Download or read book American Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic 1970 2000 written by Sarah A. Hughes and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-10-27 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the “satanic panic” of the 1980s as an essential part of the growing relationship between tabloid media and American conservative politics in the 1980s. It argues that widespread fears of Satanism in a range of cultural institutions was indispensable to the development and success of both infotainment, or tabloid content on television, and the rise of the New Right, a conservative political movement that was heavily guided by a growing coalition of influential televangelists, or evangelical preachers on television. It takes as its particular focus the hundreds of accusations that devil-worshippers were operating America’s white middle-class suburban daycare centers. Dozens of communities around the country became embroiled in trials against center owners, the most publicized of which was the McMartin Preschool trial in Manhattan Beach, California. It remains the longest and most expensive criminal trial in the nation’s history.

Download or read book American Monsters written by Sarah Alison Hughes and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Monsters: Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic, 1970-2000," analyzes an episode of national hysteria that dominated the media throughout most of the 1980s. Its origins, however, go back much farther and its consequences for the media would extend into subsequent decades. Rooted in the decade's increasingly influential conservative political ideology, the satanic panic involved hundreds of accusations that devil-worshipping pedophiles were operating America's white middle-class suburban daycare centers. Communities around the country became embroiled in criminal trials against center owners, the most publicized of which was the McMartin Preschool trial in Manhattan Beach, California. The longest and most expensive trial in the nation's history, the McMartin case is an important focal point of this project. In the 1990s, judges overturned the life sentences of defendants in most major cases, and several prominent journalists and lawyers condemned the phenomenon as a witch-hunt. They accurately understood it to be a powerful delusion, or what contemporary cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard termed a "hyperreality," in which audiences confuse the media universe for real life. Presented mainly through tabloid television, or "infotainment," and integral to its development, influence, and success, the panic was a manifestation of the hyperreal. This dissertation explores how the panic both reflected and shaped a cultural climate dominated by the overlapping worldviews of politically active conservatives. In 1980, neoconservatives, libertarians, economic conservatives, and evangelical Christians, who had begun their cultural ascent over the course of the previous decade, were brought together temporarily under the aegis of President Ronald Reagan. With collective strength they implemented their joint agenda, which partly included expanding their influence on the nation's media sources. Coinciding with a backlash against feminism and the gay rights movement, media outlets often represented working women and homosexuals as dangerous to conservative idealized notions of white suburban family life. Such views were incorporated into the panic, which tabloid media reinforced through coverage of alleged sexual abuse of children at day care centers. Infotainment expanded dramatically in the 1980s, selling conservative-defined threats as news. As the satanic panic unfolded through infotainment sub-genres like talk shows and local news programs (first introduced in the late 1940s), its appeal guaranteed the continued presence of the tabloid genre, and reinforced conservative views on gender, race, class, and religion. Although the panic subsided in the early 1990s as journalists and lawyers discredited evidence and judicial decisions turned against accusers, the legacy of the panic continued to influence American culture and politics into the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Girls and Their Monsters written by Audrey Clare Farley and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2023-06-13 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2024 MICHIGAN NOTABLE BOOK For readers of Hidden Valley Road and Patient H.M., an “intimate and compassionate portrait” (Grace M. Cho) of the Genain quadruplets, the harrowing violence they experienced, and its psychological and political consequences, from the author of The Unfit Heiress. In 1954, researchers at the newly formed National Institute of Mental Health set out to study the genetics of schizophrenia. When they got word that four 24-year-old identical quadruplets in Lansing, Michigan, had all been diagnosed with the mental illness, they could hardly believe their ears. Here was incontrovertible proof of hereditary transmission and, thus, a chance to bring international fame to their fledgling institution. The case of the pseudonymous Genain quadruplets, they soon found, was hardly so straightforward. Contrary to fawning media portrayals of a picture-perfect Christian family, the sisters had endured the stuff of nightmares. Behind closed doors, their parents had taken shocking measures to preserve their innocence while sowing fears of sex and the outside world. In public, the quadruplets were treated as communal property, as townsfolk and members of the press had long ago projected their own paranoid fantasies about the rapidly diversifying American landscape onto the fair-skinned, ribbon-wearing quartet who danced and sang about Christopher Columbus. Even as the sisters’ erratic behaviors became impossible to ignore and the NIMH whisked the women off for study, their sterling image did not falter. Girls and Their Monsters chronicles the extraordinary lives of the quadruplets and the lead psychologist who studied them, asking questions that speak directly to our times: How do delusions come to take root, both in individuals and in nations? Why does society profess to be “saving the children” when it readily exploits them? What are the authoritarian ends of innocence myths? And how do people, particularly those with serious mental illness, go on after enduring the unspeakable? Can the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood help the deeply wounded heal?

