Category Archive: Popular culture

A Dive into the Deep End: The Importance of the Swimming Pool in Southern California

[Let Summer begin! This week we focus on the role of pools and beaches in American, specifically, SoCal […]

Shifting Lanes: The Demise of the Southern California Autotopia

To understand the City of Angels, Joan Didion once wrote, one needed to immerse oneself in the freeway […]

Sloping toward the Future?: Generation X and Malaise in Richard Fulco’s There Is No End to This Slope

  “Hurt people hurt people,” the damaged Roger Greenberg tells a pre-Frances Ha Greta Gerwig in Noah Baumbach’s […]

Seventy Years Later: The Zoot Suit Riots and the Complexity of Youth Culture

[Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared under the Intersections column at KCET Departures, May 30, 2013.] In the […]

From Better Luck Tomorrow to K-Town: Asian Americans and Los Angeles in 21st Century Media

[Editor’s Note: This piece closes out our  Asian Pacific American Heritage Month coverage.  Be sure to check out […]

Noiring L.A.: The Crimson Kimono and Asian American Sexuality in the Age of the Cold War

“Crimson Kimono is really just a reversal of the old GI concept: ‘Let’s change our luck,’” Director Sam […]

Filing the Lane, Here and Abroad: Filipino American Identity and Basketball

[Editor’s Note: Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage Month! ToM will be bringing forth several articles on Asian American […]

The Reagan Revolution Part I: Popular Music, Ronald Reagan, and Protest: Punk, Hardcore, and Post Punk, a Primer, 1980-2010

Editor’s note: This week we kick off a series of posts on punk in the 1980s and 1990s […]