Popular culture analysis comes in more flavors than just
People and
Rolling Stone articles. If you want to see how brainy intellectuals and academics have "read" the cultural significance of Star Trek or The Simpsons, for instance, take a look at the
Journal of Popular Culture. You can access full-text articles from this journal written from 1988 to the present; go to the Poly Library web page at
http://library.polyprep.org/, click on "Proquest Periodicals" in the center column--after logging in with your Poly ID and password, type in the account code "VVHCTQTQST" and the password "welcome" (both without quote marks) if necessary--select the "Publications" tab, then do a search for "Journal of Popular Culture". This will bring you to a screen that looks like this:
Click to enlarge image
In the search box that accompanies "Search for articles within this publication" type in good keywords for your topic and see the range of articles that come up. Most 1- and 2-page articles are book reviews--which might give you some good leads to follow up on. But you'll also find much longer, in-depth articles like "The Final Four as Final Judgment: The Cultural Significance of the NCAA Basketball Championship" or "American Dreams of Mutants: The X-Men-"Pulp" Fiction, Science Fiction, and Superheroes."
Enjoy!
