The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium

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The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium

Author : Mark Dery
Publisher : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN 13 : 0802196128
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (21 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium by : Mark Dery

Download or read book The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium written by Mark Dery and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging collection of essays on millennial American culture that “marshals a vast pop vocabulary with easy wit” (The New York Times Book Review). From the far left to the far right, on talk radio and the op-ed page, more and more Americans believe that the social fabric is unraveling. Celebrity worship and media frenzy, suicidal cultists and heavily armed secessionists: modern life seems to have become a “pyrotechnic insanitarium,” Mark Dery says, borrowing a turn-of-the-century name for Coney Island. Dery elucidates the meaning to our madness, deconstructing American culture from mainstream forces like Disney and Nike to fringe phenomena like the Unabomber and alien invaders. Our millennial angst, he argues, is a product of a pervasive cultural anxiety—a combination of the social and economic upheaval wrought by global capitalism and the paranoia fanned by media sensationalism. The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium is a theme-park ride through the extremes of American culture of which The Atlantic has written, “Mark Dery confirms once again what writers and thinkers as disparate as Nathanael West, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Sigmund Freud, and Oliver Sacks have already shown us: the best place to explore the human condition is at its outer margins, its pathological extremes.” “Dery is the kind of critic who just might give conspiracy theory a good name.” —Wired

Follow for Now

Author : Roy Christopher
Publisher : Roy Christopher
ISBN 13 : 0977697703
Total Pages : 393 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (776 download)

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Book Synopsis Follow for Now by : Roy Christopher

Download or read book Follow for Now written by Roy Christopher and published by Roy Christopher. This book was released on 2007 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book Description: Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends and Heroes is an anthology of forty-three interviews with minds of all kinds. Spanning over seven years, Follow for Now includes interviews with such luminaries as Bruce Sterling, Douglas Rushkoff, DJ Spooky, Philip K. Dick, Aesop Rock, Erik Davis, Howard Bloom, David X. Cohen, Richard Saul Wurman, N. Katherine Hayles, Manuel De Landa, Rudy Rucker, Milemarker, Steve Aylett, Doug Stanhope, Paul Roberts, Shepard Fairey, Tod Swank, dalek, Eric Zimmerman, Steven Johnson, Mark Dery, Geert Lovink, Brenda Laurel, and many, many more. Follow for Now is an eclectic, independently-minded snapshot of the intellectual landscape at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It also includes an extensive bibliography, a full index, and weighs in at nearly 400 pages.

A History of Evil in Popular Culture

Author : Sharon Packer MD
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313397716
Total Pages : 874 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (133 download)

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Book Synopsis A History of Evil in Popular Culture by : Sharon Packer MD

Download or read book A History of Evil in Popular Culture written by Sharon Packer MD and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 874 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evil isn't simply an abstract theological or philosophical talking point. In our society, the idea of evil feeds entertainment, manifests in all sorts of media, and is a root concept in our collective psyche. This accessible and appealing book examines what evil means to us. Evil has been with us since the Garden of Eden, when Eve unleashed evil by biting the apple. Outside of theology, evil remains a highly relevant concept in contemporary times: evil villains in films and literature make these stories entertaining; our criminal justice system decides the fate of convicted criminals based on the determination of their status as "evil" or "insane." This book examines the many manifestations of "evil" in modern media, making it clear how this idea pervades nearly all aspects of life and helping us to reconsider some of the notions about evil that pop culture perpetuates and promotes. Covering screen media such as film, television, and video games; print media that include novels and poetry; visual media like art and comics; music; and political polemics, the essays in this book address an eclectic range of topics. The diverse authors include Americans who left the United States during the Vietnam War era, conservative Christian political pundits, rock musicians, classical linguists, Disney fans, scholars of American slavery, and experts on Holocaust literature and films. From portrayals of evil in the television shows The Wire and 24 to the violent lyrics of the rap duo Insane Clown Posse to the storylines of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter books, readers will find themselves rethinking what evil is—and how they came to hold their beliefs.

