Arthur Asa Berger – RIP
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Pop Culture and mass communications author Arthur Asa Berger has passed away.
Arthur Asa Berger
January 3, 1933 – September 19, 2026
“Berger is to the study of television what Idi Amin is to tourism in Uganda.”
The New York Times on Berger’s The TV-Guided American
The Marin County Journal carries the obituary:
“In 1965 he joined the Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts department at San Francisco State University, where he taught writing and media criticism for 38 years until his retirement in 2003. He published more than 130 articles and almost 100 books on media, popular culture, humor, semiotics, and culture, among them Media Analysis Techniques, Media and Communication Research Methods, Seeing Is Believing, An Anatomy of Humor, and Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture.”
“In addition to his scholarly books, he wrote a series of academic murder mysteries, including Postmortem for a Postmodernist and Durkheim Is Dead: Sherlock Holmes Is Introduced to Sociological Theory, in which, by his own description, he cheerfully bumped off what he termed “loathsome academics” while teaching readers something about theory. He drew cartoons, illustrated his own books and those of other writers, and described himself as a popularizer of obscure theories “with questionable results.” He kept writing his entire life.”
As mentioned above he was a cartoonist, caricaturist, and illustrator who enjoyed using his drawing on the covers and inside his books, of which there were scores.
For comics fans Berger is most familiar as the author of The Comic-Stripped American (1973, 1974 paperback). He his college thesis Li’l Abner: A Study in American Satire (1969, 1994) was also eventually published.
I looked for my copy of The Comic-Stripped American without success, but The Internet Archive has one.
As Berger said in a 2004 interview:
“I got started with popular culture in America in 1964, when I wrote my dissertation Li’l Abner: A Study in American Satire, at the University of Minnesota. I wrote it because of my interest in humor and in cartooning. I am a cartoonist and illustrator and did drawings for The Journal of Communication for a dozen years.”
…
“My dissertation on Al Cap was published in 1970 by Twayne. They held it for
several years and finally got around to publishing it when I visited them in New York and reminded them they had the manuscript. The first sentence in my book reads, “They laughed when I sat down at the typewriter.” I believe that it was the first sustained analysis of a comic strip done as a Ph.D. dissertation in the United States, but I’m not certain.”
…
“My interest in comics led me to write another book, The Comic-Stripped American, which was published in 1974 by Walker as a trade book.”
This interview is where the opening quote is pulled about which Berger said, “I love that line.”
Berger maintained an Instagram account and a Facebook page.
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