A Song of Ice and Fire by george r. r. martin bantam, 5216 pages, $36.39 No English child will ever again experience, as I did, the joys of Arthur Conan Doyle’s great historical romances The White Company and Sir Nigel, set in the far-off fourteenth century. The remaining . . . . Continue Reading »
We need a new kind of literary culture in which criticism and analysis can finally thrive: one that lives with and loves books for their “hidden gifts.” Continue Reading »
Let me begin with a confession. I spent almost a half century producing pop culture, mostly for television. This admission is an act of penance but also suggests a degree of generational responsibility. Maybe a half century in the entertainment industry isn’t sufficient for a full understanding, . . . . Continue Reading »
The long-running British sci-fi staple Doctor Who has quietly become one of the most pro-life shows on television. Under the tenure of showrunner Steven Moffat, there has been a strong pro-life subtext for several seasons of Doctor Who. Even before Moffat took the reins of the show, he wrote a pair . . . . Continue Reading »
It has been more than a half-century since James Coleman and his team surveyed students in ten high schools to determine their values and interests and attitudes toward learning. The conclusion was that a new social formation was upon us: the adolescent society. That was the title of the book . . . . Continue Reading »
The issue of populism in the Evangelical ethos raises a concern for the need to differentiate between pop culture as folk culture and pop culture as mass culture. At its best, Evangelicalism seeks to preserve and foster folk culture and the critics of Evangelical piety need to recognize this . . . . Continue Reading »
Over at Powerline, an interesting post and a more interesting thread on whether conservatives can close the “Pop Culture Gap.” One guy even laments that the Republicans blew by not taking the book South Park Conservatives to heart! So, apparently the day of vindication of Paul Cantor , . . . . Continue Reading »
Well, he thinks so . And far more importantly, in my sincere judgment, Mark Judge does too . Judge writes for Acculturated, the conservative website that seeks to explain Why Pop Culture Matters. So this post is a continuation of some observations about rap , but also, about the paradoxes of . . . . Continue Reading »