Pop Culture

China scholar Orville Schell has written nine books about China, as well as contributed to magazines and television. His latest book, "Mandate of Heaven," examines the Tiananmen Square massacre and looks at how the younger generation will come to power. He says popular culture has become the newest arena for dissent and political change.

Susan Douglas is a professor of media and American studies at Hampshire College. She has just written a book “Where the Girls Are,” that looks at women in baby-boomer pop culture. She explains how the media’s alternating images of stereotypical femininity and feminism created a kind of “schizophrenia” in American women. She talks about how this confusion has caused ambivalence in American women about what feminism means.

Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews "Where the Girls Are" by media theorist Susan J. Douglas.

Writer for the Village Voice and The Nation Pagan Kennedy. Kennedy ("Pagan" is not her real first name) has staked out a niche for herself as a "1970's survivor and devotee." Kennedy has written an investigation of that decade, seen through its artifacts and social upheaval, "Platforms: A Microwaved Cultural Chronicle of the 1970's" (St. Martins). In the 70's she says, "we inherited this idea of recycling culture.

At the recent Public Radio Conference in San Antonio, Texas, three Fresh Air arts reviewers swapped stories at a critics forum. Rock critic, Ken Tucker; commentator and book critic, Maureen Corrigan; and TV critic, David Bianculli, offered their thoughts on issues such as media hype and how to deal with it. They shared anecdotes about angry subjects of negative reviews who seek revenge against the reviewer. That panel discussion will be aired today.

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg on Eurocentric culture.

Commentator Maureen Corrigan tells us about her trip to the auto show.

On the occasion of end of the Superman comic, language commentator Geoffrey Nunberg considers the origin of the word "Superman," and how "super" began to be used in other ways.

Now that the Cold War's over, Pop culture scholar Michael Barson has written "Better Dead Than Red! A Nostalgic Look At The Golden Years Of Russiaphobia, Red-Baiting, And Other Commie Madness." (Hyperion) It's a look at how popular culture fueled public hysteria during the cold war -- from the Children's Crusade Against Communism bubble gum card series to the Hollywood production "I was a Communist for the F-B-I." By the way... the book is due to arrive in stores on Mayday 1992.

Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes. Despite his huge influence in the art world, Hughes prides himself on being a perennial outsider in that world. He'll talk about the current state of the arts.