Politics, Media, and Popular Culture – serie

It’s Show Time! Media, Politics, and Popular Culture is an exciting collection of original essays introducing undergraduate students and interested readers to the important role that the media and popular culture have in shaping their lives and views on politics. Written by both political scientists and journalists, this book looks at the diverse ways television, movies, the internet, and even soap operas mold public opinion and define how we view political reality. However, as these essays will reveal, this socialization is not all benign. Instead, this book reveals a corporate media increasingly trapped by the demands to inform, entertain, and make a profit – often at times distorting reality by transforming criminals into heroes, assassination theories into fact, and participatory government into a spectator sport. Overall, It’s Show Time! explores the limits and possibilities of the media and emerging information technologies as they shape political perceptions and politics into the twenty-first century.

Now in its second edition, Seeing the Bigger Picture examines the ways movies and popular culture can foster a deeper awareness of the political dilemmas and debates shaping our world.Reviewing commercial films and documentaries, the text illustrates the myriad ways that film and popular culture shape our understanding of capitalism and democracy, war and terrorism, civil rights and social justice, campaigns and elections and the presidency.This updated edition includes new chapters on media, human rights and the environment. In the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq, the book discusses the broad new spectrum of films about war; it also looks at capitalism and financial markets in popular culture in light of the financial crisis of 2008.Examining a range of vital issues that dot the political landscape, this is an excellent comprehensive text for students of film and politics, and a creative resource for courses in American government, international relations, popular culture and media studies. This edition is accompanied by a website with links to additional material and film clips that will help facilitate the study of film and politics.

Both law and popular culture pervade our lives. Popular culture constructs our perceptions of law and changes the way that players in the legal system behave. Now in its second edition, Law and Popular Culture: A Course Book explores the interface between two subjects of enormous importance to everyone – law and popular culture.Each chapter takes a particular legally themed film or television show, such as Philadelphia, Dead Man Walking, or Law and Order, treating it as both a cultural text and a legal text. The new edition has been updated with new photos and includes greater emphasis on television than in the first edition because there are so many DVDs of older TV shows now available.Law and Popular Culture is written in an accessible and engaging style, without theoretical jargon, and can serve as a basic text for undergraduates or graduate courses and be taught by anyone who enjoys pop culture and is interested in law. An instructor’s manual is available on request from the publisher and author.

One of the most important legal developments in the last half of the twentieth century was the change from criminal justice policies shaped primarily by liberal ideas to those shaped primarily by conservative ideas. This book examines images of law in Hollywood films and television crime dramas to better understand this conservative revolution in thinking about crime. The crime stories depicted in popular legal fiction provide interesting as well as insightful perspectives on law in American society, particularly changing images of justice and its administration as well as individual rights.

The Supreme Court has looked to «evolving standards of decency» in determining whether the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Evolving Standards of Decency examines the ways in which popular culture portrays the death penalty. By analyzing literature and film, Atwell argues that capital punishment becomes much more complex when both offenders and victims are presented as fully developed individuals. Numerous books and films from the last several decades expose flaws in the criminal justice system and provide audiences with stories that raise questions about race, class, and actual innocence in the administration of the ultimate punishment. Although most people will not read legal briefs supporting or challenging the death penalty, many will see films or read novels that raise issues about its fairness. Themes and images gathered through popular culture may ultimately influence whether Americans continue to believe that capital punishment conforms to their evolving standards of decency and justice. Those studying justice issues, corrections, or capital punishment will find this an accessible and provocative work that places the stories read in novels or seen in movies in the context of the legal system that has the power of life and death.