Popular Culture

Critics of American education the past few years have sung no refrain more frequently than this one: With emotions ranging from outrage to despair to a sort of tacit smugness, the pundits have repeatedly pointed to the lack of "cultural literacy" as the most rotten apple of all in the vermin- infested public school barrel. Youngsters confuse the Civil War with the Mexican War; they cannot locate the Mississippi River on a map (hell, they couldn't find it if they fell in it!

Beth Heinly says she admires paint-pushing abstract expressionists like Joan Mitchell and Willem de Kooning. The 25-year-old artist also connects with neo-expressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and, more recently, with his pop mentor Andy Warhol, who she says has appeared in her dreams. This quirky pedigree can be detected in Heinly's super-casual, unframed marker-on-paper drawings at the Black Floor Gallery, but her channeling is entirely original. Heinly's deliberately awkward, Frankenstein-walk line and scrawling of blunt, graffitilike sentiments are reminiscent of Basquiat.

One glance and you know that Grace Hartigan's partially abstract paintings - full of "snatches of life" images she picks out from her surroundings and recreates - are a remarkable accomplishment because they are awesome. And yet, be advised these are not one-shot paintings perceivable at a single glance. On view now at Rosemont College is a series of big, vibrant, color-radiant oils that Hartigan, one of our nation's top female artists, painted between 1988 and 1993. All of them were inspired by her seeing and examining closely the stippled brushwork in the Georges Seurat masterpiece painting Sunday Afternoon on the Grande-Jatte at Chicago Art Institute.

Marilyn Monroe has been called many things in the 40 years since her death, but "plus size" generally isn't one of them. Yet the glamorous Hollywood sex symbol wore a size 12 and, by American fashion standards, that makes her a plus size. Surprised? You shouldn't be. Particularly in the last couple of decades, the message the popular culture has been sending, especially to women, is you just can't be too thin.. . . And nobody knows if a popular culture that is more realistic about weight will also prove to be more receptive to healthier eating and more exercise.

Five hundred years from now, when Hollywood is covered with six feet of soil, if the archaeologists uncover Jackass: The Movie, they will have little trouble putting together the pieces as to why American civilization ended as we know it. No one in their right mind should see this film: teenage boys (not men) defecating in display toilets in hardware stores; young knuckleheads purposefully attempting stunts that will result in serious injury to themselves and to others. Academic researchers who specialize in anthropology have clearly concluded one point when it comes to young men, a point abundantly displayed in the period we know now as the Wild West, and in our current popular culture: When young men are left to their own devices, social pathologies soon follow.

In the last few days, Americans have seen chilling confirmation of the powerful impact that fanciful images in the popular culture exert on everyday life. No, I'm not talking about the case of a torched toll booth in the New York subway, apparently in imitation of a scene in the film, Money Train. I'm referring to the ubiquitous toy commercials that turn up everywhere this time of year and make their influence felt in every home with kids and a TV. No matter how young they are, children have a distressing tendency to point to some glitzy gizmo on the family tube and to demand, in tones too insistent to be safely ignored, "I want it!"

On the ivy-walled campus of Lehigh University, David Hawkes leads a discussion on critical thought. "What is the relationship between image and reality?" Hawkes, an assistant professor of English, recently asked his composition and literature class. The students pondered the weighty question. "The image," suggested 18- year-old Marty Lamb, "is perhaps a tool used to affect reality. " The deep discussion that followed did not exactly deal with composition or literature.

There is something very wrong with the system of values in a society that has only derogatory terms like nerd and geek for the intellectually curious and academically serious. A geek, according to Webster's New World Dictionary, is a street performer who shocks the public by biting off heads of live chickens and snakes. It is a telling fact about our language and our culture that someone dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge is compared to a freak biting the head off a live chicken.

One of Andy Warhol's more significant flights of intuition was his realization that celebrity culture could be represented in high art by a graphic process initially used for advertising and other commercial purposes. Silk-screening produces bold patterns of color and form rather than nuances. What better way to immortalize icons of popular culture such as Marilyn Monroe, or to transform international political figures such as Mao Tse-tsung into pop icons? Warhol's screenprints are often big and typically brassy.

Hofstra University, better known for academic summits on U.S. presidents than for pop-culture confabs, will move ahead with plans for a major fall symposium on Frank Sinatra, an icon whose vast sphere of influence merits serious scholarly attention, university officials said. The Sinatra family has been cooperating with planning the conference, which has been in the works for two years. Scheduled for Nov. 12 to 14, it will take a clear-eyed - that is, critical - look at Sinatra's impact on society, said Natalie Datlof, conference coordinator at the Hempstead, N.Y., school.