Download or read book Freedom of Religion and Religious Diversity written by Md Jahid Hossain Bhuiyan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-23 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, pluralism is increasingly the norm and can be seen as a permanent characteristic of modernity. As seen in world events, religion has not become irrelevant but more diverse, giving rise to a complex web of religion and belief minorities, together with intra-plural majorities. Nations seek ways to implement the ideal of freedom of religion, but as this book shows, whether East or West, in the global North or the South, there is no simple formalism for accommodating religious diversity. Different faith communities have competing needs and demands for the same social space, with tensions inevitably arising. This book highlights responses from liberal democracies which enshrine secularism into their constitutions to other constitutions where religion and ethnic identity are enshrined to prioritise their ethno-religious majority. Western and Asian countries encounter different obstacles and challenges. With analysis from 19 international scholars, the book explores different obstacles and responses to accommodation of religious minorities in a range of jurisdictions. In a globalised world, it will be invaluable for comparative legal scholars, for law and religion scholars, researchers and students, and decision-makers, e.g., governments, non-governmental organisations, and for those who seek to better understand the challenges of our time.

Download or read book After the Flying Saucers Came written by Greg (Professor of History and Bioethics Eghigian, Professor of History and Bioethics Pennsylvania State University) and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-03 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Flying Saucers Came is a comprehensive account of the stories, the people, and the strange events that went into making the fascination with UFOs and aliens a worldwide phenomenon among believers, skeptics, and the simply curious. It traces how an odd sighting of "flying saucers" by an American pilot in 1947 inspired governments, the media, scientists, writers, and the general public to consider the possibility that extraterrestrials were visiting earth.

Download or read book Conspiracy Theories written by Joseph E Uscinski and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-03-15 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition, updated throughout and now including Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election and aftermath, introduces students to the research into conspiracy theories and the people who propagate and believe them. In doing so, it addresses the psychological, sociological, and political sources of conspiracy theorizing.

Download or read book Witchcraft written by Marion Gibson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “thought-provoking and timely” (The Times) global history of witch trials across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, told through thirteen distinct trials that illuminate a pattern of demonization and conspiratorial thinking that has profoundly shaped human history. This “inventive and compelling” (Times Literary Supplement) work of social history travels through thirteen witch trials across history, some famous—like the Salem witch trials—and some lesser-known: on Vardø island, Norway, in the 1620s, where an indigenous Sami woman was accused of murder; in France in 1731, during the country’s last witch trial, where a young woman was pitted against her confessor and cult leader; in Lesotho in 1948, where British colonial authorities executed local leaders. Exploring how witchcraft was feared, then decriminalized, and then reimagined as gendered persecution, Witchcraft takes on the intersections between gender and power, indigenous spirituality and colonial rule, political conspiracy and individual resistance. Offering a striking, dramatic journey unspooling over centuries and across continents, Witchcraft is a “well-rounded insight into some of the strangest and cruelest moments in history” (Buzz Magazine), giving voice to those who have been silenced by history.

Download or read book The Archie Sabrina Universe written by Heather McAlpine and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-04-10 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intersecting with fan studies, TV and comics studies, queer, disability and feminist studies, as well as popular culture and media scholarship, this collection of essays is the first to offer critical examinations of Riverdale, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and the broader Archie/Sabrina comics universe. Its authors interrogate these texts in an effort not only to make sense of their chaotic stories, but to understand our own ongoing fascination with their narratives. Contributing to a greater cultural conversation about representation in media, authors find unexpected value in the oftentimes ridiculous (mis)adventures of the Archie/Sabrina expanded universe.

