Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 8

particularly with regard to teenage girls and their possibilities for self-definition.
In “Staging (on film) Richard III to Reflect the Present,” James Forse also
addresses the power of myth through his examination of the many and varied
depictions of Richard III from Shakespeare through the 1983 British comedy series
B la ck A dd er. Like Harts and Baker, Forse points to the inevitable conflation of
“truth” and myth in depictions of history and their manipulation by writers and
directors to adapt to contemporary experiences.
In “The Seduction of Communism: One L onely N igh t and J et P il o f Cyndy
Hendershot debunks a popular myth of the 1950’s that equated feminine seduction
with Communist evil. She pairs the Mickey Spillane detective novel and the 1957
Hollywood film to reject the popular misconception of the time and to imply that
love and/or the allure of capitalistic excess proved as enticing to these Communist
women as they allegedly were to the good ole’ American boys it was their Job to
seduce.
In his discussion of the 1999 re-make of the Robert Wise film The Haunting
B.R. Smith criticizes the current version for degenerating into a “simple pageant
of technical display” as he reminds that the horror genre is as dependent on
suggestion and enticement as it is on visual special effects. And, moving from
horror to horrifyingly amusing slapstick comedy, Wheeler Winston Dixon
documents the careers of British actors/directors/creators Rik Mayall and Adrian
Edmondson from their undergraduate comic skits to their first feature film. G u est
H ouse P aradiso, also released in 1999.
Other articles focus on very “real” contemporary situations, such as Caroline
Oates examination of the alleged changing focus and content in women’s weekly
magazines in the UK in her article “Writing Women’s Magazines.” Like Zahn,
Oates uncovers market manipulation and exploitation in another area of feminine
consumption. Steven Carter queries the “work” ethic of today, contrasting our
disembodied, cyberspace-oriented world with just two generations ago’s manual
labor emphasis. New conceptions about “the body” become inevitable and it is
here that Carter’s question “Are We Having Fun Yet?” is addressed. Finally, Arnold
S. Wolfe provides an in-depth and interesting analysis of John Lennon’s artistic
work in “Unreal Fields’: Constituents of the Lasting Popularity of The Beatles’
S tr a w b e ty F ields ForeveT'and Richard Ostrom reveals how the press, restricted
within the repressive Indonesian government of Suharto’s regime from 1966 through
1998, used clever Balinese cartoons to criticize and undermine the dictator’s rule.
We hope that all of these articles catch your interest and inspire further inquiry.
Juli Barry
Associate Editor