Mimi White

Illuminating one of the most pervasive issues of our time, Popular Culture is the first book to link the importance and implications of popular culture with pedagogical practice. It shows how cultural forms such as Hollywood films, pop music, soap operas, and televangelism are organized by gender, age, class, race, and ethnicity, thus providing the contradictory text that both enables and disables emancipatory interest, so fundamental to the formation of self and society. What emerges is a redefinition of the very notion of popular culture.

Drawing on feminist, postmodern, and psychoanalytic theories, White traces the impact of television's therapeutic and confessional discourses on family construction and consumer culture. In a comprehensive analysis of cable, network, and syndicated programming and both daytime and prime-time shows, she reveals how the therapeutic and confessional mode functions on television, relating it to broader questions of social identity and power. Originally published 1992. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.