Introduction
The second issue of the year 2000 Popular Culture Review takes us around the
world, and foi*ward and backward through time within diverse cultures and subcul
tures. From an historical summary of an important Chinese cujstom to race rela
tions in the U.S., from the future of film to the idiosyncracies of collectors of
archaic, discarded goods, the topics discussed provide readers with a range of fas
cinating and controversial opinions on contemporary issues.
The status of race relations since World War II is forefront in this Summer
issue. Joy Nishie and Erika Engstrom comment on racist practices toward Japanese
Americans during World War II, as well as attitudes towards Japanese Americans
after the war, in their analysis of the first Hollywood film to portray Japanese Ameri
can soldiers. Go For Broke!. Charlene Regester takes a unique approach to charac
ter analysis in her biographically-informed study of a still publicity photo of actress
Dorothy Dandridge. Regester’s article also provides a “picture” of Hollywood’s
role in American racial stereotyping and discrimination practices in her study of
Dandridge as a black female screen star in the 1960’s.
Keiko Nitta and Renford Reese analyze hip hop or rap music, albeit from very
different perspectives. Nitta’s article explores rap songs as counter-narratives to main
stream social and historical commentaries of U.S. life. Her term, “strategic selfcommodification” provides a complex and provocative sign for understanding the
“Gangsta” image and the ways in which Black males identifying with this image both
embrace and disrupt the mass commercialization of their music. Renford Reese dis
cusses ways in which rap’s appeal crosses racial and ethnic boundaries, through its
internationally accessible language and the styles in dress that young people from a
wide range of cultural backgrounds have adopted. He views rap as having the poten
tial to mend race and ethnic relations throughout the United States.
Ross Talarico’s “drive through the city” presents a quick and controversial
look at race relations via an analysis of a VW Jetta television commercial. Readers
should have a range of reactions to his conclusion as to the reasons for a white
yuppie couple’s drive through an urban American city. Gwendolyn Foster exam
ines the work of African film director Bassek Ba Kobhio, offering his film on the
life of Albert Schweitzer, “The Great White of Lambarn,” as an example of a com
plex, oppositional gaze to the familiar, white, imperialistic and colonizing one.
In different cultural arenas, Wheeler Winston Dixon reports on our “fully digital
future” with the onset of laser-projection, digital video systems and other 21st
century innovations in the film industry. Jan Baetens traces the changes in the
world of comics in Europe since its non-individualized, “postmodern” turn in the
late 1980’s through rejections of pm in a recent return to a “modem values” move-