Douglas Brode to Recieve 2023 Popular Culture Association Award

DOUGLAS BRODE TO RECEIVE

2023 POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION AWARD

The Popular Culture Association (PCA) is thrilled to announce that Dr. Douglas Brode is the 2023 President Award Recipient and Speaker at the upcoming PCA Conference (April 5-8 in San Antonio, Texas). The President Award recognizes the contributions of outstanding individuals who have contributed to the study of Popular Culture.

Douglas Brode has always been a trail blazer who as a college professor and professional writer early-on argued that Classical Culture is, when properly understood, Popular Culture plus time, paving the way for such media as television and comic books to be taken as seriously as live theatre and mainstream literature. He is a screenwriter, playwright, novelist, film historian, and multi-award winning journalist. His knowledge of film is staggering…his study of American culture, inspiring…his critique of The Alamo legend, long over due.

On Wednesday, April 5th, Doug will be presenting a radical, new interpretation of The Graduate (1967). The film will be screened beforehand.

The highest grossing film of 1967, The Graduate received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won Best Director. Selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 1996, The Graduate is one of the greatest American films of all time.

“Post-Graduate Study” will feature Brode’s re-evaluation of the Mike Nichols’ classic in which he argues that the generally accepted interpretation of Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) as the first significant screen symbol of the emergent late-1960s  New American Youth is precisely the opposite of what a close textual examination of the film reveals. Previously, Brode has analyzed The Graduate in three of his 50+ books on American popular culture: The Films of the Sixties, The Films of Dustin Hoffman, and Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.

On Thursday, April 6th, Brode will examine the most pivotal and popularized event in Texas history and political folklore. His presentation, “The Alamo: Fact, Film, and Fiction” will include numerous little-known facts about the legendary siege, a comprehensive and critical analysis of the long line of Alamo films including John Wayne’s 1960 epic, and information about his own graphic novel Yellow Rose of Texas: The Myth of Emily Morgan (McFarland). At Doug’s request, we are also screening Frank Lloyd’s under-appreciated Alamo film, The Last Command (1955; Republic Studios starring Sterling Hayden). Though considerably less known than either the Walt Disney or John Wayne versions, this is considered to be the most historically accurate film on the subject. He  will receive the award immediately following his presentation.

ABOUT DOUGLAS BRODE:
During the 1960s, DOUGLAS BRODE took a motorcycle odyssey across the United States and then hitch-hiked across Western Europe in order to gain experiences for his later stories. During the 1970s, he created the Cinema Studies Program for Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York, twice awarded that institution’s highest honor, Teacher of the Year; he then went on to develop the Film Classics Program for The Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.  He began writing film criticism for such 'Underground' alternative newspapers as The Nickel Review. Brode served as the film critic for The Syracuse Post-Standard and The Syracuse Herald American, that city’s Newhouse newspapers, between 1983 and 1994, with many of his articles nationally syndicated. During this period he received the Syracuse Press Club’s award for Best Critical Writing on four occasions. He also worked as a film and theatre critic on radio and television for more than 25 years, as well as hosting his own weekly talk show. Brode's books include the popular 1970s text Crossroads to the Cinema (Holbrook press) and numerous entries in the Citadel Press “Films of …” series including volumes on the 1950s and 1960s, directors Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen, and stars Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro. His other books on film and popular culture include Shakespeare in the Movies for Oxford University Press. Brode has edited or co-edited nearly a dozen anthologies on subjects as diverse as Star Wars, Star Trek, Walt Disney, The Twenty-First Century Western and The American Civil War on Film. He co-wrote the 50th Anniversary Tribute to the Twilight Zone with Rod Serling's widow and hosted a special event at Walt Disney World's Tower of Terror on that very date. Brode's time travel short story "The Ides of Texas" (which involves The Alamo) appears in the best selling anthology More Stories From The Twilight Zone. A horror story, The Morning After the Night of the Living Dead, appears in a popular Zombie anthology. He wrote the screenplay for the 1997 Neo-Noir film Midnight Blue starring Harry Dean Stanton. Brode’s professionally produced plays include Heartbreaker and Somewhere in the Night. In regional theatre, he has played the leads in Woody Allen’s comedy Play It Again Sam, Neil Simon’s comedy-drama Chapter Two, and Arthur Miller’s modern tragedy After the Fall, among many others. He has appeared often on national TV and radio shows as a guest speaker (a semi-regular guest on the long running Dennis Miller program) and appeared on PBS' two part, four hour tribute to Walt Disney. Brode has been interviewed by numerous magazines and newspapers including The New York Times and The London Times. His articles on film and popular culture have appeared in such mainstream magazines as Rolling Stone and TV Guide as well as such journals as Cineaste and Television Quarterly. Brode is also the author of numerous novels, including The Planet Jesus Trilogy (with his son Shaun) in which Christ is depicted as a FEMALE savior disguised as a male so as to attend rabbinical school. Also, many graphic novels including Yellow Rose of Texas: The Myth of Emily Morgan, which recounts events of the Texas Revolution of 1836 from the point-of-view of a legendary African American woman. Retired from teaching but not writing, Brode and his wife Sue currently live in San Antonio.  On the 50th anniversary of his graduation from SUNY Geneseo, Brode was picked as the Outstanding Graduate in terms of life accomplishments  for the Class of 1965.. He is the only member of the graduating class of Patchogue High School (1961) thus far included in that institution's Hall of Fame. Brode's listings include Who's Who in America and Who's Who Among American Authors.  Brode's two volume encyclopedia of World War II films and Midnight Matinees, a compendium of cult films, were recently published by Bear Manor Media.

Alamo Tour Information Coming Soon!