ABSTRACT

'...well-written and accessible. Making the difficult seem easy is Fiske's great talent. No introductory reading list in the field would be complete without a Fiske' - Sociology In Reading the Popular, John Fiske analyzes popular "texts" to reveal both their explicit, implicit (and often opposite) meanings and uses, and the social and political dynamics they reflect. He examines the multitude of meanings lying beneath the cultural artifacts that surround us in shopping malls, popular music and television. Features: * highlights the conflicting responses that cultural phenomenon such as Madonna and the Chicago Sears Tower evoke. * locates popular culture as the point at which people take the goods offered them by industrial capitalism and turn them to their own creative, and even subversive, uses. * refutes the theory that a mass audience mindlessly consumes every product it is offered.

chapter 1|12 pages

Understanding Popular Culture

chapter 2|12 pages

Shopping for Pleasure

chapter |9 pages

COMMODITIES AND WOMEN

chapter |9 pages

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION

chapter 3|27 pages

Reading the Beach

chapter |7 pages

CHANNEL SEVEN NEWS

chapter 4|18 pages

Video Pleasures

chapter |20 pages

Chapter 5a: Madonna

chapter |18 pages

Chapter 5b: Romancing the Rock

chapter 6|16 pages

Everyday Quizzes Everyday Life

chapter 7|22 pages

News, History, and Undisciplined Events

chapter |14 pages

KNOWLEDGE, POWER, AND PLEASURE

chapter 8|1 pages

Popular News

chapter |4 pages

RELEVANCE

chapter |9 pages

PRODUCTIVITY

chapter 9|20 pages

Searing Towers

chapter |5 pages

References

chapter |1 pages

About the Author