Focusing on portrayals of California in popular culture, this collection of new essays traces a central theme of darkness through literature (Toby Barlow, Angela Carter, Joan Didion, Thomas Pynchon, and Claire Vaye Watkins), video games (L.A. Noire), music (Death Grips, Lana Del Rey, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers), TV (True Detective and American Horror Story), and film (Starry Eyes, Southland Tales and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night).
Providing insight into the significance of Californian icons, the contributors explore the interplay between positive stereotypes connected to the myth of the Golden State and ambivalent responses to the myth based on social and political power, the consequences of consumerism, transformations of the landscape and the dominance of hyperreality.
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Für Beruf und Forschung
Interest Age: From 18 years
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
notes, bibliographies, index
Maße
Höhe: 229 mm
Breite: 152 mm
Dicke: 13 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-4766-6783-6 (9781476667836)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice is a Conex-Marie Curie Research Fellow at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. She has published essays on California literature, Post-colonial theory and opera studies. Agata Zarzycka is an assistant professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Wroclaw, Poland. She has published essays on speculative fiction, transmediality and video games.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction (Katarzyna -Nowak-McNeice and Agata Zarzycka)
Part I: California Under Construction
The Center Is Not Holding: Joan Didion and the California
Dreamer (Kathleen M. Vandenberg and Christopher K. Coffman)
Desert Women: Constructions of Female Identity and Motherhood in Angela Carter and Claire Vaye Watkins's Feminist Dystopias (Donna Mitchell)
Playing Good Cop ... or Bad Cop? Exploring Hyperreal Urban Spaces in L.A. Noire (Michael Fuchs)
"Feed the hole": Alienation, -Neo-Marxism and the Real in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales (Elizabeth Lowry)
Tension of Exclusion: On Death Grips and the Californian Ideology
(Benjamin Halligan)
Part II: Californian Monsters
"Wolf howls and the roar of police sirens": Fractured Identities, Lycanthropy and the Streets of Los Angeles in Toby Barlow's Sharp Teeth (Carys Crossen)
Stuck Here Forever: Los Angeles as Purgatory in American Horror Story (Rose Butler)
Dreams Require Sacrifice: Fame, Fortune and -Body-Horror
in Starry Eyes (Craig Ian Mann and Liam Hathaway)
Anywhere-Nowhere, California: The Real, the Imaginary and the Lonely Vampire in the Golden State (Simon Bacon)
True California: Vinci as Landscape of Terror (Marcin Cichocki)
Part III: Welcome to Dystopia
Thomas Pynchon's Hybrid California(s): In Search of Spatial/Social Justice in Inherent Vice (Diana Benea)
"Come to California": The Star as a Tragic Figure of American Apocalypse in Lana Del Rey's Honeymoon (2015) (Steve Drum)
Cop Shows, Sitcoms and Oral Histories in Thomas Pynchon's Vineland (Tomas Pollard )
These Kind of Dreams: Dystopian Depictions of California in the Music Video "Californication" (Daniel Klug)
Conclusion: Californias Everywhere (Katarzyna -Nowak-McNeice and Agata Zarzycka)
About the Contributors
Index