Encountering Pennywise

Author : Whitney S. May
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496842243
Total Pages : 151 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Encountering Pennywise by : Whitney S. May

Download or read book Encountering Pennywise written by Whitney S. May and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions by Amylou Ahava, Jeff Ambrose, Daniel P. Compora, Penny Crofts, Keith Currie, Erin Giannini, Whitney S. May, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, Diganta Roy, Hannah Lina Schneeberger, Shannon S. Shaw, Maria Wiegel, and Margaret J. Yankovich First published in 1986, Stephen King’s novel IT forever changed the legacy of the literary clown. The subject of a TV miniseries and a two-part film adaptation and the inspiration for a resurgence of the evil clown figure in popular culture, IT's influence is undeniable, yet scholarship to date is almost exclusively devoted to the adaptations rather than the novel itself. Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King’s “IT” considers the pronounced cultural fluctuations of IT's legacies by centering the novel within the theoretical frameworks that animate it and ensure its literary and cultural persistence. The collection explores the ways the novel, so like its antagonist, replicates (or disavows) the icons of various canons and categories in order to accomplish specific psychological and cultural work. Gathering the work of scholars from diverse professional and disciplinary vantage points, editor Whitney S. May has curated an anthology that spans discussions of American surveillance culture, intergenerational conflict, the legacies of settler colonialism and Native American representation, serial-killer fanaticism, and more. In this volume, we read the protagonists’ constellations of countermoves against Pennywise as productive outlines of critique effectuated by the richness of the clown’s reflective power. The essays are therefore thematically arranged into a series of four categories of “counter”—countercurrents, countercultures, counterclaims, and counterfeits—where each supplies a specific critical lens through which to view Pennywise’s disruptions of both culture and cultural critique.

Villains and Villainy

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9401206805
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (12 download)

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Book Synopsis Villains and Villainy by :

Download or read book Villains and Villainy written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays explores the representations, incarnations and manifestations of evil when it is embodied in a particular villain or in an evil presence. All the essays contribute to showing how omnipresent yet vastly under-studied the phenomena of the villain and evil are. Together they confirm the importance of the continued study of villains and villainy in order to understand the premises behind the representation of evil, its internal localized logic, its historical contingency, and its specific conditions.

Religious Imaging in Millennialist America

Author : Ashley Crawford
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319991728
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (199 download)

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Book Synopsis Religious Imaging in Millennialist America by : Ashley Crawford

Download or read book Religious Imaging in Millennialist America written by Ashley Crawford and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-19 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ashley Crawford investigates how such figures as Ben Marcus, Matthew Barney, and David Lynch—among other artists, novelists, and film directors—utilize religious themes and images via Christianity, Judaism, and Mormonism to form essentially mutated variations of mainstream belief systems. He seeks to determine what drives contemporary artists to deliver implicitly religious imagery within a ‘secular’ context. Particularly, how religious heritage and language, and the mutations within those, have impacted American culture to partake in an aesthetic of apocalyptism that underwrites it.

Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

Author : Mark Dery
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
ISBN 13 : 0008329826
Total Pages : 544 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (83 download)

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Book Synopsis Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by : Mark Dery

Download or read book Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey written by Mark Dery and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive biography of Edward Gorey, the eccentric master of macabre nonsense. ’A genius book about a bookish genius’ Daniel Handler, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events

I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

Author : Mark Dery
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 0816677735
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (166 download)

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Book Synopsis I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts by : Mark Dery

Download or read book I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts written by Mark Dery and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author explores the darkest corners of the American psyche--including the sexual fantasies of Star Trek fans, the hidden agendas of IQ tests, the homoerotic subtext of professional football, the poetic aspects of spam email and much more.

The World in Brooklyn

Author : Judith N. DeSena
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739166700
Total Pages : 431 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The World in Brooklyn by : Judith N. DeSena

Download or read book The World in Brooklyn written by Judith N. DeSena and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The World in Brooklyn: Gentrification, Immigration, and Ethnic Politics in a Global City, is a collection of scholarly papers which analyze demographic, social, political, and economic trends that are occurring in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, as the context, reflects global forces while also contributing to them. The idea for this volume developed as the editors discovered a group of scholars from different disciplines and various universities studying Brooklyn. Brooklyn has always been legendary and has more recently regained its stature as a much sought after place to live, work and have fun. Popular folklore has it that most U.S. residents trace their family origins to Brooklyn. It is presently referred to as one of the "hippest" places in New York. Thus, this book is a collection of demographic, ethnographic, and comparative studies which focus on urban dynamics in Brooklyn. The chapters investigate issues of social class, urban development, immigration, race, ethnicity and politics within the context of Brooklyn. As a whole, this book considers both theoretical and practical urban issues. In most cases the scholarly perspective is on everyday life. With this in mind there are also social justice concerns. Issues of social segregation and attendant homogenization are brought to light. Moreover, social class and race advantages or disadvantages, as part of urban processes, are underscored through critiques of local policy decisions throughout the chapters. A common thread is the assertion by contributors that planning the future of Brooklyn needs to include multi-ethnic, racial, and economic groups, those very residents who make-up Brooklyn.

