James E. Combs

This book discusss various components of popular culture and the effects they have on politics. Some of the areas of mass culture which are discussed are: popular dramas, folk heritage, the Western myth, sports, religion, media, propaganda, and show business.

Politics and Popular Culture in America

Polpop

This book takes another look at politics and popular culture. The author has tried to explain the politics of popular culture as part of historical and cultural processes, helping the reader understand not only how popular culture has affected our politics, but also where it is taking us.

Politics and Popular Culture in America Today

Polpop 2

Dan D. Nimmo

Robert L. Savage

Hindsight and Foresight in the Post-1984 World

The Orwellian Moment

Nimmo and Combs discuss the key role political analysts play, their methods and strategies, and the potential danger they pose to American democracy--by transforming it into a "punditocracy" which replaces serious citizen debate with discussion guided by show business values. Punditry, Nimmo and Combs argue, produces symbolic rather than effective healing of political ills, political paternalism rather than political reflection, and, in the end, public disenchantment with politics.

The Political Pundits

Robert H. Blank

Janna Merrick

An exploration of the dramatic and comic aspects of American democracy and its institutions and constituencies.

The Comedy of Democracy

As the United States nears the twenty-first century, many of its citizens are troubled by the sense that something is wrong. Even though it is argued that our national situation is good, there persists the widespread feeling that somehow we are on the wrong social and historical track. It is the contention of this book that much of this dis-ease stems from our construction of a phony culture, a culture dominated by the value of the confidence man and woman. The book demonstrates the transformation of America into a culture of artifice, where the practices of confidence tend to make everything and everybody into a phony. The author explores the various dimensions of our cultural phoniness, ranging over phony language, phony people, phony places and things, phony events, phony deals, and phony politics. The work is rich in examples of our phony culture, including such topics as the Washington pundits, malls and theme parks, psychobabble and academese, prosperity theology, and school as a phony deal. The reader should come away from the book with a conceptually informed idea of the extent and depth of phoniness in American life, and an idea of how to understand and cope with the artifices one encounters in daily life.

Confidence and Malaise in Contemporary America

Phony Culture

Collecting together some of the best thinking about the relationship between movies and politics, this book, originally published in 1993, encourages an awareness of the political dimension of film, both for film scholars and those entering the film industry. Eight essays are grouped into four parts addressing political ideology and movie narrative, political myth in the movies, political history and movie culture, and political communication and the movies. An introductory essay, as well as prefatory remarks to each of the four parts, brings additional insight and perspective and puts the essays into context.

James E. Combs

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