From the pageantry of Oprah Winfrey's daytime talk show to the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola empire, American "pop" culture--and the contemporary films, television programs, and cultural objects that determine it--dominates the rest of the world through its hegemonic presence. Does that make everyone a hybridized American or do these elements find mediation within the other cultures that consume them? Fabricating the Absolute Fake applies elements of postmodern theory--Jean Baudrillard's hyperreality and Umberto Eco's "absolute ...
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From the pageantry of Oprah Winfrey's daytime talk show to the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola empire, American "pop" culture--and the contemporary films, television programs, and cultural objects that determine it--dominates the rest of the world through its hegemonic presence. Does that make everyone a hybridized American or do these elements find mediation within the other cultures that consume them? Fabricating the Absolute Fake applies elements of postmodern theory--Jean Baudrillard's hyperreality and Umberto Eco's "absolute fake", among others--to this globally mediated American pop culture in order to examine both the phenomenon itself and its specific appropriation in the Netherlands, as evidenced by diverse cultural icons like the Elvis-inspired crooner Lee Towers, the Moroccan-Dutch white rapper Ali B, musical tributes to an assassinated politician, and the Dutch reality soap opera scene. A fascinating exploration of how global cultures struggle to create their own "America" within a post-September 11 media culture, Fabricating the Absolute Fake reflects on what it might mean to truly take part in American popular culture. "A brilliant, thoroughly enjoyable work of cultural critique. . . . Jaap Kooijman takes seemingly exhausted concepts like "Americanization" and turns them on their head."--Anne McCarthy, New York University
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