There are very few masters of the harmonica (or “harp” as the instrument is called colloquially by musician) that had a lasting impression on rock music, as English and America groups in the 1960s during the Beat era covered many blues originals that featured a harp. Among the most prominent players, we find Little Walter […]
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Tag: American Studies
Hollywood’s Melodramatic Imagination: Film Noir, the Western and Other Genres … by Geoff Mayer (2022
In four chapters, author Geoff Mayer dives deep into the meaning and the many faces of the melodrama, highlighting several aspects and decades that made audiences familiar with the endless confrontation of virtue against reckless action, true love against intrigue or simply “good” versus “bad” characters, parties or companies. Here we learn about the main […]
Broadcasting Hollywood: The Struggle Over Feature Films on Early TV by Jennifer Porst (2021)
Even if the topic of Porst’s book, with regard to today’s video watching agenda that includes streaming media, Netflix, or any Internet-based platform consulted to watch movies, documentaries or series, may look a bit outdated at first sight, Broadcasting Hollywood actually is a highly interesting study, as it chronicles how we as audiences originally “learned” […]
Star Trek, History and Us: Reflections of the Present and Past Throughout the Franchise by A.J. Blac...
To talk about present-day science fiction realms and the impact fictional stories had on popular culture or the way people imagined a better future without touching on Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek is hardly possible. When the first episodes of the show were broadcast in 1966, they were immediately recognized as basically an action and entertainment […]
Toys in the Age of Wonder: Science Fiction, Society and the Symbolism of Play by Mark Rich (2020)
As it happened so often before, fiction by authors of early wonder and adventure tales, such as H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, William Rice Burroughs, and others, provided man (and particularly children and youngsters) with hopes and fantasies about machines that featured technology not yet been invented to dream a while. As […]
Interpreting Star Wars: Reading a Modern Film Franchise by Miles Booy (2021)
Over the years, more than a handful of books on George Lucas’ Star Wars epic have been written that evaluated, criticized and interpreted the film franchise. When in 1977 Star Wars was first presented, several significant film critics identified a number of central aspects, roles, ideologies or an American perspective in it. The main aspects […]
Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films by Sean M. Maloney (2020)
The Cold War, with all of its threats and visions of mass destruction and apocalyptic scenarios appears far away these days. However, when the menace of nuclear weapons that possibly would be fired if wrong decisions were made by a few incompetent men in the military back in the 1960s, stories, novels and mostly movies […]
Exploring The Orville: Essays on … by David Kyle Johnson and Michael R. Berry (eds.) (2021)
In 2017, the first episode of the science-fiction series The Orville premiered on Fox. So far, two seasons of the space adventure show that never denied its relatedness to 1990’s Star Trek, exist. The TV series immediately was described by critics as something between a parody, homage, fan fiction, Star Trek rip-off, and bad copy, […]
Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism by Paul S. Hirsch (2021)
Comic books as media today would not raise much attention if they featured heavy use of violence or representations of vigilantes who take the law into their own hands. On the contrary, the media now is deeply absorbed into the popular canon of the US. “The comic book, whether in the form of a collectible […]