The history of the most influential comic book publishers will list two large companies still in business today. They are DC Comics and Marvel. The third important publisher, unique in its own way, very modern, daring, and at times famous for using outrageous covers, was EC Comics. In EC’s early years, then still going by […]
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Category: B. R. PopCulture
Heart Full of Soul. Keith Relf of the Yardbirds by David French (2020)
In the southwest of London, in 1962 a young Richmond band called The Metropolis Blues Quartet was starting to become England’s probably most innovative rock band. This band would become the nucleus of a guitar-based outfit that later significantly altered music history and started, among other things, the American psychedelic and garage rock period. The […]
Film Noir Style: The Killer 1940s by Kimberly Truhler (2020)
What may come to mind first whenever the visual aspects of the genre film noir are discussed, may be the dark atmosphere, the sharp contrast of light and shadow, and people in desperate situations whose actions echo brilliantly the many original hard-boiled scripts and novel adaptations usually associated with the stlye. One aspect halfway neglected […]
Crime and Spy Jazz on Screen 1950-1970: A History and Discography by Derrick Bang (2020)
The period of American sound film until roughly the mid-1940s was dominated by soundtracks and extradiegetic audio based on mostly sweet string orchestras, allusions to classical compositions and ballads. Then, in the 1950s and 60s, soundtrack composers increasingly used popular music of the decade before for police/detective/spy action productions, which would be in large part […]
The Rise and Fall of American Science Fiction, from the 1920s to the 1960s by Gary Westfahl (2019)
Even though a title such as “The Rise and Fall” usually has readers prepared for a large, heavy volume that will provide audiences with loads of information amassed in a mostly boring manner, Westfahl’s book on a literary genre differs from that stereotype. In fact, the four major parts (and a short epilogue) read very […]
I’d Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbilly, and Country Music by Peter La Chape
American political campaigns without music or shows would be an impossibility today. Speaking about the 20th century, neither marching band tunes, nor folk songs or hymns were the musical style employed most by political representatives running for office, but country music, as author La Chapelle proves. He finds many more details of this particular relationship […]
Teenage Thunder – A Front Row Look at the 1950s Teenpics by Mark Thomas McGee (2020)
The teenager, not present in the immediate post-war years, in the early 1950s suddenly became a financial force and a very visible part of American culture. That also meant clueless parents, disgusted older generations and horrified school teachers, as teenage delinquency and violence ostensibly exploded in the mid-fifties. It did not take long before movie […]
Fashion and Masculinities in Popular Culture by Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas (2019)
With the advent of modernity, the choices of men and women to shape their own character freely, pick their styles and outfit and maybe even follow a new role model were multiplied. Thanks to travel, tourism, modern means of communication, news and image transfer, no longer only the local role models and heroes were attainable […]
Robots in American Popular Culture by Steve Carper (2019)
The idea of building, commanding and using artificial creatures, based on mechanical components that would assist mankind doing anything from work, transportation or pleasure goes back to very early stories of creation such as the Gilgamesh epic. And mythology from ancient Greece and other regions. That idea also demonstrates man’s wish to become the creator […]