Introduction The deconstruction of image or product as text lies at the heart of any totalizing definition of a cultural studies methodology. In direct opposition to traditional art and design history and literary criticism methods, cultural studies offers a way of studying objects as systems rather than as the simple product of authorship. Borrowed from European structuralism, most specifically the work of linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, 11 the theory of language “looms as the most essential of cultural studies concepts, either in its own right, or through being appropriated as a model for understanding other cultural systems” (Turner 1996). Structures…
Author: Jameson
By the last two decades of the twentieth century, Hollywood had shed many of the trappings of glamour that had characterized it in the 1930s and 1940s. Only on select occasions, such as Oscar Night, does the modern-day movie industry seek to dazzle its public with a glittering gathering of stars dressed to the height of elegance? If Sharon Stone is sometimes referred to as the only current star of the old type, it is largely because she made it her business from the 1990s always to present herself as elegantly groomed, perfectly coiffed and sexually alluring. Yet the image…
Luciana, a nineteen-year-old college student, lives in a coastal town in southern Italy and loves going to the beach. During her summer vacation and many of the late spring weekends, she spends four to six hours each day basking in the sun while talking with her friends or playing beach volleyball or swimming. She uses sunscreen lotion with a low sunscreen protection factor (SPF) and only at the beginning of the season to avoid sunburn. Once she is tanned, she may not use it at all. Most of her friends rarely use any sunscreen protection and, if they do, use…
