities are caught trying to legitimate their subjects to wider audiences by adapting catch words like “dangerous,” “weapons” and “resistance.” The topic of humor is often left to footnotes or relegated to one-off articles rather than the study of a full-length monograph, save for a long history of writings on political satire. In the field of music scholarship, this tendency is amplified. The movement to ennoble popular music has left its playful side in corner with a dunce cap while focusing on the teacher’s pets: hidden epistemologies, political economy, gender, globalization, and regional and transnational community formation. But even as music scholarship turns a blind eye and a deaf ear to humor, it continues to rear its comical head, like a Punch and Judy theater at a joust.

Enter Iain Ellis’s Rebels Wit Attitude: Subversive Rock Humorists, complete with a pun on one of the most influential rock albums of all time on the cover. Through a decade-by-decade account of key artists and genres, Ellis charges through six decades of rock and hip-hop, giving accounts of the times and providing selective case studies of artists he finds particularly compelling. Ellis makes his case that subversion and humor have been an essential element of rock music, built into its genres and forms, one of its defining characteristics. He goes on to outline the various over-generalized and leaky types of humor – wit, dumb, primal, idiotic, and subcultural, each with expansive definitions that bleed into and out of each other. He also provides his parameters, with sufficient reflexivity to acknowledge that this is simply a preliminary survey, lacking in comprehensiveness and depth. It is indeed an exploratory work, one which does not claim authority and does leave plenty of space for others to delve deeper. One glaring gap that Ellis graciously opens up to is that he is completely US-centric. He brackets all of the UK’s influential rock in an effort to contain the beast that is rock humor into 256 pages.

The objects of Ellis’s inquiry are indeed interesting and seminal to the study of popular music, at least in America. He provides short to medium studies of the likes of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Big Mama Thornton, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Bob Dylan, The Mothers and the Velvet Underground, Warren Zevon, Marilyn Manson, The Ramones, Madonna, Weird Al Yankovic, Missy Elliot, and the Modern Lovers, to name a few. He also champions the re-assessment of Wanda Jackson and a re-thinking and interpretation of the famous cookie-cutter girl-groups of the 60s like the Shangri-las. Within this mass of material, he brings up the role of humor in both defining and re-defining youth culture, gender norms, sexuality, and the music business.

Rebels Wit Attitude stands as an open portal for delving into humor in a serious and meaningful way. Because of its form as a survey, dealing mostly with surface rather than plumbing the absolute depths of one age or particular artists, and making no attempt to tie music culture into greater popular culture trends, Ellis invites others to latch on to his case studies as a starting point for more involved and focused work.

For all there is to recommend this, there are some frustrating points. There is little theorizing about how his own parameters of what constituted the applicable humor for specific ages. Rarely do case studies interact with scholarship concerning the social milieu of the decade, generation, or genre, save for topical and stylistic associations to the belligerent humor of Lenny Bruce and George Carlin. Overtures are made to other bodies of scholarship, but Ellis does not overtly make connections or theorize these interactions, a stylistic choice, no doubt. He is also slightly too generous with titling music as subversive, labeling subversive anything that has a different, oppositional vision of the existing hegemony. Without any words on relational aspects of resistive or differently imaginative discourses to the cultures that birthed them, it is hard to get a sense of how these musicians and genres fit into the greater mass of popular culture, remained vibrant and relevant, and were able to be a part of the music market system (which all of them were to a greater or lesser extent). He also does not deal with the marketing of rebellion and its impact on the production of subversive humor. Although the overview format is useful, it does leave many questions unanswered, and leaves deep trenches for other brave, and tenured, scholars to plumb.

With all of its gaps and questions, Rebels still stands as an excellent first step into a relevant aspect of rock culture. As an academic book, it can serve as an alternate reader for any popular music class, as it is not music-technical at all, and covers many of the trends, artists, and genres that are common in history of rock classes. For anyone looking for a style guide to writing compelling prose about music, Ellis is definitely someone to look to; his writing, not bogged down by jargon or excessive citation, is clean and succinct.

2009-02-11T13:15:00.000-08:00

Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader

By Troy Jackson. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, October 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0813125206, $35.00. 248 pages.

