Abstract
From 1978 t? 1985, network television viewers tuned in en masse to watch a cartoon show, titled the Bugs Bunny/Tweety Show, based on the well-known and loved Looney Tunes cartoons. The show started with the goofy character Daffy Ducky singing, to full orchestral and choral accompaniment, the following signature tune:
Overture, curtain, lights! This is it, the night of nights. No more rehearsing or nursing a part. We know every part by heart!
The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence, for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane.
—Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72)
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Notes
Brian Wilson Key, The Age of Manipulation (New York: Henry Holt, 1989), 13.
See Theodor Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1949).
Brenda Downes and Steve Miller, Media Studies (London: Hodder, 1998), 25.
Frank R. Leavis and Denys Thompson, Culture and Environment (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1933).
John Lough, “The Analysis of Popular Culture,” in The Media Book, ed. Chris Newbold, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, and Hilde Van Den Bulck (London: Arnold, 2002), 219.
Paul Lazarsfeld, The Peoples Choice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948).
See, for instance, George Gerbner, Larry Gross, Michael Morgan, and Nicole Signorielli, “The Mainstreaming of America: Violence Profile No. 11,” Journal of Communication 30 (1980): 10–29.
See, for example, Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communication (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1955).
Dennis McQuail, Towards a Sociology of Mass Communication (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1969).
See, for example, Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobsen, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis, eds., Culture, Media, Language (London: Hutchison, 1980).
A good overall account of reception theory work is the one by Janet Staiger, Media Reception Studies (New York: New York University Press, 2005).
Beatrice K. Otto, Fools Are Everywhere: The Court Jester around the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)
Jim Holt, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes (New York: Norton, 2008)
John R. Clarke, Looking at Laughter: Humor, Power, and Transgression in Roman Visual Culture, 100 BC-AD 250 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).
Dennis Fingeroth, Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us about Ourselves and Our Society (New York: Continuum, 2004), 178.
Joseph L. Henderson, “Ancient Myths and Modern Man,” in Man and His Symbols, ed. Carl G. Jung (New York: Dell, 1964), 146.
Margaret Leroy, Some Girls Do: Why Women Do and Dont Make the First Move (London: Harper Collins, 1997).
Richard Klein, Cigarettes Are Sublime (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994).
Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 43.
Linda M. Scott, Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 167.
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© 2009 Marcel Danesi
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Danesi, M. (2009). Spectacle-Power: Why We Hate to Love and Love to Hate Pop Culture. In: X-Rated!. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230617834_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230617834_6
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