Violence in American Popular Culture [2 volumes]

Description

This timely collection provides a historical overview of violence in American popular culture from the Puritan era to the present and across a range of media. Few topics are discussed more broadly today than violence in American popular culture. Unfortunately, such discussion is often unsupported by fact and lacking in historical context. This two-volume work aims to remedy that through a series of concise, detailed essays that explore why violence has always been a fundamental part of American popular culture, the ways in which it has appeared, and how the nature and expression of interest in it have changed over time. Each volume of the collection is organized chronologically. The first focuses on violent events and phenomena in American history that have been treated across a range of popular cultural media. Topics include Native American genocide, slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and gender violence. The second volume explores the treatment of violence in popular culture as it relates to specific genres―for example, Puritan "execution sermons," dime novels, television, film, and video games. An afterword looks at the forces that influence how violence is presented, discusses what violence in pop culture tells us about American culture as a whole, and speculates about the future. Provides a narrative of the development of violence in American popular culture, illustrating both continuity and change Combines an overview of each essay's subject matter with in-depth analysis of specific examples Features discussion of well-known portrayers of violence, such as film and television, as well as lesser-known sources―for example, murder ballads and Puritan sermons―helping readers place contemporary concerns and examples into a detailed historical context Suggests directions for future research and other developments in the field Includes a keyword index to enable readers to track continuities across the various essays Cover Volume 1: American History and Violent Popular Culture Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Foreword: American Popular Culture—There Will Be Blood Notes Bibliography Introduction: Recovering American Violence Notes Bibliography Chapter One: The Vanishing Trace of Violence in Native American Literature and Film Ritualism Minimalism Ironism Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter Two: The Politics of Pain: Representing the Violence of Slavery in American Popular Culture The Strange Career of Uncle Tom’s Cabin The Eroticization of Interracial Violence Reconceptualizing the Violence of Slavery in the Post–Civil Rights Era Conclusion: Representing the Violence of Slavery in the “Post-Racial” Era Notes Bibliography Chapter Three: Natural Laws, Unnatural Violence, and the Psychophysical Experience of the Civil War Generation in America Violence in Antebellum America Simply Murder: Unfathomable Killing and the Civil War Psychophysical Coping with a Bloody Past Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter Four: World War II in American Popular Culture, 1945–Present Early Postwar, 1945–1948 Cold War, 1948–1962 The Vietnam War Era, 1962–1978 Post Vietnam, 1978–2001 Post-9/11 Notes Bibliography Chapter Five: American Dreams and Nightmares: Remembering the Civil Rights Movement American Dreams American Nightmares A Change Is Gonna Come Marching Forward: Fifty Years Later Final Thoughts Notes Bibliography Chapter Six: Exploring Popular Cultural Narratives of Gender Violence Domestic Violence Rape Sexual Harassment Hate Crimes Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter Seven: Vigilant Citizens and Horrific Heroes: Perpetuating the Positive Portrayal of Vigilantes Notes Bibliography Chapter Eight: The Violent Gang in American Popular Culture: From Pirates and Cowboys to Bikers and Gangstas Notes Bibliography Chapter Nine: Fear and Loathing in Suburbia: School Shootings Defining School Shootings Apportioning Blame in the Aftermath True Crime Treatments Fictional Responses Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter Ten: Fatal Attraction: The Serial Killer in American Popular Culture Exemplar of Modernity Narrative M.O. Fictional Representations Moral Panic and Political Rhetoric Thomas Harris and the Rise of Serial Killer Culture The “Celebrity” Serial Killer Reorientation and Rationalization Disavowal and Dexter: The Heroic Serial Killer Notes Bibliography Chapter Eleven: Presidential