General Introduction
The website provides resources for the critical analysis of popular culture in the US, including the impact of that culture beyond national borders. Resources include sites on various forms of popular culture, including music, film, television, advertising, sports, fashion, toys, magazines and comic books, and the medium in which this message moves, digital culture. The site focuses on issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, consumerism, cultural imperialism and censorship, as shaped by and reflected in various mass media. As bell hooks argues "Whether we're talking about race or gender of class, popular culture is where the pedagogy is, it's where the learning is." Mass culture it is not just a space of amusement, but also a space where social values are formed and political views are shaped.
This site also includes sections that introduce and give resources for four main types or elements of popular culture analysis: production analysis, textual analysis, audience analysis, and historical analysis (of the first three dimensions as they change over time). Also included are links to online pop culture courses, to journals treating popular culture, to some other key sites providing pop cultural analysis, and to media activist organizations that work to bring social justice critiques to mass media. Use the navigation bar on the left to reach sites in all these areas. As with all Internet sites, the locations referenced vary in quality and usefulness. Some are commercial sites valuable more as objects of knowledge than as producers of knowledge. Others are academic sites that teach ways to analyze pop culture, or offer substantial resources for doing your own analyses.
Since the Internet seldom, if ever, provides all the information needed on a given topic, users interested in the serious study of mass-mediated culture are also strongly urged to consult the accompanying bibliography of books on popular culture, and use that old-fashioned, non-virtual space known as the library. On most pages in this site you will find parodies of advertisements. Some are aimed at the specific advertising practice represented, and some at questionable practices of the corporation sponsoring the ad. And all are aimed to remind us that a precious new public space, the World Wide Web, is in danger of becoming another space where only corporate free speech is protected. Most of the parodies are courtesy of AdBusters, with a few from other parody sites found on the "Advertising" page. Note that each of the other CulturalPolitics.net sites also treat some elements of popular culture.