Download or read book God Gave Rock and Roll to You written by Leah Payne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-04 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entertaining history of the soundtrack of American evangelical Christianity Few things frightened conservative white Protestant parents of the 1950s and the 1960s more than thought of their children falling prey to the "menace to Christendom" known as rock and roll. The raucous sounds of Elvis Presley and Little Richard seemed tailor-made to destroy the faith of their young and, in the process, undermine the moral foundations of the United States. Parents and pastors launched a crusade against rock music, but they were fighting an uphill battle. Salvation came in a most unlikely form. Well, maybe not that unlikely--the long hair, the beards, the sandals--but still a far cry from the buttoned-up, conservative Protestantism they were striving to preserve. Yet when a revival swept through counterculture hippie communities of the West Coast in the 1960s and 1970s a new alternative emerged. Known as the Jesus Movement--and its members, more colloquially, as "Jesus freaks"--the revival was short-lived. But by combining the rock and folk music of the counterculture with religious ideas and aims of conservative white evangelicals, Jesus freaks and evangelical media moguls gave birth to an entire genre known as Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). By the 1980s and 1990s, CCM had grown into a massive, multimillion-dollar industry. Contemporary Christian artists were appearing on Top 40 radio, and some, most famously Amy Grant, crossed over into the mainstream. And yet, today, the industry is a shadow of what it once was. In this book, Leah Payne traces the history and trajectory of CCM in America and, in the process, demonstrates how the industry, its artists, and its fans shaped--and continue to shape--conservative, (mostly) white, evangelical Protestantism. For many outside observers, evangelical pop stars, interpretive dancers, puppeteers, mimes, and bodybuilders are silly expressions of kitsch. Yet Payne argues that these cultural products were sources of power, meaning, and political activism. Throughout, she draws on in-depth interviews with CCM journalists, publishers, producers, and artists, as well as archives, sales and marketing data, fan magazines, merchandise--everything that went into making CCM a thriving subculture. Ultimately, Payne argues, CCM spurred evangelical activism in more potent and lasting ways than any particular doctrine, denomination, culture war, or legislative agenda had before.

Download or read book Judging Insanity Punishing Difference written by Chloé Deambrogio and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-14 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Judging Insanity, Punishing Difference, Chloé Deambrogio explores how developments in the field of forensic psychiatry shaped American courts' assessments of defendants' mental health and criminal responsibility over the course of the twentieth century. During this period, new psychiatric notions of the mind and its readability, legal doctrines of insanity and diminished culpability, and cultural stereotypes about race and gender shaped the ways in which legal professionals, mental health experts, and lay witnesses approached mental disability evidence, especially in cases carrying the death penalty. Using Texas as a case study, Deambrogio examines how these medical, legal, and cultural trends shaped psycho-legal debates in state criminal courts, while shedding light on the ways in which experts and lay actors' interpretations of "pathological" mental states influenced trial verdicts in capital cases. She shows that despite mounting pressures from advocates of the "rehabilitative penology," Texas courts maintained a punitive approach towards defendants allegedly affected by severe mental disabilities, while allowing for moralized views about personalities, habits, and lifestyle to influence psycho-legal assessments, in potentially prejudicial ways.

Download or read book Cult Rhetoric in the 21st Century written by Aled Thomas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-06-13 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining contemporary understandings of the term 'cult', this book brings together scholars from multiple disciplines, including sociology, anthropology and religious studies. Focusing on how 'cult rhetoric' affects our perceptions of new religious movements, the contributors explore how these minority groups have developed and deconstruct the language we use to describe them. Ranging from the 'Cult of Trump' and 'Cult of COVID', to the campaigns of mass media, this book recognises that contemporary 'cult rhetoric' has become hybridised and suggests a more nuanced study of contemporary religion. Topics include online religions, political 'cults', 'apostate' testimony and the current 'othered' position of the study of minority religions.

Download or read book Theology and Star Trek written by Shaun C. Brown and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-05-22 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Star Trek: Enterprise concluded in 2005, Star Trek went on hiatus until the 2009 film Star Trek and its sequels. With the success of these films, Star Trek returned to the small screen with series like Discovery, Picard, and Strange New Worlds. These films and series, in different ways, reflect cultural shifts in Western society. Theology and Star Trek gathers a group of scholars from various religious and theological disciplines to reflect upon the connection between theology and Star Trek anew. The essays in part one, “These are the Voyages,” explore the overarching themes of Star Trek and the thought of its creator, Gene Roddenberry. Part two, “Strange New Worlds,” discusses politics and technology. Part three, “To Explore and to Seek,” focuses on issues related to practice and formation. Part four, “To Boldly Go,” contemplates the future of Star Trek.

