American popular culture in the era of terror : falling skies, dark knights rising, and collapsing cultures

Description

Bringing together disparate and popular genres of the 21st century, American Popular Culture in the Era of Terror: Falling Skies, Dark Knights Rising, and Collapsing Cultures argues that popular culture has been preoccupied by fantasies and narratives dominated by the anxiety -and, strangely, the wish fulfillment-that comes from the breakdowns of morality, family, law and order, and storytelling itself. From aging superheroes to young adult dystopias, heroic killers to lustrous vampires, the figures of our fiction, film, and television again and again reveal and revel in the imagery of terror. Read more... Abstract: Bringing together the most popular genres of the 21st century, this book argues that Americans have entered a new era of narrative dominated by the fear-and wish fulfillment-of the breakdown of authority and terror itself. Read more...