NOSTALGIA: STARS AND GENRES IN AMERICAN POP CULTURE

Jane and Michael Stern. Elvis World. Markham: Penguin, 1987. xi + 211 pp. Illus. Eve Arnold. Marilyn Monroe: An Appreciation. Markham: Penguin, 1987.141 pp. Illus. Archie P. McDonald, cd. Shooting Stars: Heroes and Heroines of Western Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. xv + 265 pp. Illus. Patrick Lucanio. Them or Us: Archetypal Interpretations of Fifties Alien Invasion Films. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. x + 194 pp. Illus. Jim Freedman. Drawing Heat. Windsor. Black Moss Press, 1988.190 pp. Illus. Heroes and heroines of American popular culture-the stars of Hollywood and pop music-hold such a fascination for their fans that when they die their images rarely fade away. Often their individual popularity increases and morbid cults ensue. I can remember as an adolescent being devastated when Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash. In retrospect, I realize that my admiration for Holly was the closest I ever came to an experience of fan idolatry. As a teenager growing up in England, I bought every one of his records as soon as it was released; most people only began to appreciate his music after his death. He reached the top of the singles charts in Britain for the first time after he died, with "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," in April, 1959. More recently, his popularity re-emerged in 1978 with the release of a biographical film starring Gary Busey (The Buddy Holly Story). Strangely, the popularity of one of the other two pop stars killed in the same plane crash-Ritchie Valens-peaked nearly twenty years after his death with one of the biggest summer movie hits of 1987, La Bamba. The title song, performed by the group, Los Lobos, reached the top of the hit parade in North America, marking the first time since Valens's original version that a Spanish language song had done so. Even more remarkably, "La Bamba" topped the "pops" in Britain for the very first time in 1987. Clearly, it is not only personal reminiscence that causes nostalgia. In the last two decades in particular, nostalgia has become a key component of contemporary popular culture.