Beautiful Things in Popular Culture

243 Pages·2006·2.42 MB·English

by  Alan McKee (ed.)

Beautiful Things in
Popular Culture
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As always, to John Hartley, who is right
about most things
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Beautiful Things in
Popular Culture
edited by Alan McKee
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Blackwell Publishing
© 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
except for editorial material and organization © 2007 by Alan McKee
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
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The right of Alan McKee to be identifi ed as the Author of the Editorial Material in this
Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright,
Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1 2007
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beautiful things in popular culture / edited by Alan McKee.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-3190-2 (hardback : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4051-3190-X (hardback : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-3191-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4051-3191-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Popular culture. 2. Aesthetics, Modern—20th century. I. McKee, Alan.
CB430.B387 2006
306′.0973–dc22
2006001715
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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Contents
List of Figures vii
Notes on Contributors viii
Introduction 1
Alan McKee
1 Best Contemporary Mainstream Superhero Comics
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis 15
Henry Jenkins
2 The Best Batman Story: The Dark Knight Returns 33
Will Brooker
3 The Best Serial Killer Novel: Red Dragon 49
Sue Turnbull
4 The Best Australian Romance Novelist: Emma Darcy 64
Glen Thomas
5 The Best Website For Men Who Have Sex With Men:
cruisingforsex.com 79
Mark McLelland
6 The Best Basketball Player: Michael Jordan 87
Thomas McLaughlin
7 The Best Sneakers: The Nike Air Max Classic TW 99
Claire Gould
8 The Best Action Console Game: Grand Theft Auto:
San Andreas 111
John Banks
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vi Contents
9 The Best Motorbike: The Ducati 916 Superbike 124
Margaret Henderson
10 The Best Propaganda: Humphrey Jennings,
The Silent Village (1943) 144
John Hartley
11 The Best Villain in Xena: Warrior Princess: Alti 164
Sara Gwenllian Jones
12 The Best Pop Princess: Kylie Minogue 178
Marc Brennan
13 The Best Disco Record: Sharon Redd:
“Never Give You Up” 193
Simon Frith
Conclusion 204
Alan McKee
Index 225
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List of Figures
9.1 Utopia comes in yellow as well (front view) 126
9.2 Utopia comes in yellow as well (rear view) 127
9.3 Utopia comes in yellow as well (side view) 128
12.1 Cover, Q magazine, June 2002 185
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Notes on Contributors
John Banks has been an avid gamer since playing the arcade game
Defender at the local corner shop as a teen in the early 1980s. His favorite
videogames include the Grand Theft Auto series and Halo 1 & 2. Recently,
he has been spending far too much time playing Blizzard’s World of
Warcraft. He works with the games development company Auran, as well
as being a researcher with the Australasian Cooperative Research Centre
for Interaction Design. He has researched the relationships among com-
puter games, their audiences, and game development companies, among
other things.
Marc Brennan’s fi rst and only encounter with Kylie Minogue was a
personal appearance by the pop star at the Perth nightclub Pinocchio’s
in 1987. An arch Indie boy at the time, his intention was to heckle the
diminutive starlet – an aim that was thwarted by his two autograph-
hunting friends. Age has weathered such prejudiced tendencies, as has a
greater appreciation of the art of the pop song encouraged by years of
viewing such Australian televisual staples as Countdown, Rage, and Video
Hits (but not So Fresh). He now fi nds pleasure in cutting the rug to
remixes of pop songs, drinking beer at live performances, and busting
some Janet Jackson moves for his students. He will, one day, manage a
boy band.
Will Brooker grew up on Denny O’Neil’s Batman in the 1970s, Frank
Miller’s Batman in the 1980s and Grant Morrison’s Batman in the 1990s.
While researching his PhD thesis, a cultural history of Batman’s fi rst 60
years, he spent two weeks in DC Comics’ NYU offi ces and interviewed
Denny O’Neil about Miller and Morrison. On the publication of his book
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Notes on Contributors ix
Batman Unmasked in 2000, he was interviewed by Gloria Hunniford on
a sofa with the 1960s Caped Crusader, Adam West. Brooker knows seven
working defenses. Three of them disarm with minimal contact. Three of