Regina Lee Blaszczyk, a professor of consumer culture and design history, says her neighborhood coffee shop is a perfect example of how the laptop experience has become the accessory of the age, and she's not kidding. At Chapterhouse on Ninth near Bainbridge, there is a shelf of books available for customers, but on nearly every table, most occupied by a person and a latte, is a laptop. Most feature a shiny apple on the cover. "May I share your outlet?" is about all that passes for conversation between tables.

Could insult be good for you?   As long as everyone else is getting it, too? For the third straight year, Ricky Gervais hosted Sunday evening's Golden Globe Awards. He was more restrained (and thinner) than usual (oops - was that an insult?). But he still had a couple of good zingers. "The Golden Globes are to the Oscars what Kim Kardashian is to Kate Middleton," he said, comparing the reality-TV queen and the future queen of England. "Bit louder, bit trashier, bit drunker, and more easily bought.

Flamboyant wide receiver Terrell Owens has reached the epitome of celebrity in today's popular culture - he is now famous merely for being famous. His "I'm back" workout was watched by two television networks but no NFL teams. The 37-year-old free-agent wide receiver participated in some drills and caught passes Tuesday in Calabasas, Calif., in a showcase televised by ESPN and NFL Network. He told ESPN: "I definitely feel there are some teams out there that are interested.

SAN DIEGO - Storm troopers cavorted with zombies, Steven Spielberg chatted with Peter Jackson, and the stars of Cowboys & Aliens swooped into San Diego, making for an action-packed Comic-Con. The 42d annual fan festival closed Sunday after four days of pop-culture indulgence. More than 120,000 people attended the event at the San Diego Convention Center, which spilled over into downtown San Diego. Costumed characters strolled the streets, and empty storefronts were transformed into special attractions such as the Sega Arcade and Monstergeddon, which mixed Marvel characters with monster trucks.

'To clear my head, I went to a nude beach," says Smith (Thomas Dekker), a cinema studies major struggling with his sexual urges - gay? ambisexual? - and offering a noirish voice-over in Gregg Araki's crisp, goofy Kaboom . Of course, clearing his head is the last thing this diversion accomplishes, and before long, Smith is tumbling into bizarre scenarios involving a headless body and creepy dudes in animal masks. Luckily, there's his best friend, art student Stella (Haley Bennett)

Q: Please help me with a difficult decision. A childhood friend re-entered my life within the past year quite by accident. I so thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with her and the memories it brought back that we have been visiting by phone weekly. I do not want to hurt my wife, nor do I want to give up this special relationship; it's like therapy for me. As long as it's nonphysical, what's wrong with continuing our relationship in private? My closest friend feels I am betraying my wife, but I don't see it that way. He insists I'm having an affair of some sort that will end in disaster for everyone.

Cankerblossom. What's most remarkable about Pig Iron Theatre Company's first foray into the family-theater market is its timing. This was the summer that 3-D entertainment burgeoned in popular culture. So along comes Pig Iron Theatre Company with Cankerblossom , its through-the-looking-glass visit to Flatworld, a 2-D land populated by the extraordinary cardboard puppetry of Beth Nixon (a "coconspirator" of the West Philly theater company Puppet UpRising). Though the production contains many elements of a classical quest, it also alludes to, in no particular order, Shakespeare, Homer, film director Hiyao Miyazaki ( Spirited Away )

Cankerblossom. What's most remarkable about Pig Iron Theatre Company's first foray into the family theater market is its timing. This was the summer that 3-D entertainment burgeoned in popular culture. So along comes Pig Iron Theatre Company with Cankerblossom , its through-the-looking-glass visit to Flatworld, a 2-D land populated by the extraordinary cardboard puppetry of Beth Nixon (a "co-conspirator" of the West Philly theater company Puppet UpRising). Though the production contains many elements of a classical quest, it also alludes to, in no particular order, Shake?

It's almost bigger than reality itself. Reality TV, that is. This month, CBS's Survivor , the show that opened the floodgates, turns 10 years old. In its wake came hundreds of such shows, until reality now dominates cable channels and broadcast networks. For the week ending May 9, the three top broadcast shows were all reality: Dancing With the Stars on ABC led (19.64 million viewers), followed by Fox's American Idol on Wednesday (19.58 million) and Tuesday (17.50 million)