Popular Culture in a New Age

Author : Marshall Fishwick
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317956737
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (179 download)

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Book Synopsis Popular Culture in a New Age by : Marshall Fishwick

Download or read book Popular Culture in a New Age written by Marshall Fishwick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a Foreword by Dr. Fishwick's student--Tom Wolfe. This book redefines popular culture in the light of the revolutionary changes brought about by the information revolution and the digital divide. It explores the phenomenal growth and extension of popular culture in the last decade and ties in the vast changes brought about by technology and the Internet. In an era when American television and the Internet reach virtually every corner of the globe, Popular Culture in a New Age shows how the poorly understood and often underestimated area known as popular culture affects all of our lives. Beginning with an evaluation of the millennium celebrations and the enormous error of Y2K madness, Popular Culture in a New Age then moves on to the “New Gold Rush” brought about by technology and takes a hard look at its risks. The book examines a wide variety of pop culture phenomena such as carnivals, celebrities, and the road from nineteenth century humbuggery (P. T. Barnum's term) to today's hype. In Popular Culture in a New Age you'll learn about: the three faces of popular culture: folk, fake, and pop--how they relate and how they differ today's popular icons the empire of Disney World Marshall McLuhan, our era's most profound and shocking electronic thinker African-American popular culture and style Popular Culture in a New Age gives characterization to the postmodern world in a chapter on “postmodern pop,” followed by the shift from civil religion to civil disobedience and the “myth of success.” This insightful book will help you understand the way we eat, think, vote, and respond to our fast-changing world in the era of hype, spin doctors, chat rooms, and jargon.

I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

Author : Mark Dery
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 9781452938905
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (389 download)

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Book Synopsis I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts by : Mark Dery

Download or read book I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts written by Mark Dery and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2012-04-06 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the cultural critic Wired called “provocative and cuttingly humorous” comes a viciously funny, joltingly insightful collection of drive-by critiques of contemporary America where chaos is the new normal. Exploring the darkest corners of the national psyche and the nethermost regions of the self—the gothic, the grotesque, and the carnivalesque—Mark Dery makes sense of the cultural dynamics of the American madhouse early in the twenty-first century. Here are essays on the pornographic fantasies of Star Trek fans, Facebook as Limbo of the Lost, George W. Bush’s fear of his inner queer, the theme-parking of the Holocaust, the homoerotic subtext of the Super Bowl, the hidden agendas of IQ tests, Santa’s secret kinship with Satan, the sadism of dentists, Hitler’s afterlife on YouTube, the sexual identity of 2001’s HAL, the suicide note considered as a literary genre, the surrealist poetry of robot spam, the zombie apocalypse, Lady Gaga, the Church of Euthanasia, toy guns in the dream lives of American boys, and the polymorphous perversity of Madonna’s big toe. Dery casts a critical eye on the accepted order of things, boldly crossing into the intellectual no-fly zones demarcated by cultural warriors on both sides of America’s ideological divide: controversy-phobic corporate media, blinkered academic elites, and middlebrow tastemakers. Intellectually omnivorous and promiscuously interdisciplinary, Dery’s writing is a generalist’s guilty pleasure in an age of nanospecialization and niche marketing. From Menckenesque polemics on American society and deft deconstructions of pop culture to unflinching personal essays in which Dery turns his scalpel-sharp wit on himself, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts is a head-spinning intellectual ride through American dreams and American nightmares.

Bookforum

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.X/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Bookforum by :

Download or read book Bookforum written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Connecting With Consumers

Author : Allan J. Kimmel
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199556504
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis Connecting With Consumers by : Allan J. Kimmel

Download or read book Connecting With Consumers written by Allan J. Kimmel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-03 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These are exciting times for business marketing professionals, yet the challenges imposed by ongoing social and technological developments are daunting. This book calls on marketers to make a choice: embrace the ongoing changes as opportunities for reshaping relationships with consumers, or cling to the past at the risk of becoming irrelevant.

Technophobia!