Review by William Sturkey, Ohio State University

Troy Jackson’s new book Becoming King explores the various influences that impacted Martin Luther King Jr. during his development as a civil rights leader. Jackson, a pastor and historian, has built upon his experiences working with the King Papers at Stanford to take a closer a look at King’s sermons and essays in exploring King’s intellectual development. Jackson argues that the people of Montgomery, such as E.D. Nixon and Jo Ann Robinson, played a larger role in King’s development than more prominent social activist intellectuals, such as Reinhold Niebur and Mahatma Gandhi, who are most often credited with influencing King’s philosophies. The author further contends that King provided spiritual leadership for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, but that his oratory power contributed to his inability to sustain a mass movement in Montgomery after the bus boycott ended. Jackson maintains that “the bus boycott did more for King and the emerging national civil rights movement than it did for the broader African American community in Montgomery” (7), and that these implications can teach us more about the strengths and weaknesses of King’s civil rights leadership.

Becoming King aptly opens with a discussion of Montgomery activism prior to King’s arrival in the city often referred to as the Cradle of the Confederacy. Jackson shows that African American civil rights organizations had been active in the city as early as 1888. Jackson’s discussion of pre-King activism in Montgomery is comprehensive and includes numerous organizations and individuals who laid the foundation for a mass movement during the years prior to the boycott, but who also had trouble activating the black community. Jackson appropriately credits E.D. Nixon, Rosa Parks, Jo Ann Robinson, and Vernon Johns for laying the groundwork required for later activism.

The next section of the book delves into King’s background. Jackson notes early influences on King before showing the impact that Morehouse President Benjamin Mays had on the young college student. Mays, according to Jackson, first introduced King to Gandhian philosophies after meeting Gandhi in 1948. Jackson’s narrative then tracks King to Montgomery while neglecting King’s experiences in graduate school at Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University on the way. The remainder of the book focuses on King in Montgomery and how the city’s established black leadership propelled King into national prominence. Jackson uses King’s sermons in the late 1950s to illuminate the intricacies of his burgeoning civil rights leadership in Montgomery before concluding with a brief discussion of King’s post-boycott activism, which was focused on the national level, thus hindering the potential of local activism.

Jackson’s argument about the influence of Montgomery’s black leaders on King is compelling, but he loses momentum by dismissing the importance of King’s experiences in graduate school. King’s experiences at Crozer are summed up in a single paragraph, while his development in Boston is discussed in two pages. Jackson argues that “King’s time at Crozer was a season of development and growth rather than one of activism” (46). It is curious that Jackson does not further explore this development. Furthermore, looking solely at Crozer limits the potential impact that living in Chester, Pennsylvania had on King. Chester is one of the oldest bastions of racial justice advocacy in the United States. Its residents played important roles in the abolition movement through the civil rights movement, and King’s immersion into this community must have had some sort of impact on him. Taylor Branch has discussed King’s experiences at Crozer in greater detail, and Jackson would have been wise to reciprocate or at least explore possible influences. The same can be said for King’s experiences in Boston.

Jackson also underplays the importance of Vernon Johns. The two men had a relationship, and Johns impacted King’s development in a number of different ways. If nothing else, Johns provided an important foundation at Dexter for civil rights activism. By 1954, much of the congregation at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church expected political activity from the pulpit. Furthermore, Johns’s radicalism opened a space for King to be seen as moderate even if he was involved in civil rights activities.

The most intriguing part of Jackson’s book is his discussion on class in Montgomery. Jackson poignantly observes that Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where many boycott activities were organized, was a middle-class black church, while First Avenue Baptist Church, where Ralph Abernathy preached, was more working-class. This dynamic was important to the boycott, as most of the people who quit riding the bus were working-class people who probably did not attend Dexter. Jackson, however, does not fully explore the issues of class that surround the boycott, but this is an important observation.

Ultimately, Becoming King is an interesting read filled with several new layers of information. The book benefits heavily from Jackson’s work at the King Papers project in Stanford. Jackson effectively uses King’s words to provide a boycott narrative that illuminates several aspects of the famous civil rights leader’s ideological development and how King was able to inspire the working class of Montgomery to sacrifice their only means of transportation. This book could have benefitted from a further discussion of King’s influences prior to Montgomery, but it is an intriguing look into the development of the civil rights movement’s most visible figure.

2008-12-14T16:50:00.001-08:00

Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture. Edited by Sheila Whiteley. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, September 2008. Paperback: ISBN 978-0-7486-2809-4, $35. 222 Pages.

