In this Book
- Apocalyptic Dread: American Film at the Turn of the Millennium
- Book
- 2007
- Published by: State University of New York Press
- Series: SUNY series, Horizons of Cinema
summary
In Apocalyptic Dread, Kirsten Moana Thompson examines how fears and anxieties about the future are reflected in recent American cinema. Through close readings of such films as Cape Fear, Candyman, Dolores Claiborne, Se7en, Signs, and War of the Worlds, Thompson argues that a longstanding American apocalyptic tradition permeates our popular culture, spreading from science-fiction and disaster films into horror, crime, and melodrama. Drawing upon Kierkegaard’s notion of dread—that is, a fundamental anxiety and ambivalence about existential choice and the future—Thompson suggests that the apocalyptic dread revealed in these films, and its guiding tropes of violence, retribution, and renewal, also reveal deep-seated anxieties about historical fragmentation and change, anxieties that are in turn displaced onto each film’s particular “monster,” whether human, demonic, or eschatological.
Table of Contents
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- Illustrations
- pp. ix-x
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xi-xii
- 4. Dolores Claiborne: Memorial Dread
- pp. 83-104
- 5. Se7en in the Morgue: Dystopian Dread
- pp. 105-126
- 7. War of the Worlds: Uncanny Dread
- pp. 145-153
- Works Cited
- pp. 175-179
Additional Information
ISBN
9780791480335
DOI
MARC Record
OCLC
140352762
Pages
207
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No