The American Imperial Gothic: Popular Culture, Empire, Violence by Johan Höglund


The American Imperial Gothic: Popular Culture, Empire, Violence
Title : The American Imperial Gothic: Popular Culture, Empire, Violence
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 1409449548
ISBN-10 : 9781409449546
Language : English
Format Type : Hardcover
Number of Pages : 211
Publication : First published April 1, 2014

The imagination of the early twenty-first century is catastrophic, with Hollywood blockbusters, novels, computer games, popular music, art and even political speeches all depicting a world consumed by vampires, zombies, meteors, aliens from outer space, disease, crazed terrorists and mad scientists. These frequently gothic descriptions of the apocalypse not only commodify fear itself; they articulate and even help produce imperialism. Building on, and often retelling, the British 'imperial gothic' of the late nineteenth century, the American imperial gothic is obsessed with race, gender, degeneration and invasion, with the destruction of society, the collapse of modernity and the disintegration of capitalism.Drawing on a rich array of texts from a long history of the gothic, this book contends that the doom faced by the world in popular culture is related to the current global instability, renegotiation of worldwide power and the American bid for hegemony that goes back to the beginning of the Republic and which have given shape to the first decade of the millennium.

The American Imperial Gothic: Popular Culture, Empire, Violence Reviews

  • Amalie

    Read for reference for one of my assignments. This is a good theoretically-informed book and a useful reading for anyone with an interest in the gothic, in postcolonial theory, and in American popular culture.

  • Chris Comerford

    A fascinating, thought-provoking study into the military and imperial rationales behind recent gothic narratives. From Michael Bay to Batman, spanning The Walking Dead and Dawn of the Dead, tackling scholars and scribes like Max Boot, Chalmers Johnson, Niall Ferguson and Julian Go, Höglund comprehensively lays out how history isn't necessarily doomed to repeat itself, but rather that narratives show us history is merely still slowly moving from the embarrassments and traumas of the past.

    The study does feel like it could have gone into more detail with some gothic texts and scholarly applications - more of a look at Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's notions of Empire in particular would've been good, rather than the passing reference towards the book's conclusion - and there are certain passages where the language can feel a little repetitive. Despite this, it's an intriguing read that'll have you thinking twice about the subtext of simple stories like Battle: Los Angeles and querying the binaries the United States entertainment industry would rather you accept without question.

    Highly recommended.