Violence Andrew Jackson: The Personal Is the Political Theodore Roosevelt: Violence and Masculine Self-Transformation Presidential Violence in the Age of Mass Destruction Postmodern Presidential Violence: Zombies, Vampires, and Werewolves Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter Twelve: September 11 and Beyond: The Influence of 9/11 on American Film and Television September 11, 2001 Iraq Missions Homecoming Conclusion: Violence Coming Home Notes Bibliography Film and Television Chapter Thirteen: The War on Terror in American Popular Culture Violence and War: Constructing ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ Early Responses to 9/11 in American Popular Culture Reproducing Gendered and Racialized Discourses Post-9/11 Expanding the Discourse: Alternative Representations of Violence Conclusion Notes Bibliography About the Editor and Contributors The Editor The Contributors Index Volume 2: Representations of Violence in Popular Cultural Genres Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Foreword: American Popular Culture—There Will Be Blood Notes Bibliography Introduction: Recovering American Violence Notes Bibliography Chapter One: Traversing the Boundaries of Moral Deviance: New England Execution Sermons, 1674–1825 Notes Bibliography Chapter Two: Reading between the Lines: The Penny Press and the Purpose of Making Violence News Notes Bibliography Chapter Three: The Coy, the Graphic, and the Ugly: Violence in Dime Novels Violence and Censorship: The Dime Novel as Contested Ideological Territory Violence and Sensation: Shifting Reader Identification in Dime Novel Torture Scenes Violence and Genre: Situating Dime Novels with the Conventions of Crime Fiction Drawing-Room Mystery: Secrets, Ghosts, and Offstage Violence The Hardboiled: Detectives, Outlaws, and a Damsel in Distress The Police Detective and the Forced Marriage: Race, Gender, and Violence in Phebe Paullin’s Fate Conclusions Suggestions for Further Reading Notes Bibliography Chapter Four: “She Decided to Kill Her Husband”: Housewives in Contemporary American Fictions of Crime Examining Housewife Violence Locating Violent Housewives Comedy Violence “True Crime” and Confessional Discourses Conclusion: Violent American Housewives Notes Bibliography Chapter Five: Hard-Boiled Detectives and the Roman Noir Tradition The Emergence of the Hard-Boiled and Roman Noir Dashiell Hammett Raymond Chandler James M. Cain Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter Six: Violence, the Production Code, and Film Noir Notes Bibliography Chapter Seven: From Knights to Knights-Errant: The Evolution of Westerns through Portrayals of Violence Notes Bibliography Chapter Eight: Modus Operandi: Continuity and Change in Television Crime Drama at the Forensic Turn Veracity, Verisimilitude, and Valor: Mid–Twentieth-Century Police Procedurals New Channels for New, Non-Fiction Crime Stories The Terror of Trauma: Forensic Procedurals of the New Millennium “With Better Light Let in By Death”: Forensic Procedurals as Mourning Rituals Over My Dead Body Notes Bibliography Chapter Nine: Documenting Murder before In Cold Blood: The 1950s Origins of True-Crime Notes Bibliography Chapter Ten: Capote’s Children: Patterns of Violence in Contemporary American True-Crime Narratives Notes Bibliography Chapter Eleven: “I’m Not Prepared to Die”: Murdered-Girl Tunes in Appalachia Pearl Bryan Omie Wise Lula Viers Tom Dula Contemporary Murder Ballads Notes Bibliography Chapter Twelve: AmeriKKKa’s Human Sacrifice: Blackness, Gangsta Rap, and Authentic Villainy Authentic Gangsters and Black Criminality in the American Imagination Criminality and Gangsta Rap’s Beginnings Police Violence and Gangsta Rap’s Golden Age Two More Murders and the Aftermath Notes Bibliography Chapter Thirteen: “Violent Lives”: The Representation of Violence in American Comics Violence in American Comics Superhero Comics and Violence Violence and the Road to Grim’n’Gritty Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter Fourteen: “Command and Conquer”: Video Games and Violence A Short History of Video Game “Violence” Discourse Video Game “Effects”: Violent Video Games = Violent Behaviors Critiques of Violent Video Game Playing = Violent Behavior Putting Violence in Context God of War Series Guild Wars Series Violence Doesn’t Always Sell: The Rise of Indie and Mobile Gaming Concluding Thoughts: Gamergate as Real-World Violence Notes Bibliography About the Editor and Contributors The Editor The Contributors Index