Author : Daniel Dinello
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 0292758464
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis Technophobia! by : Daniel Dinello

Download or read book Technophobia! written by Daniel Dinello and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-08-26 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Techno-heaven or techno-hell? If you believe many scientists working in the emerging fields of twenty-first-century technology, the future is blissfully bright. Initially, human bodies will be perfected through genetic manipulation and the fusion of human and machine; later, human beings will completely shed the shackles of pain, disease, and even death, as human minds are downloaded into death-free robots whereby they can live forever in a heavenly "posthuman" existence. In this techno-utopian future, humanity will be saved by the godlike power of technology. If you believe the authors of science fiction, however, posthuman evolution marks the beginning of the end of human freedom, values, and identity. Our dark future will be dominated by mad scientists, rampaging robots, killer clones, and uncontrollable viruses. In this timely new book, Daniel Dinello examines "the dramatic conflict between the techno-utopia promised by real-world scientists and the techno-dystopia predicted by science fiction." Organized into chapters devoted to robotics, bionics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and other significant scientific advancements, this book summarizes the current state of each technology, while presenting corresponding reactions in science fiction. Dinello draws on a rich range of material, including films, television, books, and computer games, and argues that science fiction functions as a valuable corrective to technological domination, countering techno-hype and reflecting the "weaponized, religiously rationalized, profit-fueled" motives of such science. By imaging a disastrous future of posthuman techno-totalitarianism, science fiction encourages us to construct ways to contain new technology, and asks its audience perhaps the most important question of the twenty-first century: is technology out of control?

Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism

Author : Peter McLaren
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 0742510395
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (425 download)

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Book Synopsis Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism by : Peter McLaren

Download or read book Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism written by Peter McLaren and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will address a number of urgent themes in education today that include multiculturalism, the politics of whiteness, the globalization of capital, neoliberalism, postmodernism, imperialism, and current debates in Marxist social theory. The above themes will be linked to critical educational praxis, particularly to teaching activities within urban schools. Finally, the book will develop the basis for a wider political project directed at resisting and transforming economic exploitation, cultural homogenization, political repression, and gender inequality. Recent and widespread scholarly attention has been given to the unabated mercilessness of global capitalism. Little opposition exists as capital runs amok, unhampered and undisturbed by the tectonic upheaval that is occurring in the geopolitical landscape that has recently witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the regimes of the Eastern Bloc. As we examine education policies within the context of economic globalization, we attempt to address the extent to which the pedagogy and politics of everyday life has fallen under the sway of what we identify as cultural and economic imperialism. Finally, the book raises a number of urgent questions: What are the current limitations to educational reform efforts among the educational left? What are some of the problems associated with certain developments within postmodern education? How can a return to Marxist theory and revolutionary politics revitalize the educational left at a time when capitalism appears to be unstoppable? What actions need to be taken in both local and global arenas to overcome the exploitation that the globalization of capital has wreaked upon the world?

Uprooted Minds

Author : Nancy Caro Hollander
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135468737
Total Pages : 468 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (354 download)

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Book Synopsis Uprooted Minds by : Nancy Caro Hollander

Download or read book Uprooted Minds written by Nancy Caro Hollander and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our post-9/11 environment, our sense of relative security and stability as privileged subjects living in the heart of Empire has been profoundly shaken. Hollander explores the forces that have brought us to this critical juncture, analyzing the role played by the neoliberal economic paradigm and conservative political agenda that emerged in the West over the past four decades with devastating consequences for the hemisphere's citizens. Narrative testimonies of progressive U.S. and Latin American psychoanalysts illuminate the psychological meanings of living under authoritarian political conditions and show how a psychoanalysis "beyond the couch" contributes to social struggles on behalf of human rights and redistributive justice. By interrogating themes related to the mutual effects of social power and ideology, large group dynamics and unconscious fantasies, affects and defenses, Hollander encourages reflections about our experience as social/psychological subjects.

Fashioning Horror

Author : Julia Petrov
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350036196
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Fashioning Horror by : Julia Petrov

Download or read book Fashioning Horror written by Julia Petrov and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Jack the Ripper to Frankenstein, Halloween customs to Alexander McQueen collections, Fashioning Horror examines how terror is fashioned visually, symbolically, and materially through fashion and costume, in literature, film, and real life. With a series of case studies that range from sensationalist cinema and Slasher films to true crime and nineteenth-century literature, the volume investigates the central importance of clothing to the horror genre, and broadens our understanding of both material and popular culture. Arguing that dress is fundamental to our understanding of character and setting within horror, the chapters also reveal how the grotesque and horrific is at the center of fashion itself, with its potential for instability, disguise, and carnivalesque subversion. Packed with original research, and bringing together a range of international scholars, the book is the first to thoroughly examine the aesthetics of terror and the role of fashion in the construction of horror.