popular culture — Bunk History

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Bruce Springsteen on July 19, 1988 at his concert in East Berlin on the cycle track Weissensee.

Can the 1980s Explain 2024?

The yuppies embodied the winning side of America’s deepening economic divide. Bruce Springsteen spoke for those left behind.

by Nicholas Lemann via Washington Monthly on August 25, 2024

Scenes of Reading on the Early Portrait Postcard

When picture postcards began circulating with a frenzy at the turn of the 20th century, a certain motif proved popular: photographs of people posed with books.

by Melina Moe, Victoria Nebolsin via The Public Domain Review on July 31, 2024

Old advertisements selling cars to women.

Driving While Female

Is the car our most gendered technology?

by Leann Davis Alspaugh via The Hedgehog Review on July 31, 2024

Painted scene of a busy city, with horses, carts, and hay barrels in the foreground and tall skyscrapers in the background. George Bellows. New York, 1911. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. National Gallery of Art (1986.72.1). CC0, nga.gov. Accessed July 21, 2024.

America’s War on Theater

James Shapiro's book "The Playbook" is a timely reminder both of the power of theater and of the vehement antipathy it can generate.

by Daniel Blank via Los Angeles Review of Books on July 22, 2024

A freeze-frame of Eddie Murphy smiling at the camera in Beverly Hills Cop.

Bring Back the Freeze-Frame Ending!

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F spends its final moments on a thrilling cinematic trope of the ’80s, one that I would argue is due for a comeback.

by Chris Stanton via Vulture on July 15, 2024

How “The Real World” Created Modern Reality TV

The rules governing everything from “Big Brother” to “The Real Housewives” started three decades ago, with a radical experiment on MTV.

by Emily Nussbaum via The New Yorker on June 15, 2024

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert giving two thumbs up.

When the Movies Mattered

Siskel and Ebert and the heyday of popular movie criticism.

by Annie Berke via The Yale Review on June 12, 2024

Poster for the WPA theatrical production of "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis

Stealing the Show

Why conservatives killed America’s federally funded theater.

by Charlie Tyson via The Yale Review on June 10, 2024

A drawing of a crowd watching a baseball game in 1886.

Before ‘Fans,’ There Were ‘Kranks,’ ‘Longhairs,’ and ‘Lions’

How do fandoms gain their names?

by Elizabeth Minkel via Atlas Obscura on May 30, 2024

Still from Pretty Poison (1968).

The All-American Crack-Up in 1960s Hollywood Cinema

Starting in the 1960s, more and more Hollywood films depicted an increasingly violent and alienated American society quickly losing its mind.

by Eileen Jones via Jacobin on May 24, 2024

Man laughing.

The Most Hated Sound on Television

For half a century, viewers scorned the laugh track while adoring shows that used it. Now it has all but disappeared.

by Jacob Stern via The Atlantic on April 15, 2024

Larry David.

The End of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Marks the End of an Era

Larry David is the last of his kind—and in several ways.

by Daniel Bessner via The Nation on April 8, 2024

Marvin Gaye walking on a basketball court, with players and the crowd behind him.

Marvin’s Last Protest

In 1968 Gaye shifted his musical vision to give voice to impoverished Black urban communities and the rising dissent against involvement in the Vietnam War.

by Mark Anthony Neal via Medium on April 1, 2024

Two 1950s cars in front of a diner

You Can’t Go Home Again

Our thinking about nostalgia is badly flawed because it relies on defective assumptions about progress and time.

by Charlie Tyson via The Hedgehog Review on March 19, 2024

Past Tense

The historical novel isn’t cool. Popular? Yes. Enduring? Yes. A bit, well — for nerds? Also yes. Coolness lies in being at the right place at the right time.

by David Schurman Wallace via The Drift on March 12, 2024

"Alien Embrace" repeated artwork

The Institute for Illegal Images

Meditating on blotter not just as art, or as a historical artifact, but as a kind of media, even a “meta medium.”

by Erik Davis via The Paris Review on March 4, 2024

A photograph of an AR-15 rifle, a pistol, and a knife in camoflage print, as well as bullets and a pair of gloves.

Give Your Mom a Gun

America’s favorite gun.

by Geoff Mann via London Review of Books on March 1, 2024

Peanuts' Franklin as a flat two-dimensional character.

It’s Flagrant Tokenism, Charlie Brown!

Peanuts’ Franklin has been a controversial character for decades. A new special attempts reparations.

by Troy Patterson via Slate on February 16, 2024

A bedroom decorated with Bob Marley merchandise and the Jamaican flag.

Bob Marley’s ‘Legend’ Is One of the Bestselling Albums Ever. But Does It Tell His Full Story?

After 40 years and more than 25 million copies sold, what story does ‘Legend’ tell us about Bob Marley and the people listening to it?

by Eric Ducker via The Ringer on February 14, 2024

Jewish moneylender choking debtor

"A Fiendish Fascination"

The representation of Jews in antebellum popular culture reveals that many Americans found them both cartoonishly villainous and enticingly exotic.

by David S. Reynolds via New York Review of Books on February 1, 2024

Bottom half of a red sheet music cover with the words "Sung by Aida Overton Walker with the Smart Set Co" written on it with a portrait of Aida to the right

Sheet Music Covers for the Gotham-Attucks Company, ca. 1905–1911

Beginning in 1905, one star-studded song-publishing company would push the aesthetic limits of how Black popular music was shown to the public.

by Dorothy Berry via The Public Domain Review on February 1, 2024

Green frog with white circles and squiggly lines surrounding it denoting sound

The Many Lives of ‘Sounds of North American Frogs’

This metamorphic record is a teaching tool, a flirtation device, a college radio favorite, a nostalgic object, and more. BOOP!

by Cara Giaimo via Atlas Obscura on January 23, 2024

Parental advisory sticker warning of explicit content.

Who Gets to Regulate #*%&? Free Speech in Popular Culture

When speech offends, who decides where boundaries should be drawn?

via Retro Report on January 18, 2024

John Montgomery Ward and Helen Dauvray.

Before Taylor and Travis, There Was Helen and John

She was an actress. He was a shortstop. What we can learn from the press parade around this 19th-century power couple.

by Scott D. Peterson via Zócalo Public Square on January 11, 2024

Two American soldiers in UCP uniforms with an Iraqi man in the background.

Universal Failure

Universal Camouflage Pattern became a symbol of an unpopular war. Today, it’s being reappraised by those too young to remember the invasion of Iraq.

by Charles McFarlane via The Baffler on January 4, 2024

A turntable and records.

What’s Old is New Again (and Again): On the Cyclical Nature of Nostalgia

Retro was not the antithesis to the sub- and countercultural experiments of the 1960s, it grew directly out of them.

by Tobias Becker via Literary Hub on December 13, 2023

Sly Stone with daughter Nove, ca. 1980.

On the Sly

A memoir of the Family Stone.

by Carl Wilson via Bookforum on December 4, 2023

Cover of "Outrageous," with tomato on face of man holding microphone

Endless Culture Wars

On Kliph Nesteroff’s book, “Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars.”

by Chris Yogerst via Los Angeles Review of Books on December 1, 2023

Person holding a blonde American Girl doll and American Girl bag

All Dolled Up

How American Girl transformed the doll world—and why millennials love it so.

by Jayne Ross via The American Scholar on November 30, 2023

Girl holding a pile of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls

The Droll Capitalist Parable of Cabbage Patch Kids

A new documentary, “Billion Dollar Babies,” shows how a product of Appalachian folk art drew the blueprint for all holiday toy crazes to come.

by Jessica Winter via The New Yorker on November 20, 2023

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