The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture [electronic resource] : Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV /
Cantor, Paul A.(Paul Arthur),1945-
Lexington : University Press of Kentucky,
2012.
Popular culture often champions freedom as the fundamentally American way of life and celebrates the virtues of independence and self-reliance. But film and television have also explored the tension between freedom and other core values, such as order and political stability. What may look like healthy, productive, and creative freedom from one point of view may look like chaos, anarchy, and a source of destructive conflict from another. Film and television continually pose the question: Can Americans deal with their problems on their own, or must they rely on political elites to manage the
Description based upon print version of record.
Popular culture often champions freedom as the fundamentally American way of life and celebrates the virtues of independence and self-reliance. But film and television have also explored the tension between freedom and other core values, such as order and political stability. What may look like healthy, productive, and creative freedom from one point of view may look like chaos, anarchy, and a source of destructive conflict from another. Film and television continually pose the question: Can Americans deal with their problems on their own, or must they rely on political elites to manage the
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction: popular culture and spontaneous order, or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the tube -- Freedom and order in the Western. The Western and Western drama: John Ford's The searchers and The oresteia -- The original frontier: Gene Roddenberry's apprenticeship for Star trek in Have gun, will travel -- Order out of the mud: Deadwood and the state of nature -- Maverick creators and Maverick heroes. Mars attacks! Tim Burton and the ideology of The flying saucer movie -- Flying solo: The aviator and entrepreneurial vision -- Cartman shrugged: the invisible gnomes and the invisible hand in South park -- Edgar G. Ulmer: the aesthete from the Alps meets the king of the B's -- The fall of the House of Ulmer: Europe versus America in the gothic vision of The black cat -- America as wasteland in detour: film noir and The Frankfurt school -- 9/11, globalization, and new challenges to freedom. The truth is still out there: The X-files and 9/11 -- Un-American gothic: the alien invasion narrative and global modernity.
Description based on print version record.
Television programs
Motion pictures