them kill. The other . . . hurts.
Simon Frith is old enough to be described these days as a pioneer of
popular music studies – his fi rst academic book, The Sociology of Rock,
appeared in 1978. In university terms, his disciplinary expertise has
always been a little unclear – he has been a lecturer in sociology, a profes-
sor in departments of both English Studies and Film and Media, and
now holds the Tovey Chair of Music at the University of Edinburgh. His
fi rst published reviews (of records by Gene Vincent and the Small Faces)
appeared in Rolling Stone in 1970 and in the 1980s he became rock critic
of both the London Sunday Times and the Observer. For much of this
period he reviewed singles, and his “Thesis on Disco” (an homage to
Karl Marx’s “Thesis on Feuerbach”) appeared in Time Out on the occa-
sion of the UK release of Saturday Night Fever. He has been the chair of
the judges of the Mercury Music Prize since its inauguration in 1992 and
is the author of Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. He may
not know much about disco, but has every confi dence in his expertise in
what is meant by “the best.”
Claire Gould would like to think she has the best-dressed feet in the
world. A former university lecturer and newspaper journalist, she crossed
the fl oor to online media when they adopted the more casual combat
trousers and trainers dress code. She currently edits the Daily Telegraph
online (www.dailytelegraph.com.au) in Sydney, has broadened her foot-
wear horizons and wears thongs (fl ip fl ops) in summer. She stares at her
feet for at least three hours a day.
Sara Gwenllian Jones has researched and written extensively on Xena:
Warrior Princess in particular, and cult television generally, in her books
Cult Television and Worlds Apart: Essays on Cult Television (edited with
Roberta Pearson). She has also published on the topic in journals
including Continuum, Screen, the Journal of Television and New Media,
and in book collections including Mark Jancovich and James Lyons’
Quality Popular Television. Her next book will be a cultural history of
pirates.
John Hartley lived in Wales for 19 years and fell for Humphrey Jennings
while taking a fi lm production course at Chapter Film Workshop in
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x Notes on Contributors
Cardiff in 1979. His interest in propaganda stems from having made an
“agit-prop” fi lm about working conditions for cinema projectionists.
Called We’re Dying to Please You, it played at art houses and fi lm festivals
and led to the replacement of Chapter Cinema’s carbon arc lamps with
xenon bulbs. Hartley visited Cwmgiedd with a view to making a fi lm
about The Silent Village, but emigrated to Australia instead. He went on
to write about Jennings and propaganda more generally in several books,
including Tele-ology, The Politics of Pictures, Uses of Television (all Rout-
ledge) and A Short History of Cultural Studies (Sage).
After a long and expensive apprenticeship in shiny, fast, and beautiful
Italian objects – namely racing bicycles – Margaret Henderson eventu-
ally progressed to beautiful two-wheeled objects with engines. Four
Japanese sports bikes later, and one ride of a friend’s Ducati F1, she fi nally
got the economic base in place and bought her fi rst Ducati, a 750
Monster. She now rides a Ducati 800 Supersport – red, of course, with
white GT stripes. She has published widely in cultural and literary studies,
including a study of motorcycle magazines.
Henry Jenkins once received a fan letter from Neil Gaiman after Jenkins
testifi ed before the US Senate Commerce Committee hearings on “Mar-
keting Violence to Youth.” DC Comics president Paul Levitz returns his
phone calls. In fact, he is working with Gaiman, Levitz, and Harlan
Ellison to organize the Julius Schwartz lecture series at MIT in honor
of the Silver Age editor who revitalized The Flash and Green Lantern
and created The Justice League of America. He regularly teaches courses
on comics as the DeFlorz Professor of the Humanities and Director of
the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. He is the author or
editor of more than 10 books on various aspects of popular culture,
including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture,
From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, and the
forthcoming Convergence Culture. He is now turning his attention to the
challenge of understanding what it means when a genre – superheroes –
totally dominates a medium – comics. He should confess, however, that
this topic is in part a scam to get his endowed chair to support his comic-
book-buying habit.
Alan McKee is a connoisseur of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (best episode:
“Hush”); Terry Pratchett novels (Carpe Jugulum); Andrew Lloyd Webber
musicals (Phantom of the Opera); action movies (Aliens) and gay porn
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