Download or read book Enchanted Pedagogies written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-10-30 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pedagogies of magic have their own cocooned metaphors waiting to hatch. In literature and the arts, magic ties its practitioners to systems of learning and methods of becoming. Enchanted Pedagogies, edited by Kari Adelaide Razdow, is a collection of essays by artists and writers who reflect on archetypes and tropes of enchantment, intertwining elements such as transformation, imagination, creativity, and empathy. These essays evoke shapeshifters, witches, ghosts, fools, fairies, hags, gnomes, selkies, and more, exploring multi-disciplinary artistic practices. Enchanted Pedagogies presents ways to expand, imagine, and circumvent modes of creativity and pedagogies through personal, theoretical, practice based, and hybrid explorations. The fantastic and poetic intertwine in a space of reflexive storytelling, renewing significant transformational elements of the arts and education. Contributors are: Jesse Bransford, Vanessa Chakour, Trinie Dalton, Lorenzo De Los Angeles, Thom Donovan, Laura Forsberg, Pam Grossman, Amy Hale, Elizabeth Insogna, Candice Ivy, Tiffany Jewell, Alessandro Keegan, Jac Lahav, Ruth Lingford, Maria Pinto, Kris N. Racaniello, Kari Adelaide Razdow, Alicia Smith, Janaka Stucky, Kay Turner, Meg Whiteford and Erin Yerby.

Download or read book Abusive Policies written by Mical Raz and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early 1970s, a new wave of public service announcements urged parents to "help end an American tradition" of child abuse. The message, relayed repeatedly over television and radio, urged abusive parents to seek help. Support groups for parents, including Parents Anonymous, proliferated across the country to deal with the seemingly burgeoning crisis. At the same time, an ever-increasing number of abused children were reported to child welfare agencies, due in part to an expansion of mandatory reporting laws and the creation of reporting hotlines across the nation. Here, Mical Raz examines this history of child abuse policy and charts how it changed since the late 1960s, specifically taking into account the frequency with which agencies removed African American children from their homes and placed them in foster care. Highlighting the rise of Parents Anonymous and connecting their activism to the sexual abuse moral panic that swept the country in the 1980s, Raz argues that these panics and policies—as well as biased viewpoints regarding race, class, and gender—played a powerful role shaping perceptions of child abuse. These perceptions were often directly at odds with the available data and disproportionately targeted poor African American families above others.

Download or read book Fake News in Digital Cultures written by Rob Cover and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fake News in Digital Cultures presents a new approach to understanding disinformation and misinformation in contemporary digital communication, arguing that fake news is not an alien phenomenon undertaken by bad actors, but a logical outcome of contemporary digital and popular culture.

Download or read book Grappling with Representation in the WWE written by Lowery A. Woodall III and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-10-03 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Lowery A. Woodall III explores the ways that diverse populations are portrayed, stereotyped, and sometimes villainized in the WWE’s colorful and dramatic programming. Each chapter examines the surprisingly complex and multilayered representation of marginalized populations throughout the modern history of the WWE under the leadership of Vincent K. McMahon. Through weekly shows like Raw and SmackDown, pay-per-view spectaculars like WrestleMania, and a vast library of wrestling-related material on their streaming platform, Woodall argues that the WWE and McMahon have created calculated and carefully curated representations of diversity that are viewed by millions of fans worldwide. What effects do those representations have on the men, women, and children who consume WWE content? How are wrestlers and performers impacted by their on-screen portrayals? This book explores these questions and demonstrates that when representations are inaccurate or problematic, more than just kayfabe is in danger of being broken. Scholars of professional wrestling studies, media studies, and communication studies will find this book of particular interest.

Download or read book The Psilocybin Handbook for Women written by Jennifer Chesak and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you're looking for mushroom mansplaining, you've come to the wrong book. The Psilocybin Handbook for Women is a resource for everyone, although it features information specific to those assigned female at birth-because psychedelics may have different effects and applications across the sexes. This informative guidebook is packed with everything you need to know about psilocybin, including its history, potential medicinal and recreational benefits, the latest evidence-based research, and how to microdose and trip sit. You'll also get the answers to some of your most pressing questions: Does psilocybin affect women differently? Does it matter where I am in my cycle when I use psilocybin? Can psilocybin help with menstrual migraines, endometriosis, or premenstrual dysphoric disorder? What the heck is the entourage effect? Do hormones have an impact on the entourage effect? Will psilocybin boost my sex life? And more!