Is It 'Cause It's Cool?

Book excerpt: Even a global political watershed, such as the end of the Cold War, seems to have left a fundamental characteristic of cultural relations between the US and the rest of the world unchanged: American popular culture still stirs up emotion. American popular culture's products, artifacts, and practices entangle their consumers in affective encounters characterized by feelings of fascination, excitement, or even wholesale rejection. What is it that continues to make 'American' popular culture 'cool?' Which role does 'cool' play in the consumers' affective encounters with 'America?' This volume of essays offers new insights on the post-Cold War dissemination of American popular culture, exploring the manifold ways in which 'cool' has emerged as an elusive, yet determining, factor of an American culture gone global. (Series: American Studies in Austria - Vol. 13)