Celebrity Pedophilia And Ideology In American Culture

Celebrity, Pedophilia, and Ideology in American Culture reveals the connections between rapacious capitalism and the rape of children. The twenty chapters, which span the analysis of childhood, celebrity culture, important books and films on pedophilia and violence, post-9/11 theology and public rhetoric, and killing for fame, in an interrelated fashion cover intrinsically important areas of ideology. The book develops detailed theoretical insights in cultural theory and philosophy. With the economic meltdown of the first decade of the twenty-first century, we are witnessing the inability of the free market to cope with our contemporary world, which is not limitless, in terms of knowledge and the power of science to dominate the material world and resources. Child sexual abuse here functions as a metaphor for the rapacious attack on the planet, which knows no limit penetrating everything, even--and most especially--the weakest form, at every opportunity, corrupting the future. The pervasiveness of child sexual abuse, for many, cannot be argued with, and, in a postmodern world where truth is anathema, it offers a form of truth and is concerned with the absolute limit. Stimulating, suggestive, and sometimes provocative, the capaciousness of these essays will inform everyone interested in the media, popular culture, theory and theology, politics, and the zeitgeist. Celebrity, Pedophilia, and Ideology in American Culture is an important book for all media studies, popular culture, cultural theory, and American studies collections.

This book is a unique study of the historical, theoretical, and cultural interpretations of ‘madness’ including interviews with those who have experiences of ‘madness’. It takes a transdisciplinary approach, employing historical, psychological, and sociological perspectives through an intersectional lens. This work explains how the prioritization of thinking over feeling in Western thought means the transrational imagination has frequently been negated in tackling mental health with detrimental results. This book, therefore, examines creative media, especially film, as a transrational form of human expression for healing and wellbeing, along with television, theatre, social media, music, and computer games. ‘Madness’ with regards to gender, sexuality, adolescence, and class in media and film is interrogated, as well as ‘madness’ and race through a focus on colonialism, post-colonialism, and psychiatry. It analyses group psychosis, including celebrity culture, and the ‘madness’ of leaders and gurus. This book challenges the lasting influence of the Age of Reason by furthering our understanding of the value of transrationality and the diverse ways of being human.

(Extra)Ordinary? edited by Jade Alexander and Katarzyna Bronk engages in research on the ways and means in which celebrity status has been created, controlled, dispersed and received in the past as well as the present.

The twenty-first century has seen an explosion in the ways and means in which children can become part of celebrity culture. With the rise in popularity of reality TV, child beauty pageants, talent shows, and social media platforms, as well as more established routes to fame through TV, cinema, theatre and music, the number of children establishing a presence in public life continues to proliferate. Childhood and Celebrity brings together international scholarly writing and research about famous children, and representations of childhood, from a range of disciplines including Childhood Studies, Celebrity Studies, Cultural Studies and Film Studies in order to open up a theoretical space in which to explore and understand the complex relationship between contemporary childhood and celebrity culture. This unique collection includes detailed case studies of specific child performers such as McCaulay Culkin and Miley Cyrus, histories of child stars in the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood, analyses of representations of children in film and discussions of children as media creators and producers. Key themes of transgression, gender, ‘coming of age’, childhood innocence and children’s rights recur in the chapters and present a compelling argument for the emergence of the field of Childhood and Celebrity as an area of study in its own right.

School shootings are a topic of research in a variety of different disciplines—from psychology, to sociology to criminology, pedagogy, and public health—each with their own set of theories. Many of these theories are logically interconnected, while some differ widely and seem incompatible with each other, leading to divergent results about potential means of prevention. In this innovative work, leading researchers on the topic of school shootings introduce their findings and theoretical concepts in one combined systematic volume. The contributions to this work highlight both the complementary findings from different fields, as well as cases where they diverge or contradict each other. The work is divided into four main sections: an overview of current theoretical approaches and empirical models; application of these theories to international cases, including Columbine (USA), Emsdetten (Germany), and Tuusula (Finland); a critique of the influence of the media, both in the portrayals of past events and its effect on future events; and finally an overview of existing models for prevention and intervention, and measures of their success. The result is a comprehensive source for current research on school shootings, and will provide a direction for future research.