Alan McKee

Analysis of representation of Aboriginal women in the media by analysis of the music video The messenger produced by Tracey Moffatt.

Tracey Moffatt and INXS Write Meanings on Music Video

The Message Or The Messenger

Paul Byron

Roger Ingham

Katerina Litsou

This book presents an innovative cross-disciplinary report on research across the humanities and social sciences about the relationship between pornography and its consumers. For policy makers and the wider public it can be difficult to obtain a clear understanding of the current state of knowledge on pornography and its relationships with audiences, due to the often-contradictory nature of research spanning the various and politically diverse academic disciplines. The cross-disciplinary expertise of the author team has engaged in an extensive examination of the findings of academic research in the area in order to explain, in a clear and accessible style, the most important conclusions about the relationship of pornography to Healthy Sexual Development. This short and accessible overview is suitable for students and scholars in Psychology, Sexual Health, Film Studies, Sex Education, Queer Theory, Gender Studies, Sexuality Studies, Sociology, Media Studies and Cultural Studies.

What Do We Know About the Effects of Pornography After Fifty Years of Academic Research?

Combining media effects with aesthetic approaches this book offers the first substantial, systematic and coherent account of fun and its importance. But what exactly is fun and what purposes does it serve? Fun is a vital element of entertainment, and entertainment is the most important form of culture in modern Western democracies. It demonstrates that fun is at the heart of entertainment's effects – entertainment both offers its consumers fun and provides them with the intellectual materials to think about the nature of fun. More than this, the book argues that entertainment shows us that fun – pleasure without purpose – is at the heart of living a good life. Illustrated with detailed examples from entertainment – from the Urban Dictionary to The Simpsons, to the Culture novels of Iain M Banks – this book is intelligent, original, and even (dare we say it) fun.

What Entertainment Tells Us About Living a Good Life

FUN!

Christy Collis

Ben Hamley

Entertainment Industries is the first book to map entertainment as a cultural system. Including work from world-renowned analysts such as Henry Jenkins and Jonathan Gray, this innovative collection explains what entertainment is and how it works. Entertainment is audience-centred culture. The Entertainment Industries are a uniquely interdisciplinary collection of evolving businesses that openly monitor evolving cultural trends and work within them. The producers of entertainment – central to that practice– are the new artists. They understand audiences and combine creative, business and legal skills in order to produce cultural products that cater to them. Entertainment Industries describes the characteristics of entertainment, the systems that produce it, and the role of producers and audiences in its development, as well as explaining the importance of this area of study, and how it might be better integrated into Universities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.

Entertainment as a Cultural System

Entertainment Industries

Catharine Lumby

Aspro Alan McKee

Kath Albury

True or false? Most porn users are uneducated, lonely and sad old men. All porn is violent. Pornography turns people into rapists and/or paedophiles. Pornography uniformly portrays women as passive objects of men's sexual urges. The Porn Report debunks these and many other misconceptions about porn consumers, producers and the industry at large. In the first comprehensive examination of the production and consumption of pornography in Australia, Alan McKee, Kath Albury and Catharine Lumby present a wide-ranging view of the adult-content industries and its consumers. If you've ever wondered what's in Australia's bestselling 50 porn videos and DVDs; what's behind amateur or do-it-yourself porn; and how porn is produced and distributed, The Porn Report will not only answer your questions, but also surprise you. The authors also discuss feminist responses to pornography and provide important advice to parents on how they can protect their children from cyberstalkers and from viewing online porn. If pornography arouses, repels or simply piques your curiosity, you cannot afford to miss The Porn Report.

The Porn Report

John Mercer

Feona Attwood

Clarissa Smith

Susanna Paasonen

This is a concise and accessible introduction into the concept of objectification, one of the most frequently recurring terms in both academic and media debates on the gendered politics of contemporary culture, and core to critiquing the social positions of sex and sexism. Objectification is an issue of media representation and everyday experiences alike. Central to theories of film spectatorship, beauty fashion and sex, objectification is connected to the harassment and discrimination of women, to the sexualization of culture and the pressing presence of body norms within media. This concise guidebook traces the history of the term’s emergence and its use in a variety of contexts such as debates about sexualization and the male gaze, and its mobilization in connection with the body, selfies and pornography, as well as in feminist activism. It will be an essential introduction for undergraduate and postgraduate students in Gender Studies, Media Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies or Visual Arts.

On the Difference between Sex and Sexism

Objectification

Textual analysis is a methodology - a way of gathering data - for researchers who are interested in the ways in which people make sense of the world.

A Beginner's Guide

Textual Analysis

What is happening to public debate in Western cultures? Is our public sphere disintegrating? In the face of popular tabloid newspapers, new forms of reality television and an increasing lack of respect for traditional authorities, many critics are concerned that our society no longer has a rational, informed and unified space where everyone can communicate about the issues that affect us all. In this book Alan McKee answers these questions by providing an introduction to the concept of the public sphere, the history of the term and the philosophical arguments about its function. By drawing on many examples from contemporary mediated culture, McKee looks at how we communicate with each other in public - and how we decide whether changing forms of communication are a good thing for the 'public sphere'.

An Introduction

The Public Sphere

This is an innovative book that addresses the question of how consumers make decisions about what is good and what is bad in popular culture. An entertaining and informative guide to the range of aesthetic criteria that goes into judging mass culture's most celebrated texts and objects - from Batman to motor bikes, and pop stars to internet pornography Brings together a series of accessible and engaging essays written by connoisseurs of various areas of popular culture Tackles the core question of how consumers make decisions about what is good popular culture and what is bad popular culture Offers an entertaining and educative read for academic readers as well as purveyors of culture; moving beyond a 'greatest hits' list of popular culture to debate broader issues.

Beautiful Things in Popular Culture

Rebecca Sullivan

Written for a broad audience and grounded in cutting-edge, contemporary scholarship, this volume addresses some of the key questions asked about pornography today. What is it? For whom is it produced? What sorts of sexualities does it help produce? Why should we study it, and what should be the most urgent issues when we do? What does it mean when we talk about pornography as violence? What could it mean if we discussed pornography through frameworks of consent, self-determination and performance? This book places the arguments from conservative and radical anti-porn activists against the challenges coming from a new generation of feminist and queer porn performers and educators. Combining sensitive and detailed discussion of case studies with careful attention to the voices of those working in pornography, it provides scholars, activists and those hoping to find new ways of understanding sexuality with the first overview of the histories and futures of pornography.

Alan McKee

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