ABSTRACT
They identified with television programs, films, and popular music in a way that they would not even consider about politics. These texts unleashed the memories and experiences suppressed by the dominant rhetoric of their private and public lives. Here, hope was still an issue, and happiness was still possible.The gap between dominant political rhetoric and their lived experiences left them with enormous tensions and anxieties with no outlet for expression save in their responses to popular culture texts. Here was a sphere they saw as their own, a presentation of choices about the world that mattered to them, and in discussing these texts, they brought forth the full passion and anger and hope that they repressed elsewhere.
