Fabricating the Absolute Fake : : 'America' in Contemporary Pop Culture / / Jaap Kooijman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter AUP eBook Package Backfile 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Kooijman, Jaap,
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam : : Amsterdam University Press, , [2008]; ©2008
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Language: English
• Series: American Studies
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (184 p.)

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

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Fabricating the Absolute Fake -- Chapter One: We Are the World: America’s Dominance in Global Pop Culture -- Chapter Two: The Oprahifi cation of 9/ 11: America as Imagined Community -- Chapter Three: The Desert of the Real: America as Hyperreality -- Chapter Four: Americans We Never Were: Dutch Pop Culture as Karaoke Americanism -- Chapter Five: The Dutch Dream: Americanization, Pop Culture, and National Identity -- Conclusion: Let’s Make Things Better -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index