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In America as in Britain, the rise of the Gothic represented the other—the fearful shadows cast upon Enlightenment philosophies of common sense, democratic positivism, and optimistic futurity. Many critics have recognized the centrality of these shadows to American culture and self-identification. American Gothic, however, remaps the field by offering a series of revisionist essays associated with a common theme: the range and variety of Gothic manifestations in high and popular art from the roots of American culture to the present. The thirteen essayists approach the persistence of the Gothic in American culture by providing a composite of interventions that focus on specific issues—the...
British filmmaker Peter Greenaway says life offers only two subjects: "One is sex and the other is death." Greenaway uses both and romanticizes neither; indeed, his goal is the antithesis of the sanitary and sentimental portrayal of humanity. Although his films have met with outrage from some viewers, cult audiences praise them for insightful messages: that people are detached from violence because they fail to see others' bodies as identical to their own; that predatory capitalism has caused humans to lose sight of our shared physicality and mortality; and that taboos are simply a system allowing people to exercise power over others. This book examines nine of Greenaway's feature films, ded...
Aaron Sorkin is one of the most notable voices in Hollywood, attracting millions of weekly viewers with his television series The West Wing and scoring box office success with films like A Few Good Men and The American President. With a musician's sense of rhythm and writing skills honed in the theater, Sorkin crafts dialogue that brings characters to life. His crisp, tight language is both exciting to listen to and poetic in its beauty and power--but what lies behind the slick, sophisticated exchanges between Sorkin's characters? Does Sorkin's ability to captivate viewers with rapid-fire, humorous dialogue lull them into overlooking an inherent political agenda, a sense of elitism, and gend...
The first book-length study to focus on Don DeLillo's plays, Staging Don DeLillo brings the author's theatre works to the forefront. Rebecca Rey explores four central themes that emerge across DeLillo's theatre oeuvre: the centrality of language; the human fear of death; the elusiveness of truth; and the deceptive, slippery nature of personal identity. Rey examines all seven of DeLillo's plays chronologically: "The Engineer of Moonlight" (1979), The Day Room (1986), the one-minute plays "The Rapture of the Athlete Assumed Into Heaven" (1990), and "The Mystery at the Middle of Ordinary Life" (2000), Valparaiso (1999), Love-Lies-Bleeding (2006), and The Word for Snow (2014). Written in clear, accessible language, and interweaving critique of DeLillo's novels throughout, this book will appeal not only to DeLillo scholars but also to anyone working on contemporary literature and drama.
This volume is a collection of essays by various academics looking at how identity is shaped, gendered, and contested throughout Pynchon's work. By exploring sociological, anthropological, literary, and political dimensions, the contributors revise important ideas in the debate over individualism using political and feminist theory and examine the different ways in which their writings embody, engage, and critique the official narratives generated by America's culture.
From the vengeful ghosts of J-horror to the walking dead in 28 Days Later and World War Z, from the creepiness of Spain's haunted houses to the graphic gore of the New French Extremism, horror is everywhere in the twenty-first century. This lively and illuminating book explores over 100 contemporary horror films, providing insightful and provocative readings of what they mean while including numerous quotes from their creators. Some of these films, including The Babadook, The Green Inferno, It Follows, The Neon Demon, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and The Witch are so recent that this will be one of the first times they are discussed in book form. The book is divided into three main sectio...
This book contains both newly commissioned and reprinted critical essays and reviews on Don DeLillo's novels, including articles by Arthur Saltzman, John N. Duvall, Mark Osteen, Glen Scott Allen, David Cowart, George F. Will, Diane Johnson, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, and other writers.
Don DeLillo - winner of the National Book Award, the William Dean Howells Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize - is one of the most important novelists of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. While his work can be understood and taught as prescient and postmodern examples of millennial culture, this book argues that DeLillo's recent novels - White Noise, Libra, Mao II, Underworld, and The Body Artist - are more concerned with spiritual crisis. Although DeLillo's worlds are rife with rejection of belief and littered with faithfulness, estrangement, and desperation, his novels provide a balancing moral corrective against the conditions they describe. Speaking the vernacular of contemporary America, DeLillo explores the mysteries of what it means to be human.
A world-weary detective, a seductive femme fatale, a mysterious murder - these elements of classic film noir live again in more recent hardboiled detective films from Chinatown to Sin City. But the themes and styles of noir have also spilled over into contemporary films about gangsters, cops and serial killers ( Reservoir Dogs, The Departed, Se7en). New hybrid genres have been created, including psycho-noirs ( Memento), techno-noirs ( The Matrix) and superhero noirs ( The Dark Knight). Beginning with an introduction that shows how neo-noir has drawn upon contemporary social and historical events as well as the latest technological advances in filmmaking, this book discusses the neo-noir film...
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