Jaap Kooijman

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American pop culture - Hollywood cinema, television, pop music - 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 concepts of postmodern theory - Baudrillard’s hyperreality and Eco’s “absolute fake,” among others - to this globally mediated American pop culture in order to examine both the phenomenon itself and its appropriation in the Netherlands, as evidenced by such diverse cultural icons as the Elvis-inspired crooner Lee Towers, the Moroccan-Dutch rapper Ali B, musical tributes to an assassinated politician, and the Dutch reality soap opera scene. Fabricating the Absolute Fake is a fascinating exploration of how global cultures struggle to create their own “America” within a post-9/11 media culture.

Available at Athenaeum, Amazon UK, and Amazon USA.

“A brilliant, thoroughly enjoyable work of cultural critique, Fabricating the Absolute Fake takes seemingly exhausted concepts like ‘Americanization’ and turns them on their head. Refusing simple binaries between the fake and the authentic, or between cultural imperialism and native resistance, Kooijman demonstrates just how flexible the signifiers of Americanness can be when they circulate globally.” Anna McCarthy, Cinema Studies, New York University

“Most daring and persuasive is Kooijman’s ability to move between and connect the most delicious pop and the most searing political events (9/11, the murder of Pim Fortuyn), never evading the seriousness of entertainment nor the spectacle of politics. A book that is a pleasure for what it conveys of its subject and for its intellectual rigor, managing to be at once subtle and straightforward, complex and lucid.” Richard Dyer, Film Studies, King’s College London

“Fabricating the Absolute Fake shows that pop culture is more than emphemeral entertainment. When looked at with Kooijman’s cosmopolitan eye, pop culture can be seen as a continuing ritual in celebration of national identities, America’s identity for sure, but also, intriguinly, a Dutch or even European sense of self.” Rob Kroes, American Studies, University of Amsterdam

tags Fabricating the Absolute Fake, New book posted in Just published

Edited by Jaap Kooijman, Patricia Pisters and Wanda Strauven

Mind the Screen pays tribute to the work of Thomas Elsaesser, one of the pioneering and leading scholars in the field of film and media studies. Each contribution applies a media concept as developed by Elsaesser, revealing the wide range of themes and concerns that have come to define his work - not only in film and television studies, but also in new media studies, art and visual culture, system theory, media archaeology, and more. The issues discussed include cinephilia, melodrama, historical imaginary, post-classical Hollywood, European cinema, mind-game film, double occupancy, media technology, YouTube, images of terrorism, and the audiovisual archive. Together these essays present a close-up of media concepts, providing a looking glass for all types of audiovisual screens, from archaeological pre-cinematic screens to the silver screen, from the television set to the video art installation and the digital e-screen, and from the outdoor city screen to the mobile phone display.

tags Mind the Screen, New book posted in Just published