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2d0adba songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality. Some different republic, some liberated republic... whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambition to stir things up. I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk with. music philosophy superficiality pop-culture Bob Dylan
84d2cbe It was Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the television series, 1997-2003, not the lackluster movie that preceded it) that blazed the trail for Twilight and the slew of other paranormal romance novels that followed, while also shaping the broader urban fantasy field from the late 1990s onward. Many of you reading this book will be too young to remember when Buffy debuted, so you'll have to trust us when we say that nothing quite like it had existed before. It was thrillingly new to see a young, gutsy, kick-ass female hero, for starters, and one who was no Amazonian Wonder Woman but recognizably ordinary, fussing about her nails, her shoes, and whether she'd make it to her high school prom. Buffy's story contained a heady mix of many genres (fantasy, horror, science-fiction, romance, detective fiction, high school drama), all of it leavened with tongue-in-cheek humor yet underpinned by the serious care with which the Buffy universe had been crafted. Back then, Whedon's dizzying genre hopping was a radical departure from the norm-whereas today, post-Buffy, no one blinks an eye as writers of urban fantasy leap across genre boundaries with abandon, penning tender romances featuring werewolves and demons, hard-boiled detective novels with fairies, and vampires-in-modern-life sagas that can crop up darn near anywhere: on the horror shelves, the SF shelves, the mystery shelves, the romance shelves. joss-whedon pop-culture twilight vampires Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
1783324 I kind of hate Nick right now, too, but there's someone else higher on my list, someone I hate more than Saddam Hussein and any asshole named Bush combined, hate more than that fuckhead who canceled 'My So-Called Life' and left me with a too-small boxed DVD set that does not answer the questions whether Angela and Jordan Catalano did it, or if Patty and Graham got a divorce, or if there really was something to all that lesbian subtext between Rayanne and Sharon. pop-culture Rachel Cohn
3df4868 It appears that countless women born between the years of 1965 and 1978 are in love with John Cusack. I cannot fathom how he isn't the number-one box office star in America, because every straight girl I know would seel her soul to share a milkshake with that motherfucker. pop-culture Chuck Klosterman
770f88d Understanding knowledge as an essential element of love is vital because we are bombarded daily with messages that tell us love is about mystery, about that which cannot be known. We see movies in which people are represented as being in love who never talk with one another, who fall into bed without ever discussing their bodies, their sexual needs, their likes and dislikes. Indeed, the message is received from the mass media is that knowledge makes love less compelling; that it is ignorance that gives love its erotic and transgressive edge. These messages are brought to us by profiteering producers who have no clue about the art of loving, who substitute their mystified visions because they do not really know how to genuinely portray loving interaction. love-quotes romantic television romance love truth mass-media tv pop-culture love-at-first-sight knowledge bell hooks
ee13bb7 The image of the journalist as wallflower at the orgy has been replaced by the journalist as the life of the party. pop-culture press Nora Ephron
f738c49 "I saw a dark void under the platform and had just enough time to think: "Fuck me he's a earthbender." funny pop-culture Ben Aaronovitch
9aba9ad "Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case "Big Shot" and "Bette Davis Eyes." The lyrics of the two songs provided no commentary, honest or ironic, on the proceedings. They were merely there and always underfoot, the insistent gray muck that was pop culture. It stuck to our shoes and we tracked it through our lives." music songs life pop-culture Colson Whitehead
03005b9 Sejal had not thought of her home, or of India as a whole, as cool. She was dimly aware, however, of a white Westerner habit of wearing other cultures like T-shirts--the sticker bindis on club kids, sindoor in the hair of an unmarried pop star, Hindi characters inked carelessly on tight tank tops and pale flesh. She knew Americans liked to flash a little Indian or Japanese or African. They were always looking for a little pepper to put in their dish. india pop-culture multiculturalism Adam Rex
97bc351 You know what pulp is, Mr. Tallis? It's the flesh of a luscious fruit, mashed down into an incredible, half liquid richness. so saturated with flavor that it fills your whole body, not just your mouth. reading writing pop-culture pulp-fiction stories Mike Carey & Peter Gross
993c74f While the patriarchal boys in hip-hop crew may talk about keeping it real, there has been no musical culture with black men at the forefront of its creation that has been steeped in the politics of fantasy and denial as the more popular strands of hip-hop. hip-hop pop-culture bell hooks
58d4a20 They saw me. Milton's smile curled off his face like unsticky tape. And I knew immediately, I was a boy band, a boondoggle, born fool. He was going to pull a Danny Zuko in when Sandy says hello to him in front of the T-Birds, a Mrs. Robinson when she tells Elaine she didn't seduce Benjamin, a Daisy when she chooses Tom with the disposition of a sour kiwi over Gatsby, a self-made man, a man engorged with dreams, who didn't mind throwing a pile of shirts around a room if he wanted too. My heart landslided. My legs earthquaked. daisy-buchanan jay-gatsby rude-awakening the-graduate tom-buchanan grease the-great-gatsby pop-culture nervous rude cruelty denial embarrassment movies teenagers rejection disappointment Marisha Pessl