Review by Joseph Michael Sommers, University of Central Arkansas

One of the risks any reader runs, examining a scholarly collection, is that collection’s capacity to be hit-or-miss in regards to the quality, capacity, and breadth of its essays. Sheila Whiteley, author of numerous works often centered around the pairing of gender and popular culture, such as Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender (1997) and Too Much Too Young: Popular Music, Age and Gender (2005), centers her most recent work around a very specific constellation of subject matter in Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture. It is in that third term of the set, though, “Popular Culture,” that the volume runs into a minor issue worthy of immediate note. “Popular Culture,” as defined by Whiteley’s choice of essays, is limited to multi-modes and media published in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia. Given the overarching knowledge and seeming ubiquity of the controlling term “Christmas” in this collection of essays, it seems remarkably odd to limit the scope of the volume’s contributions to Great Britain and two of its former colonies. Without being overly critical in considering the scope of the collection, it still seems reasonable to suggest that the breadth of possible entries into Anglophone cultures worldwide might have been more appropriate for such a global topic. In excluding these other cultures, larger questions are left unasked. For example: What of the British Empire’s reach into Indian, African, and South American culture? How does/did Christmas become characterized and/or commodified in non-Western colonies? Whiteley’s own introduction questions the idea of how “we understand Christmas […] as characterized by cultural rituals” (emphasis mine, 1). Under that rubric, it seems unusual to truncate the idea of multiculturalism in the essays provided, literally, the shrinking of that “we” to exclude more global cultures. Perhaps these are questions better left to the consumer of the collection.That being said, consumerism and consumer ideology lie at the heart of this collection of essays. The professed goal of the volume “is to explore the ways in which the production of meaning is mediated by the social and cultural practices surrounding Christmas” (4). Minor criticism concerning the scope of Anglophone culture aside, the collection largely succeeds. Whiteley’s volume is divided into four sections that: 1) discuss the history of Christmas from Victorian England forward into the twentieth century in the United States; 2) interrogate the specious Christian hegemony imposed on the religiosity of the holiday through examining cultural artifacts and adornments associated with the season; 3) examine the identity of Christmas as a propagandistic device used during war times; and, finally, 4) “explore the contradictions inherent in Christmas ideology” (13). While not obvious in its construction and organization, Whiteley’s divisions do follow a solid and somewhat causally-linear argument surrounding the commodification of the pagan celebration and the distribution of its use across three countries over the last three centuries. For example, George McKay’s “Consumption, Coca-colonisation, Cultural Resistance – and Santa Claus,” from the historical section, strikes straight into the American Christmas experience directly from Whiteley’s thesis. His analysis of Santa and the products Santa has been used to shill both adorn the cover and highlight the power of Whiteley’s purpose. In essays prior to it, Whiteley defines the scope of the investigation by beginning with John Storey’s “The Invention of the English Christmas” and transitions into the commodification of the concept “across the pond” through Sara Dodd’s essay on Victorian consumption during the holiday.Less successful are entries that attempt to retread extensively covered and seemingly ubiquitous topics concerning Christmas that actually seem to deviate from the book’s stated goals. Chapters dealing with Christmas and religious controversy seem old and academically tired by comparison to livelier discussions of Christmas’s cultural complexity and paradoxical usage (essays which occupy the third and fourth sections of the book). As such, Barry Cooper’s extremely short excursion into Christmas Carols makes the claim that “the genre has a long history,” yet completes his discussion in a very brisk eight pages. It must be said, though, that one of the collection’s strongest essays, “The Musical Underbelly of Christmas,” by Freya Jarman-Ivens, resides and outshines everything else in the second section with its delicate prose belying significant body blows to the idea of a “’perfect’ Christmas” (113). Jarman-Ivens offers a unique, quirky, and witty examination of the less-idealized public display of Christmas that also offers intertextualization with other essays within the collection to enhance the affect achieved.The final two sections offer delightful (a word more in keeping with the event under examination than the essay examining it), counter-intuitive investigations of Christmas from perspectives usually little discussed. John Mundy’s consideration of the filmed usages of Christmas (including some of the more subversive and grin-inducing selections such as Silent Night, Deadly Night and Gremlins) illustrates profound cultural re-imagination of the original pagan intents of the holiday. Thom Swiss’s personal narrative surrounding the investigation of his own life from the mid-1960s through the uses of “specific artifacts [and] cultural texts” marks his own experiences with the holiday in a touching, home-spun manner that only an autobiographical essay could provide (179). It is an unusual essay given the rest of the volume, and a welcome surprise gift left in the book’s stocking that, while highlighting the discontents associated with the author’s own life and connection with the holiday, also reminds the reader of the personal connection the subject matter plays into the life of many of those consuming the text. Likewise, Gerry Bloustien offers a welcome Jewish perspective that, in many ways, compensates for a primarily anglicized record. It is the final essay in a solid, if slightly scattered, collection of essays that contains more hits than misses.

