“Popular Culture” is a complex social system and this course concentrates on its visual manifestations in various media. We focus on women as signs or emblems, as producers, and as consumers, of “popular culture”, but attention is also given to the representation of masculinity and of race/ethnicity. Mainstream and marginal, appropriated and subverting, reflective and formative, “popular culture” is both a multivalent signifying system and a powerful industry.
After a brief thematic introduction to gender, and to analysis, we focus on contemporary American culture, examining such examples as advertising and music; Barbie dolls; parental roles in film and advertising; romance in fiction and films like the classic, Pretty Woman; the male “buddy” system in action movies and the female friend in other films; construction of the male “hero” and the female “action chick”. Student participation will include two papers, a final exam, and regular discussion in class.
