By VAUGHN COCKAYNE
BG Independent News Correspondent
Towers of toys, bulging boxes of beer cans, giant racks of records and shelves of T-shirts make up the pop culture history of the United States.
This year’s Ray Browne Conference for Popular Culture Studies deals with exactly these collections and collectors. One such collector is keynote speaker Matthew Donahue, who is also presenting his documentary on T-shirt collecting “The Amsterdam T-shirt Project.”
Donahue, senior lecturer in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University, was the keynote speaker at the first Ray Browne conference.
“The organizers felt because my documentary is so tied into collecting, I was asked to be involved. And anyway that I can help out the department I love to. Because you gotta do something you can’t just sit around,” Donahue said.
The film, which details the T-shirt scene in Amsterdam, Netherlands, has been an interest of Donahue’s for years. Donahue began collecting T-shirts from his favorite bands as a teenager. The documentary started years ago as a way for him to investigate the phenomenon of the heavy metal T-shirt. But it developed into investigating the souvenir T-shirt trade in what he calls “the souvenir capital of the world.”
“There was something unique about the whole artistic T-shirt scene in the city, and there really isn’t anything else in the world like it,” Donahue said.
The film was a way for Donahue to invest his time in things that he loves, collecting and T-shirts, as well as create something that would benefit the department of popular culture at BGSU.
“You can make art and documentaries about your favorite topics and reach a broad audience beyond the academics,” Donahue said. “You can reach the youth, students, older people and, of course, it helps further the messages about freedom of expression and how important popular culture is.”
Donahue was a protege of popular culture studies pioneer Ray Browne and from the beginning was passionate about the study of popular culture.
“I was in one of the last classes Ray Browne taught on campus. It was a popular literature course. I remember myself and all the graduate students were just enthralled with the guy. Because he was really the one who brought this idea of popular culture into the popular consciousness. Ray Browne put BGSU on the map,” Donahue said.
The conference, which features panels covering many sides of popular culture. Panels feature topics on curating film archives, vintage sticker collecting and LEGO collecting. Donahue continues to spread the gospel of Browne and popular culture.
“He was a ‘doer’. Academia is filled with all kinds of people, but Ray browne was a ‘doer,’”Donahue said. “I feel that it is really important to carry on his legacy and the spirit of freedom of expression and how important they are in terms of art and popular culture.”