2008-12-14T16:43:00.001-08:00

Sex Goes to School: Girls and Sex Education before the 1960s. By Susan K. Freeman. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, June 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-0-252-07531-5, $25.00. 220 pages.

Review by Jennifer Aerts Terry, California State University, Sacramento

In Sex Goes to School: Girls and Sex Education before the 1960s, Susan K. Freeman explores the nature of sex education in post-World War II America. Freeman posits that the democratic impulse of American society in the 1940s and 1950s influenced the development of sex education curriculum by encouraging dialog-based courses. These courses solicited students’ input, which in turn contributed to the shaping of more liberal courses than what was offered either previously or in later decades. Further, she explains the pedagogical shift away from a purely biological approach to a psychological focus which encouraged introspective analysis. Though, she asserts, formal sex education during this era continued to reinforce heterosexual gender roles and relationships as normal social practices, these classes gave female adolescents the vocabulary and cognizance to challenge contradictory societal messages and confront male dominance, subsequently influencing women’s liberation in the 1960s.
Sex education programs were not new developments in the post-World War II era. They originated in the turn of the twentieth-century social hygiene and purity movements that sought to clean up cities, assimilate immigrants, and regulate Americans’ sexual behavior. The curriculum, medically grounded and morally rigid, took a clinical approach aimed mainly at combating venereal disease and premarital pregnancy. Freeman likens this approach to modern-day conservative curriculum that places topics regarding sexuality in essentially positive or negative categories. Yet, Freeman explains, in the years following the war and preceding the moral backlash against the sexual revolution, American attitudes and behaviors took a more liberal slant in that sex education programs promoted physical relationships between young men and women as normal and desirable. In fact, students were given the impression that a desire to do otherwise was unnatural and immature. In this regard, Freeman adds her voice to those of Stephanie Coontz and Joanne Meyerowitz in further complicating our understanding of post-World War II sexual behavior, challenging the notion that Americans were more conservative in their attitudes and behaviors than in later eras. This liberal attitude toward physical relationships led to frank and open classroom discussions that placed an emphasis on “emotional satisfaction” rather than physical pleasure (145). Though widely supported and welcomed in a number of communities, she also points to continued opposition from the Catholic Church.
It was within this liberal atmosphere that students (with the focus of this study primarily on teenage girls) participated in a variety of activities, discussions, and question and answer sessions. Freeman does not view students as “a submissive captive audience” controlled and indoctrinated by educators as in earlier decades (xi). Rather, the democratic, frank atmosphere of the classes welcomed adolescents’ questions, comments, and perspectives, thus shaping the curriculum as it went. On this point, Freeman emphasizes the importance of dissenting opinions, questions, and arguments made by students, since that is where one might truly see a deviation from the curriculum. Based on examples drawn from preserved student journals, assignments, and educators’ recollections, it does indeed appear that discussions were student-centered, and at times, diverged from planned curriculum, but Freeman provides little evidence of dissent or what would have been termed deviant inquiry. Unfortunately, without concrete evidence, comments such as, “Other questions were no doubt voiced, although teachers ignored or minimized them in promoting sex education,” and, “Inquiring students nevertheless posed questions that educators might have wished to avoid” (98), leave the reader wondering about the nature of those questions. Further, the bulk of examples support the notion that adolescent girls were indeed inquisitive but mostly compliant with educators’ principles.
Though a great deal of significance was placed on one’s conduct in dating situations and potential encounters with the opposite sex, sex education in the 1940s and 1950s was much broader than simple dos and don’ts of sexual relationships. The courses Freeman studied were relationship-centered and carried names such as Family Life Education, Human Science, and Human Relations. In addition to potential romantic relationships, these courses encouraged boys and girls to consider platonic interactions and personal decorum in a variety of social settings. The promotion of gender roles arises as a common theme among these courses. Here, Freeman connects sex education classes with the social construction of femininity versus masculinity. Boys and girls were conditioned, albeit in what was considered a progressive and enlightened manner, to accept and adopt gender roles and hierarchies as a means of conforming to proper society. As further evidence, Freeman highlights extracurricular activities such as dances, dating, and outlets of student expression such as high school yearbooks as places where societal constructs were reinforced by the students themselves. This, she suggests, was an extension of sex education. Yet it was also in these extracurricular activities that a degree of rebellion and dissent was evidenced through non-conformist behavior, as a variety of examples attest.
Freeman’s work differs from other scholarship on sex education in her bottom-up approach; she focuses on and draws attention to the students, rather than on the educators’ intent and curriculum development. Sex Goes to School is a valuable addition to scholarship on girls’ studies in that it highlights the role schools, and teenagers themselves, played in the enforcement of rigid social messages regarding gender roles and responsibilities that permeated post-World War II America. While Freeman’s assertion that this education somehow empowered girls and influenced them in the later women’s movement is intriguing, this is not made completely clear and could bear further investigation. Nonetheless, this is an interesting book that could prove useful in history and women’s studies courses.