c22eaf6 And if you think about it, pretty much everything that made the twentieth century bearable was invented in a California garage: the Apple computer, the Boogie Board, and gangster rap. boogie-boards gangsta-rap rap popular-culture pop-culture twentieth-century Paul Beatty
96ece0d Even though some individual scholars try to tell us there is no direct connection between images of violence and the violence confronting us in our lives, the commonsense truth remains- we are affected by the images we consume and by the states of mind we are in when watching them. If consumers want to be entertained, and the images shown us as entertaining are images of violent dehumanization, it makes sense that these acts become more acceptable in our daily lives and that we become less likely to respond to them with moral outrage or concern. Were we all seeing more images of loving human interaction, it would undoubtedly have a positive impact on our lives. violence television mass-media pop-culture violent movies bell hooks
b587b1d "I think the skin revolution for women, I will call it, really all started with Mariah Carey. Madonna was pretty risque too, but she was pretty much always known as a "bad girl." Mariah was a good girl, supposedly Christian, turning very bad, in the late 90's. So then, all the other little girls and teens and women across America thought it would be ok for them to "come out" too essentially, or flaunt whatever they had. Modesty went completely out the window for many women, starting in the late 90's." good-girl madonna mariah-carey risque coming-out pop-culture christian dress skin modesty Lisa Bedrick
5850b6b "It's basically a joke." "I think it's cool," Julian says. "It's all about control, right?" He considers something. "It's not a joke. You should take it seriously. I mean, you're also one of the producers--" I cut him off. "Why have you been tracking this?" "It's a big deal and--" "Julian, it's a movie," I say. "Why have you been tracking this? It's just another movie." "Maybe for you." "What does that mean?" "Maybe for others it's something else," Julian says. "Something more meaningful." "I get where you're coming from, but there's a vampire in it." work pop-culture Bret Easton Ellis
349cf3d "It's true, I guess, that no matter how much it sucks, you're supposed to sacrifice things for a friend. It was a concept that he hadn't understood earlier on in his life. In elementary school, Bernie had been assigned 'Charlotte's Web' to read, and he'd always found it selfish how Charlotte the spider gave everything she had to Wilbur the pig, all her time and energy trying to keep this pig alive and off the farmer's dinner plate, only to end up dying in the wispy remains of her last cobweb. "That pig was a selfish bastard who whined too much." He hadn't understood why, in his college days watching 'The Smurfs' cartoon on TV just to pass the time, the evil wizard Gargamel had kept his bratty little apprentice, Scruple, around with him even when there was no incentive to do it and it would have been more convenient to just get rid of him. "Well, you give and you give and you give, you sacrifice things for somebody even when you normally wouldn't, but you get back something worth having, maybe. Something worth all that sacrifice... I mean, what's life worth if you have nobody to share it with, anyway?" sacrifice friendship love pop-culture-reference smurfs pop-culture sharing friend Rebecca McNutt
1a94897 Seinfeld was typically American in that show. He was a pretty funny guy, but he had no sense of style. Tacky like a Texan tux. Tasteless dressing and tasteful jokes. That's Seinfeld for me. I would have preferred it the other way around. american-style seinfeld jokes pop-culture style Hallgrímur Helgason
03a9bd8 There is no room for rosy eyed acceptance of the cultural decay around us. Highly suspect will be any Christian literary and cultural critic who makes too much room for Lady Gaga, Harry Potter, Hester Prynne, Huckleberry Finn, James Bond, Katniss Everdeen, Joe Brooks, Leroy Van Dyke, and Star Trek: Into Darkness. Those who enthusiastically embrace these cultural icons appear to be happy with the macro-cultural trends of the Christian apostate world. That being the case, what does this say about their faith, their worldview, and their own cultural trajectories? Could it be that they have embraced the tattooed Jesus---the false Christs of culture? Indeed, many have been wooed by a false prophet, a false priest, a false redeemer, and a false king. They have been rescued from the wrong sins and have taken on the wrong view of reality, truth, and. ethics. They have embraced the wrong religion, and they have joined the apostasy. christianity pop-culture culture Kevin Swanson
5a96cb7 Yet even in the best of cases, the need to be on call, to spend at least a certain amount of energy looking over one's shoulder, maintaining a false front, never looking too obviously engrossed, the inability to fully collaborate with others --all this lends itself much more to a culture of computer games, YouTube rants, memes, and Twitter controversies than to, say, the rock 'n' roll bands, drug poetry, and experimental theater created under the midcentury welfare state. work millennials jobs pop-culture job culture working David Graeber
326b433 Necessity used to be the mother of invention, but then we ran out of things that were necessary. pop-culture technology Chuck Klosterman
611a4e1 "...you need the tiniest bit of bravery. People get scared when you try to do something, especially when it looks like you're succeeding. People do not get scared when you are failing. It calms them. That's why the show Intervention is a hit and everyone loves "worrying about" Amanda Bynes." women pop-culture Mindy Kaling
91faff9 In keeping with your policy of bringing Pollution the latest in death and violence, and in living colour, there's going to be something entirely different... death without remediation. violence television living death christine-chubbuck remediation policy pop-culture colour pollution Rebecca McNutt
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