Beautiful Things in Popular Culture edited by Alan McKee Beautiful Things in Popular Culture As always, to John Hartley, who is right about most things Beautiful Things in Popular Culture edited by Alan McKee Blackwell Publishing © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd except for editorial material and organization © 2007 by Alan McKee BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Alan McKee to be identifi ed as the Author of the Editorial Material in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1 2007 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beautiful things in popular culture / edited by Alan McKee. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-3190-2 (hardback : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4051-3190-X (hardback : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-3191-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4051-3191-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Popular culture. 2. Aesthetics, Modern—20th century. I. McKee, Alan. CB430.B387 2006 306′.0973–dc22 2006001715 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 10 on 13 pt Galliard by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd, Hong Kong Printed and bound in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com Contents List of Figures vii Notes on Contributors viii Introduction 1 Alan McKee 1 Best Contemporary Mainstream Superhero Comics Writer: Brian Michael Bendis 15 Henry Jenkins 2 The Best Batman Story: The Dark Knight Returns 33 Will Brooker 3 The Best Serial Killer Novel: Red Dragon 49 Sue Turnbull 4 The Best Australian Romance Novelist: Emma Darcy 64 Glen Thomas 5 The Best Website For Men Who Have Sex With Men: cruisingforsex.com 79 Mark McLelland 6 The Best Basketball Player: Michael Jordan 87 Thomas McLaughlin 7 The Best Sneakers: The Nike Air Max Classic TW 99 Claire Gould 8 The Best Action Console Game: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 111 John Banks vi Contents 9 The Best Motorbike: The Ducati 916 Superbike 124 Margaret Henderson 10 The Best Propaganda: Humphrey Jennings, The Silent Village (1943) 144 John Hartley 11 The Best Villain in Xena: Warrior Princess: Alti 164 Sara Gwenllian Jones 12 The Best Pop Princess: Kylie Minogue 178 Marc Brennan 13 The Best Disco Record: Sharon Redd: “Never Give You Up” 193 Simon Frith Conclusion 204 Alan McKee Index 225 List of Figures 9.1 Utopia comes in yellow as well (front view) 126 9.2 Utopia comes in yellow as well (rear view) 127 9.3 Utopia comes in yellow as well (side view) 128 12.1 Cover, Q magazine, June 2002 185 Notes on Contributors John Banks has been an avid gamer since playing the arcade game Defender at the local corner shop as a teen in the early 1980s. His favorite videogames include the Grand Theft Auto series and Halo 1 & 2. Recently, he has been spending far too much time playing Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. He works with the games development company Auran, as well as being a researcher with the Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design. He has researched the relationships among com- puter games, their audiences, and game development companies, among other things. Marc Brennan’s fi rst and only encounter with Kylie Minogue was a personal appearance by the pop star at the Perth nightclub Pinocchio’s in 1987. An arch Indie boy at the time, his intention was to heckle the diminutive starlet – an aim that was thwarted by his two autograph- hunting friends. Age has weathered such prejudiced tendencies, as has a greater appreciation of the art of the pop song encouraged by years of viewing such Australian televisual staples as Countdown, Rage, and Video Hits (but not So Fresh). He now finds pleasure in cutting the rug to remixes of pop songs, drinking beer at live performances, and busting some Janet Jackson moves for his students. He will, one day, manage a boy band. Will Brooker grew up on Denny O’Neil’s Batman in the 1970s, Frank Miller’s Batman in the 1980s and Grant Morrison’s Batman in the 1990s. While researching his PhD thesis, a cultural history of Batman’s fi rst 60 years, he spent two weeks in DC Comics’ NYU offi ces and interviewed Denny O’Neil about Miller and Morrison. On the publication of his book Notes on Contributors ix Batman Unmasked in 2000, he was interviewed by Gloria Hunniford on a sofa with the 1960s Caped Crusader, Adam West. Brooker knows seven working defenses. Three of them disarm with minimal contact. Three of them kill. The other . hurts. Simon Frith is old enough to be described these days as a pioneer of popular music studies – his fi rst academic book, The Sociology of Rock, appeared in 1978. In university terms, his disciplinary expertise has always been a little unclear – he has been a lecturer in sociology, a profes- sor in departments of both English Studies and Film and Media, and now holds the Tovey Chair of Music at the University of Edinburgh. His fi rst published reviews (of records by Gene Vincent and the Small Faces) appeared in Rolling Stone in 1970 and in the 1980s he became rock critic of both the London Sunday Times and the Observer. For much of this period he reviewed singles, and his “Thesis on Disco” (an homage to Karl Marx’s “Thesis on Feuerbach”) appeared in Time Out on the occa- sion of the UK release of Saturday Night Fever. He has been the chair of the judges of the Mercury Music Prize since its inauguration in 1992 and is the author of Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. He may not know much about disco, but has every confi dence in his expertise in what is meant by “the best.” Claire Gould would like to think she has the best-dressed feet in the world. A former university lecturer and newspaper journalist, she crossed the floor to online media when they adopted the more casual combat trousers and trainers dress code. She currently edits the Daily Telegraph online (www.dailytelegraph.com.au) in Sydney, has broadened her foot- wear horizons and wears thongs (fl ip flops) in summer. She stares at her feet for at least three hours a day. Sara Gwenllian Jones has researched and written extensively on Xena: Warrior Princess in particular, and cult television generally, in her books Cult Television and Worlds Apart: Essays on Cult Television (edited with Roberta Pearson). She has also published on the topic in journals including Continuum, Screen, the Journal of Television and New Media, and in book collections including Mark Jancovich and James Lyons’ Quality Popular Television. Her next book will be a cultural history of pirates. John Hartley lived in Wales for 19 years and fell for Humphrey Jennings while taking a fi lm production course at Chapter Film Workshop in x Notes on Contributors Cardiff in 1979. His interest in propaganda stems from having made an “agit-prop” fi lm about working conditions for cinema projectionists. Called We’re Dying to Please You, it played at art houses and fi lm festivals and led to the replacement of Chapter Cinema’s carbon arc lamps with xenon bulbs. Hartley visited Cwmgiedd with a view to making a fi lm about The Silent Village, but emigrated to Australia instead. He went on to write about Jennings and propaganda more generally in several books, including Tele-ology, The Politics of Pictures, Uses of Television (all Rout- ledge) and A Short History of Cultural Studies (Sage). After a long and expensive apprenticeship in shiny, fast, and beautiful Italian objects – namely racing bicycles – Margaret Henderson eventu- ally progressed to beautiful two-wheeled objects with engines. Four Japanese sports bikes later, and one ride of a friend’s Ducati F1, she finally got the economic base in place and bought her fi rst Ducati, a 750 Monster. She now rides a Ducati 800 Supersport – red, of course, with white GT stripes. She has published widely in cultural and literary studies, including a study of motorcycle magazines. Henry Jenkins once received a fan letter from Neil Gaiman after Jenkins testified before the US Senate Commerce Committee hearings on “Mar- keting Violence to Youth.” DC Comics president Paul Levitz returns his phone calls. In fact, he is working with Gaiman, Levitz, and Harlan Ellison to organize the Julius Schwartz lecture series at MIT in honor of the Silver Age editor who revitalized The Flash and Green Lantern and created The Justice League of America. He regularly teaches courses on comics as the DeFlorz Professor of the Humanities and Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. He is the author or editor of more than 10 books on various aspects of popular culture, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, and the forthcoming Convergence Culture.