2008-11-16T15:30:00.001-08:00

The Metrosexual: Gender, Sexuality, and Sport. By David Coad. Albany: State University of New York Press, July 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-0791474105, $16.95. 214 pages.
Review by Gypsey Teague, Clemson University
from SJC post 2 (10/13/08)

There are not many books on gender that do not cover women’s issues or Women’s Studies. Therefore, when I was asked to review this book I agreed quickly, and I am very glad I did. This is not the book I anticipated. What I expected—a book on how the metrosexual became part of the general vocabulary of television and print—although close to the heart of this book, was replaced by a book rife with examples of how the boundary between the homoerotic and the heterosexist is being blurred in advertising.
Coad gives the reader many examples of how the clothing industry, specifically the underwear and sportswear manufacturers, wove a mythos of sports stars and their irrefutable heterosexuality. However, Coad also uses the same examples to show how this mythos of heterosexuality was used by publishers to lure and capture the gay reader into dreaming that these models at the height of their masculinity could be theirs. It has been a fine line trodden since the 1970s, one still in evidence today with actors and sports figures such as Michael Jordan and Charlie Sheen.
As a professor of Women’s Studies I have taught for some time that not all advertising is exploitive of women merely because it shows women in their underwear. This book gives the male side of this same issue. Yes, the male models are showing much more than they would have in print and television ads of yesteryear; however, they are doing nothing more nor less than what the women have been doing for years, and they are enjoying the fame that goes with it.I am saddened, though, by the fact that in order for these ads to work in the minds of the straight general viewing public, the models must be hyper-hetero. They must portray a degree of homophobia in some cases that borders on damaging to humanity. Examples of trophy wives for featured sports stars are mixed with their highly evolved sense of style and fashion. Their knowledge of which material goes with which style is no longer the exception to the rule but is the rule itself.I have ordered a copy of this book for Clemson University’s Gunnin Architecture Library and have included it in my syllabus for the Gender class that I teach in Women’s Studies. As the saying goes; “the mirror has two faces,” and in this case one of them is not what you expect to see. I recommend this book for anyone who has a Gender, Women’s Studies, or Men’s Studies program, or anyone who is a marketing or management major. There is something for all of them, as well as the general public, to see how we are being manipulated in our view of sex, sexuality, and image in advertising.

2008-10-13T20:30:00.000-07:00

Sounds of Change: A History of FM Broadcasting in America. By Christopher H. Sterling and Michael Keith. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, July 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-8078-5888-2, $22.50. 336 pages.
Review by Joseph Michael Sommers, University of Kansas

