Book

Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs

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Chapter
In The Devil We Knew, H.W. Brands underscores the confusion experienced at the end of the Cold War when America’s prime adversary the Soviet Union ceased to be. He notes that as the Berlin wall was brought down journalist Charles Krauthammer had said nations like America need enemies “for purposes of self-identification and motivation” (206). Brands points to a similar mindset in Francis Fukuyama who had predicted an end of history at the time with the cessation of struggle to be followed by “‘economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands’” (209). Amid the epistemological and ethical confusion, there emerged in 1990 yet another problem exacerbating the others, a recession made worse by “the large cutback in weapons procurement” (213) in the context of looming federal budget and trade deficits (215). Americans were facing the possibility that the current younger generation—Generation X—would be the first in decades to enjoy less material benefit than the preceding generations. Categories of truth and ethics being destabilized at the same time as the economy was under duress would make finding solutions difficult in a country already destabilized by ideological divides, cultural paranoia, and the dread of nuclear extermination that would now be replaced by the dread of Y2K looming at the end of the decade as the next form of technological apocalypse. The culture would change considerably toward the decade’s end with an improving economy and organized efforts to remediate and eliminate Y2K, as we will see reflected in the changing attitudes expressed in most invasion films at the decade’s end; but initially the focus is on anxiety and uncertainty in the context of a now disoriented nation state.
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If the aim of the Reagan paradigm was to return to a Cold War-style clear delineation of good and evil, or to re-establish faith in the neo-imperial security state, these 1980s invasion films seem to suggest this process was not always completely successful in its endeavors. They reflect doubt and fear of a world trying to replace cultural anxiety with a simplistic nostalgia for the past. They testify to the complexity of a culture retaining suspicions of America’s geopolitical role in the world whether instilling cautious hope or deep pessimism in the viewer. Yet strangely, they seem to borrow unconsciously pro-status quo elements of Reagan era culture even as they sometimes reflect doubts about its implicit proposed return to America’s hegemonic tendencies at home and abroad. Toward the period’s end with the finale of the Cold War, there seems to be as much anxiety implicitly expressed in cinema about the dissolution of the Reagan paradigm as there was initially doubt about accepting the paradigm in the period’s inception.
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Working in the sitcom tradition of the ‘unruly’ woman (Rowe, The unruly woman: Gender and the genres of laughter. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1995), gross-out horror-comedy Santa Clarita Diet (Netflix 2017–2019) features a monstrous-feminine protagonist characterized in terms of excess, abjection, appetite and violent disruption of both home and her suburban community. Working from the premise that the transformation of Sheila Hammond (Drew Barrymore) into a zombie cannibal is in fact a monstrous makeover, the series locates its comedy within the heavily feminized, neoliberalist discourses of ‘wellness’, which it relentlessly satirizes, especially through its social media marketing. As a creature of ‘pure Id’, Sheila has been liberated from those internalized looks of self-censure that typify normative femininity, freeing her to fully appreciate the abject pleasures of her monstrously made-over body, characterized as being at once thoroughly disgusting yet seemingly more attractive than ever. As such, some of the series’ sharpest social satire derives from Sheila’s deeply reluctant and imperfect attempts at feminine masquerade, through which she works to maintain just enough of those normative social and gendered behaviours needed to preserve her secret and secure her family.
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S’appuyant sur des données qualitatives et quantitatives, les auteures visent à circonscrire la manière dont les pratiques de visionnement connecté s’inscrivent dans la vie quotidienne des jeunes femmes (18-24 ans) au Québec et s’articulent aux différents espaces, particulièrement l’espace domestique. Partant de l’idée que les usages du téléviseur, et aujourd’hui des dispositifs de visionnement connecté, constituent un indicateur de la transformation de la présence des femmes dans les espaces domestiques et publics, les auteures proposent de poursuivre les réflexions de Lynn Spigel du début des années 90 dans le nouvel écosystème médiatique où les pratiques de réception de la télévision sont en pleine transformation. Elles examinent le caractère genré (ou non) des usages et des modalités d’appropriation du visionnement connecté, notamment en ce qui concerne le potentiel d’autonomie couramment associé à ce dispositif quant aux espaces et au temps de visionnement, aux activités menées en parallèle ou aux modalités de découverte et de choix des contenus. La discussion croise deux traditions de recherche, soit celles des usages de la télévision et d’Internet, et s’inscrit dans la lignée des travaux de la critique féministe de la télévision (feminist television criticism). Les données sont ainsi analysées en tenant compte du rôle que jouent les logiques économique, sociale et éditoriale des opérateurs ou des opératrices des plateformes de visionnement à la demande, dans le maintien ou la reconfiguration des rapport sociaux de genre.
Article
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This article is an ecocritical reading of the Swedish television series Jordskott. I discuss the effects in the series produced by the combination of the Nordic Noir's style and narrative techniques with elements of other genres, especially Gothic horror. I argue that through the contemporary reworking of the centuries-old Nordic mythology, Jordskott demonstrates how the aggressive powers of nature in Gothic narratives can no more be conventionally explained by referring to the pagan, pre-Christian beliefs, but need to be reconceived in light of the relentless environmental devastation brought about by humankind. The link unveiled between natural ecology and cultural mythology allows the series to surpass the limitations of the regionally informed folkloric story and to evolve into an ecological cautionary tale of global significance.
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The premise of ZOOM (1972–1978), one of the most popular American children’s television shows of the 1970s, was that it served as a kind of clearinghouse for content provided by children themselves. This chapter considers ZOOM’s enlistment of its child performers and its young viewers as creative partners in the creation and dissemination of children’s culture. While ZOOM’s success testified to its ability to connect deeply with a core audience of children who felt invested in its representation of their own agency, it was also the case that adults choreographed, organized, and edited the show’s material as silent but powerful partners. Ultimately, ZOOM advanced a new model of intergenerational cultural production, in which children were encouraged to advocate for themselves as young citizens.
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