Description
Popular Culture matters! Such a slogan can appear over dramatic yet where popular culture really comes into its own is as a resource to help capture and understand the rapid changes in world politics. Popular culture producers, whether they be film makers, fashion designers, tv producers, videogame makers or authors of picture books internalise, contribute to, and reflect world events. Yet their works also contribute to and capture the popular imaginary at times of change. We can, of course, overstate the pace of change – much that appears to be change is in fact stasis when seen over time. This panel actively explores the content of popular culture contributing to methods and knowledge about trends and developments within world politics. Themes of banishment and exclusion, capitalist critique, conspiracy theories, visual security, and gender are all identified, problematised and reflected on through deep readings of artefacts both old and new.