In light of the rapid development in communications over the last decade, it feels unusual to pick up a recent study accounting for the history of FM radio in a twenty-first century dominated by live-streaming internet broadcasts, .mp3s and Steven Paul Jobs’s seemingly ubiquitous contribution to digital media: the iPod. As Lynn Christian notes, “the big question,” in this day and age, seems to be less where the medium of FM broadcasting began, but, rather, where is the once predominant distribution hub of all musical programming headed in a century primed to abandon the airwaves for smaller, clearer, and less ad-driven portable handhelds (x)? What will FM radio’s legacy be as a new millennium ushers in a new medium? Will FM radio remain a relevant participant in the discussion, or will it fall by the wayside like its predecessor, AM radio? In Sounds of Change: A History of FM Broadcasting in America, Christopher H. Sterling and Michael C. Keith suggest that we can focus our understanding of FM radio broadcasting’s future by revisiting the cyclical nature of its past. The book tells a story of the unstoppable will of technology and consumerism forcing the medium’s advancement, followed by the medium’s unwilling self-consumption.This is not to say that Sterling and Keith claim to know, or even speculate thoroughly on, FM’s future. On the contrary, one of the few criticisms that can be lobbied at this masterful investigation into the FM radio story is its lack of interest in the last fifteen years of the medium. While the authors rightly pay respect to analog radio as it enters the final days of its lifecycle—its “decline,” beginning with the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (echoing, as they note, AM radio’s death knell with the Communications Act of 1934)—they pay only middling attention to FM’s august years in a terse, truncated montage of a final chapter. This becomes especially evident when this ultra-brief coverage is compared to the replete investigation of FM’s infancy, early struggles, and boon years. Given that their argument hinges on the notion that the digital revolution seems to mirror FMs usurpation of AM radio a half century earlier, it is odd that the authors do not make a stronger connection to the next evolutionary step in the format. In other words, in shirking a greater investigation of the current moment, particularly as it is so well-documented, Sterling and Keith fumble in a manner similar to the AM operators they write about, who did not believe that there was any future in FM transmission. The authors do acknowledge this point, indicating with some sense of wistful nostalgia that they know the end for FM radio is nigh, but that does not mitigate treating the “phase out” years as a somewhat sentimental montage (213).Minor criticisms of their treatment of the contemporary moment aside, this study is far more handsome and replete when documenting the early and middle years, even if it does come up short closer to the present day. Written with a prose as lively as it is erudite, the authors connect the rise of FM broadcasting to a global event and a man—The Second World War and Howard Armstrong—and that man’s struggle to convince American broadcasters to embrace a tiny slice of the band that would eventually come to dominate the spectrum. More importantly, besides simply accounting for the dramatic rise of the medium, theirs is a study that fills a dearth in the research documenting the greater cultural history surrounding the project: FM’s birth in New England; its struggle with corporate AM, Congress, and RCA (a story as dramatic, arguably, as the struggles history suggests occurred between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla); the Eureka! moment of stereophonic sound; and the migration into cities and into automobiles by a swelling American population after WWII. Hundreds of such narratives give the greater pastiche a well-defined and discernable shape. The names and faces are familiar, and the authors use a deft methodology to cover an immensely dense field of personalities ranging from Orson Welles and his famous War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938 through Sirius’s recent acquisition of Howard Stern, with the narrative tact of a nineteenth-century Russian novelist.In the end, Sterling and Keith make a more-than-commendable, and largely successful, effort to make FM radio’s story reflect a larger socio-cultural relief. They examine FM’s history as a test case for the question of “Who owns the media, and how does that matter?” (5). In recent days, as questions such as these seem to occupy the American zeitgeist across the greater media, Sterling and Keith’s volley into the discussion is a well-considered exploration and response. The authors use FM radio as one such example in order to illustrate George Santayana’s famous dictum concerning the ramifications befalling those who fail to remember their past. That the authors do not prognosticate the immediate future of FM radio is not necessarily a fault as much as a caution, given the speed with which the medium is evolving. Yet, given the otherwise overwhelming successes and merits accomplished in this whirlwind barnstorm across the dial over the course of some eighty years, even Sterling and Keith’s opinions on FM’s future would have been appreciated. As is, the study is marked by an intrepid effort into a history that still floats out into the reaches of space as radio waves. Given the strength of their analysis, superb prose, and generosity of spirit toward the subject matter, Sterling and Keith seem to have spent long nights listening to those broadcasts while composing this fine contribution to the field of communications.

2008-10-13T20:27:00.001-07:00

Identifying Consumption: Subjects and Objects in Consumer Society. By Robert G. Dunn. Philadelphia: Temple UP, June 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-1-59213-870-8, $23.95. 235 pages.
Review by Mary C. Carter, University of Oklahoma

