Generation X And The Rise Of The Entertainment Subject

Generation X and the Rise of the Entertainment Subject defines Gen X as the first generation to be dominated by entertainment subjectivity. A social and psychological feedback loop is created as entertainment caters to adolescent consumers while the consumer, in turn, is shaped by the entertainment they internalize. While the paradigmatic latchkey young adults are immersed in media consumption, they see the world through the lens of popular culture products that seek to capitalize on the free time and disposable income of the unoccupied viewer. This book argues that Gen X entertainment subjectivity lays the foundations for contemporary society where handheld devices and other technologies detach their users from the world around them.

When Steven Soderbergh exploded onto movie screens with sex, lies, and videotape in 1989, it represented more than the arrival of an important new director--it heralded the arrival of an entire generation of important new directors. Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction), Kevin Smith (Dogma), David Fincher (Fight Club), M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense), Ben Stiller (Reality Bites), Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor), and dozens of others are all members of Generation X, the much talked about but much misunderstood successors to baby boomers. This book is a critical study of the films directed by Gen Xers and how those directors have been influenced by their generational identity. While Generation X as a whole sometimes seems to lack direction, its filmmakers have devoted their careers to making powerful statements about contemporary society and their generation's role in it. Each section of the book deals with an aspect of Gen X filmmaking, including the influence of popular culture, postmodern narrative devices, "slackerdom" and the lack of direction, disenfranchisement and nihilism, the ever-evolving role of technology, gender issues and sexuality, the question of race, the influence of older filmmakers, and visions of the future.

Political Pathologies from The Sopranos to Succession argues that highly praised prestige TV shows reveal the underlying fantasies and contradictions of uppermiddle-class political centrists. Through a psychoanalytic interpretation of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, House of Cards, Dexter, Game of Thrones, and Succession, Robert Samuels uncovers how moderate “liberals” have helped to produce and maintain the libertarian Right. Samuels’ analysis explores the difference between contemporary centrists and the foundations of liberal democracy, exposing the myth of the “liberal media” and considers the consequences of these celebrated series, including the undermining of trust in modern liberal democratic institutions. Political Pathologies from The Sopranos to Succession contributes to a greater understanding of the ways media and political ideology can circulate on a global level through the psychopathology of class consciousness. This book will be of great interest to academics and scholars considering intersections of psychoanalytic studies, television studies, and politics.

Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Films of Ingmar Bergman presents a contemporary Freudian-Lacanian assessment of this classic director. This collection is the first to bring together this unique psychological perspective on Bergman’s work. While Bergman and his films have been written about throughout the decades, until now there has not been a collection anthologizing Freudian-Lacanian perspectives on his work. Vanessa Sinclair brings together an international community of scholars and practicing psychoanalysts – some of whom are also filmmakers – to reflect on Bergman’s films, life, and work in philosophical, historical, and cultural contexts. They assess individual films in depth, compare multiple films, and focus on Bergman’s life and work in a cultural context. This book includes chapters on seminal films including Persona and The Silence. Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Films of Ingmar Bergman will be essential reading for academics and students of film studies, psychoanalytic theory, and Lacan, and of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.

The Subject of Film and Race is the first comprehensive intervention into how film critics and scholars have sought to understand cinema's relationship to racial ideology. In attempting to do more than merely identify harmful stereotypes, research on 'films and race' appropriates ideas from post-structuralist theory. But on those platforms, the field takes intellectual and political positions that place its anti-racist efforts at an impasse. While presenting theoretical ideas in an accessible way, Gerald Sim's historical materialist approach uniquely triangulates well-known work by Edward Said with the Neo-Marxian writing about film by Theodor Adorno and Fredric Jameson. The Subject of Film and Race takes on topics such as identity politics, multiculturalism, multiracial discourse, and cyborg theory, to force film and media studies into rethinking their approach, specifically towards humanism and critical subjectivity. The book illustrates theoretical discussions with a diverse set of familiar films by John Ford, Michael Mann, Todd Solondz, Quentin Tarantino, Keanu Reeves, and others, to show that we must always be aware of capitalist history when thinking about race, ethnicity, and films.

A study of advertisers' and marketers' intentions to aim at a new consumer group - those born between 1961 and 1981 - and dubbed Generation X. The author introduces this new generation, describing how they respond to minorities, business, education, career, family and the media.

Born roughly between 1964 and 1980, Generation X has received much less critical attention than the two generations that precede and follow it: the Baby Boomers and Millennials. This essay collection examines representations of Generation X in contemporary popular culture, including in television, movies, music, and internet sources. Drawing on generational theory, cultural studies theory, race theory, and feminist theory, the essays in this volume consider the past identities of Generation X, relationships with members of younger generations, modern appropriation of Generation X aesthetics, interactions of Generation X members with family, and the existential values of Generation X.

For Generation Y, born after 1982, relationships happen over the Internet and music marks their territory. How does this generation think about the world? What does their spirituality look like? And what implications does this have for the Church? This book addresses the need for the Church to reconnect and communicate with young people.