Apocalyptic Dread: American Film at the Turn of the Millennium

Framsida
State University of New York Press, 1 feb. 2012 - 207 sidor
In Apocalyptic Dread, Kirsten Moana Thompson examines how fears and anxieties about the future are reflected in recent American cinema. Through close readings of such films as Cape Fear, Candyman, Dolores Claiborne, Se7en, Signs, and War of the Worlds, Thompson argues that a longstanding American apocalyptic tradition permeates our popular culture, spreading from science-fiction and disaster films into horror, crime, and melodrama. Drawing upon Kierkegaard's notion of dread—that is, a fundamental anxiety and ambivalence about existential choice and the future—Thompson suggests that the apocalyptic dread revealed in these films, and its guiding tropes of violence, retribution, and renewal, also reveal deep-seated anxieties about historical fragmentation and change, anxieties that are in turn displaced onto each film's particular "monster," whether human, demonic, or eschatological.
 

Innehåll

1 Apocalyptic Dread Kierkegaardand the Cultural Landscape of the Millennium
1
Familial Dread
29
Candyman and Supernatural Dread
59
Memorial Dread
83
Dystopian Dread
105
Apocalyptic Dread
127
Uncanny Dread
145
Notes
155
Works Cited
175
Index
181
Upphovsrätt

Andra upplagor - Visa alla

Vanliga ord och fraser

Om författaren (2012)

Kirsten Moana Thompson is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Wayne State University and coeditor (with Terri Ginsberg) of Perspectives on German Cinema.

Bibliografisk information