Only recently have critics in cultural and language studies, particularly in response to postmodern analyses, begun to examine how identity is constructed through consumption. Robert G. Dunn claims that such critique is imperative because modern practices of consumption form “the most powerful link between the economic and socio-cultural realms” (3). Whereas commodity critique has in the past been effective to analyze the socioeconomic effects of capitalist culture, in Identifying Consumption Dunn focuses on the subjective relationships between commodity objects and human actors, and how those relationships serve to structure individual identity.As Dunn notes in the introduction, unpacking the nature of the effects of consumption and its subsequent repositioning is an interdisciplinary process; consequently, his analysis draws from many sources. First, Dunn attempts to plot a structural lineage for a theory of consumption, beginning with the commodity critique of Marx. While Marx does anticipate the structural detachment of the commodity object in keeping with the overall alienation of the worker, he could not perceive the enormous influence of what he called a “‘mysterious thing’” (qtd. in Dunn 27). His omission of a deeper analysis of the commodity object is overlooked, argues Dunn, because the breadth and depth of its social imbrication was impossible to fathom. Tracing Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism, Dunn then moves to Georg Lukacs, who posits that commodification restructures social relations. Dunn sees the commodity as increasing in value to the worker as a possession, and as such, as an indicator of position within a larger social organization.The influences of modernity, which Dunn notes “can be read as the systematic commodification of need and want,” are also accounted for (4). He follows the motif of increasing alienation next to Georg Simmel, whose critiques of modernity focus on the abstraction and social detachment created by monetary exchange. Dunn uses Simmel to connect overarching structures with individual subjectivities, emphasizing the relationships between them. According to Simmel, culture occurs at the point of interiorization of objects and exteriorization of subjectivities. This is one of Dunn’s most convincing evidential connections between material analysis and individual interior life. Dunn also uses the class analysis of the Frankfurt school as a bridge to theories that see the consumption of commodities as a way of expressing status or of experiencing desire, pleasure, social control, narcissism, and hedonism. He cites Veblen and Galbraith to show how artificially created needs are initiated by production and by the impulse of economic drivers, creating a never-ending cycle of consumption in pursuit of elusive status.The metamorphosis of the commodity object from a necessity to an artificially created need is well substantiated by Dunn in the first part of the text; next, he looks at the influences of postmodern theories of consumption.The turn to textual analysis and to anthropology is a postmodern necessity for Dunn as he extends his theory of consumption beyond Marxist critique. He interprets the relationship of commodity to consumption to consumer through semiotics, the form of analysis used by Boudrillard. In this understanding, the commodity becomes a sign with multiple layers of signification in a semiotic system contained within and structured by the political economy. The value of commodity is not merely economic, but also constructed so that it signifies in a greater web of social meaning. Boudrillard perceived the slippage between sign and signifier as representing a potentially dangerous avenue of social control. Dunn next examines the usefulness of an anthropological view, noting that anthropology may be the postmodern discipline: it considers all realities to be constructed culturally. Due to its focus on tribal societies, anthropology’s lens of analysis disregards issues of class stratification and instead observes how social relations are structured in part through a system of goods. Dunn posits British cultural studies’ penchant for drawing from multiple disciplines as a way to address the subject that also recognizes agency.The move toward agency and away from structural forces is a key point that Dunn uses to discuss the subjectivity of consumption. While Boudrillard locates commodities within a semiotic system of signification among other commodities, Dunn looks beyond the limitations of his structuralism to acknowledge consumption as driven also by the agency of the consumer. By positioning consumers as agents seduced by aesthetics and pleasurable attributes, or compelled by sensual materiality, he proposes them as reflective consumers of commodity goods seeking to fill a need unaccounted for by sign/signification analysis. He posits the notion of insatiability as the elusive drive behind the acquisition of goods and as the crucial point where economic structures interact with individual subjectivities. Capitalism cannot exist without insatiability, and factors of desire, emulation, and larger signification all play a role in compelling consumers’ insatiability. Commodity consumption signifies in the larger culture as lifestyle choices or as outward manifestations of how individuals fit into their cultural surroundings. Dunn argues that discussions of status relations are decreasingly centered around class and more often focused on lifestyle. Lifestyle is clearly demarcated through specific patterns of consumption of goods and experiences. Lifestyles are often sold packaged as total experiences and take on an iconic life of their own, primarily built through the consumption of related goods. Observing that style and its antecedent fashion are notoriously capricious, Dunn observes that style is the perception of what defines a lifestyle, and that fashion is its realization. A vital component of the drive for consumption, fashion dictates that the old must be replaced by the new, keeping the stimulus for production intact in a self-perpetuating cycle. Consumers look to fashion as a lifestyle indicator to pattern their choices on those characteristic of a desired cultural group; these choices function not only as outward indicators of cultural belonging, but also as ways in which individuals continually construct themselves.Dunn offers no either /or choices as to the roots of modern consumption; instead, he expertly constructs a careful lineage of the transition of the commodity object to one of insatiable consumer desire.

2008-10-13T20:04:00.001-07:00

Drunk the Night Before: An Anatomy of Intoxication. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005, rpt. in paperback July 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-0-8166-4398-1, $22.50. 228 pages.
Review by Bridget Roussell Cowlishaw, Northeastern State University, Oklahoma

