The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.57 (982 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 081314082X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 488 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-10-22 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Finally, pop-culture nerds have an intellectual to call their own."Jonathan V. With this outlook, he finds the idea of freedom in the most inauspicious places, not only in Shakespeare (his specialization) but also in popular culture, of which he is an incredibly trenchant observer. The book is brilliantly writtensmart, sharp, completely free of jargon, and, frankly, a lot of fun."Stephen Cox, University of California, San Diego"Cantor knows all the words to the songs in the South Park movie, speaks fluent Klingon, and has forgotten more about the X-Files than Fox Mulder ever knew. Last, senior writer The Weekly Standard"The incomparable Cantor has blessed the libertarian movement with a literary voice. In this book there is something of interest for everyone who either loves or hates pop culture, or simply wonders what one should think of it. He's fun to read, and you can learn a few things, too."Milwaukee Express<
Liberty, economics and pop culture SInohey It is customary for the so-called intellectual elite to trivialize TV shows and most movies as "fluff and pabulum for the masses", but here comes this book that negates these delusions by marrying popular culture to established philosophies."The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture" opens with an Introduction that is an all-encompassing summary of its content and the author's perspective. It should not be skipped.The work is divided into four parts tha. Liberty or Order? Cantor looks at the options in pop culture. Cantor, an expert on Shakespeare and a professor of English at the University of Virginia, has again returned to the topic of television and film with his new book The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV, and further expands on the topics of globalization, markets, and state power first presented in his 2001 book Gilligan Unbound.This new volume is even more substantial than the previous one, featuring te. This is an excellent study by a literary critic whose work always offers Rebecca u This is an excellent study by a literary critic whose work always offers fresh, provocative insights about the topic addressed. It is meticulously documented, lucidly written, and treats popular culture with integrity. It draws upon the writer's seemingly endless knowledge of literary tradition and applies it to an engaging subject.
But film and television have also explored the tension between freedom and other core values, such as order and political stability. Drawing on the works of John Locke, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, and other proponents of freedom, Cantor contrasts the classical liberal vision of Americaparticularly its emphasis on the virtues of spontaneous orderwith the Marxist understanding of the "culture industry" and the Hobbesian model of absolute state control.The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture concludes with a discussion of the impact of 9/11 on film and television, and the new anxieties emerging in contemporary alien-invasion narratives: the fear of a global technocracy that seeks to destroy the nuclear family, religious faith, local government, and other traditional bulwarks against the absolute state.. Cantor explores the ways in which television shows such as Star Trek, The X-Files, South Park, and Deadwood and films such as The Aviator and Mars Attacks! have portrayed both top-down and bottom-up models of order. Popular culture often champions freedom as the fundamentally American way of life and celebrates the virtues of independence and self-reliance. Film and television continually pose the question: Can Americans deal with their problems on their own, or must they rely on political elites to manage their lives?In this groundbreaking work, Paul A. What may look like healthy, productive, and creative freed
Cantor is Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English at the University of Virginia. Among his wide-ranging and acclaimed writings on film and television, Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times. Paul A.