Marty Roth’s Drunk the Night Before (published as a paperback in July 2008) is a well-researched examination of how intoxication is represented or elided in three ancient Greek texts and three commonplaces. It is a study in the style of Alain Corbin: examination of a sensory experience as cultural concept. The research is so thorough that the reader, distracted by the brisk movement from scholarship to scholarship, may ignore the narrowness of focus and not ask the question, “Why the almost exclusive interest in ancient Greek texts when the work is nominally covering ‘the western world’?” Even if we grant the implied assumption that “the western world” is based on Greek art—an assumption that seems very stuffy for a study á la Corbin--why confine oneself to only Anacreon poetry, Euripedes’s The Bacchae, and Plato’s Symposium? But if the focus of Drunk the Night Before is both too narrow and too broad, that is perhaps a hazard of innovative scholarship. The text is certainly helpful in guiding future scholarship. In fact, Roth is most interesting when outlining research that has not been done on specific texts (e.g., comparative study of drinking poetry across cultures) and concepts (e.g., “Intoxication is visible and untheorized; addiction is invisible…and overtheorized” (xvii)). The scholar of cultures looking for a project will find more than a half-dozen worthy ideas here.In chapters dealing with the three chosen literary objects, the emphasis is on how scholarship has shaped the subject matter rather than on the literature itself. The reader is given a grand tour of the critical reception of these ancient Greek works rather than an analysis of the works themselves. We are warned in the introduction that the book is not an attempt to form a thesis, but rather an exercise allowing the texts to speak with each other. Though it is the scholars who are actually conversing in the first half of the book, it’s a conversation quick in its pace and wide in its purview.After the speedy tour of literature, the reader finds chapters devoted to three conceptions of intoxication: the bane of Christianity, the inspiration of artists, and the potion/poison of magicians. The discussion of Christianity’s views of intoxication begins with establishing an early understanding from Judaism, echoed again in Islam, that intoxication is always metaphorical: spiritual intoxication is sobering. We are then escorted through a history of how this idea reversed itself in the Christian church. In this chapter alone is there a conclusion--or, at least, a basic assumption that guides the conversation: notions of heaven and spiritual ecstasy are the result of alcohol and other drugs. This assumption renders the chapter on Christianity rather shallow since only here is intoxication reduced to its literal meaning.In contrast, the chapter examining “magic potions” finds references to alcohol in its various disguises. We are asked to consider the fact that in Eurasian myth and Arthurian narratives, wine is usually the drink into which magical ingredients are mixed. It is not the drink itself, but something unsubstantial though effective that is at work. In the case of love potions, the magic is desire itself, not a literal intoxicant. This is even the case when the elixir comes from Ponce de Leon’s fountain or Shakespeare’s fairies. Nineteenth-century prose being so rich in stories of magic potions, the reader wishes the journey through this period were less rushed. But Roth has more to examine than literary texts: he examines how the concept of intoxication enters theory as well when Bakhtin’s “carnival” is treated as a consequence of intoxication.The chapter dealing with intoxication as poetic muse is more familiar territory than others, but no less absorbing. Here the author returns us to mythologies that assert a common origin for intoxication and inspiration, moving on to classical and Renaissance conceptions of wine as an aid to art, and finally giving center stage to the Romantics. Several fascinating studies of the romantic notion of genius are cited with conclusions that assert genius is code for another perceived pathology: alcoholism, drug addiction, or homosexuality. In this chapter, we are treated to consideration of all the arts, not just literature, and it is stimulating to see the similarities among critics of music and painting alongside the literary. Perhaps most interesting in this chapter are citations of literary artists denying that the written word is enhanced by drink. When the denunciations come from such notorious drinkers as Fitzgerald, O’Neill, and Hemingway, one is obliged to take notice. But then we are shown the testimonies of writers who claimed the opposite: Wilkie Collins, Poe, and Faulkner, among others. In the end, Roth prefers the later conclusion, that the artist’s drinking is part of his work.Because there is no thesis driving the book, Drunk the Night Before ends abruptly. The reader is left with a sense that s/he has been given a quick tour of many small treasures. Happily, the desire to slow down and savor the treats can be satisfied somewhat by reading through the extensive endnotes. Scholars interested in what has been said concerning intoxication as a cultural experience will find this short text a great pleasure.

2008-08-17T17:52:00.000-07:00

from University Press of Kentucky

Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics through Popular Culture

by Stanley K. Schultz and Joseph J. Foy

under review by Charlene Etkind, Ph.D.

2008-08-17T17:49:00.001-07:00

from University Press of Kansas

Attack Politics: Negativity in Presidential Campaigns since 1960

by Emmett H. Buell Jr. and Lee Sigelman

under review by Derek Catsam, University of Texas of the Permian Basin

2008-08-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

from Edinburgh University Press

Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture

by Sheila Whiteley

under review by Joe Sommers, University of Central Arkansas

2008-08-17T17:19:00.000-07:00

from University of Illinois Press

Sex Goes to School: Girls and Sex Education before the 1960s

by Susan K. Freeman

under review by Jennifer Terry, California State University, Sacramento

2008-08-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

from University of Kentucky Press

The Godfather of the Tabloid: Generoso Pope, Jr. and the National Enquirer

by Jack Vitek

under review by Frances Ward-Johnson, Elon University, North Carolina