Nihilism in Film and Television

Nihilism in Film and Television PDF Author: Kevin L. Stoehr
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476611335
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
This book explores the idea of nihilism, emphasized by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, through its appearance in modern popular culture. The author defines and reflects upon nihilism, then explores its manifestation in films and television shows. Among the subjects examined are the award-winning television series The Sopranos and the film noir genre that preceded and influenced it. Films probed include Orson Welles's masterpiece Citizen Kane, the films of Stanley Kubrick, Neil Jordan's controversial The Crying Game and Richard Linklater's unconventional Waking Life. Finally, the author considers nihilism in terms of the decay of traditional values in the genre of westerns, mostly through works of filmmaker John Ford. In the concluding chapter the author broadens the lessons gleaned from these studies, maintaining that the situated and embodied nature of human life must be understood and appreciated before people can overcome the life-negating effects of nihilism.

Nihilism in Film and Television

Nihilism in Film and Television PDF Author: Kevin L. Stoehr
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476611335
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores the idea of nihilism, emphasized by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, through its appearance in modern popular culture. The author defines and reflects upon nihilism, then explores its manifestation in films and television shows. Among the subjects examined are the award-winning television series The Sopranos and the film noir genre that preceded and influenced it. Films probed include Orson Welles's masterpiece Citizen Kane, the films of Stanley Kubrick, Neil Jordan's controversial The Crying Game and Richard Linklater's unconventional Waking Life. Finally, the author considers nihilism in terms of the decay of traditional values in the genre of westerns, mostly through works of filmmaker John Ford. In the concluding chapter the author broadens the lessons gleaned from these studies, maintaining that the situated and embodied nature of human life must be understood and appreciated before people can overcome the life-negating effects of nihilism.

Cinematic Nihilism

Cinematic Nihilism PDF Author: John Marmysz
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474424570
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Through case studies of popular films, including Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises, Dawn of the Dead and The Human Centipede , this book re-emphasises the constructive potential of cinematic nihilism.

Shows about Nothing

Shows about Nothing PDF Author: Thomas S. Hibbs
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781602583795
Category : Culture in motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description


Shows about Nothing

Shows about Nothing PDF Author: Thomas S. Hibbs
Publisher: Spence Publishing Company
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description


Film, Nihilism and the Restoration of Belief

Film, Nihilism and the Restoration of Belief PDF Author: Darren Ambrose
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1782794042
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Despite the clichés which govern much of its current forms, the cinema continues to have a vital political and aesthetic significance. Our commitment to, and our sincerity towards, our ways of being in the world have become catastrophically eroded. Nihilism and despair have taken hold. We must find a way to renew our faith in our capacity to transform the world, a faith that will give us back the reality of a world eroded by the restrictive capitalist ontology of modernity. How can we restore belief in the reality of a world when scepticism and universal pessimism have taken hold? Is it possible to find alternative ways of living, being and thinking? This book will discuss the means by which some filmmakers have grasped the vocation of resisting and transforming the present, of cultivating new forms of belief in the world when total alienation seems inevitable. ,

The Sunny Nihilist

The Sunny Nihilist PDF Author: Wendy Syfret
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781788167031
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description


Hitchcock as Philosopher

Hitchcock as Philosopher PDF Author: Robert J. Yanal
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786482303
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
The films of Alfred Hitchcock deal heavily with psychological and philosophical themes, and one needn't look very far into the canon to find them. In Psycho, for example, the personality metamorphosis in Marion Crane that leads her into grand larceny is a pale double of the murderous oedipal divide in Norman Bates. In The Birds, overbearing natural mutations turn what might have been a "creature feature" into a film about fear of the unknowable. This book looks at 12 Hitchcock films and the positions they put forth on three problem areas of epistemology: deception, knowledge of mind, and problematic knowledge of the external world. These philosophical concepts are explained and woven into the author's thorough and thought-provoking discussion of each film. Descartes and Wittengenstein star; Plato, Locke, Hume, Kant and Kierkegaard also make appearances in this new "philosopher's cut" of the master's works.

Cinematic Nihilism

Cinematic Nihilism PDF Author: John Marmysz
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 9781474424561
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Exposing and illustrating how an ongoing engagement with nihilistic alienation may contribute to, rather than detract from, the value of life, Cinematic Nihilism both challenges and builds upon past scholarship that has scrutinised nihilism in the media, but which has generally over-emphasisedits negative and destructive aspects. Through case studies of popular films, including Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises, Dawn of the Dead and The Human Centipede, and with chapters on Scotland's cinematic portrayal as both a site of "nihilistic sacrifice" and as "nowhere in particular", this bookpresents a necessary corrective, re-emphasising the constructive potential of cinematic nihilism and casting it as a phenomenon that need not be overcome.

Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand

Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand PDF Author: Aaron Weinacht
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793634785
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand: Russian Nihilism Travels to America argues that the core commitments of the nihilist movement of the 1860’s made their way to 20th century America via the thought of Ayn Rand. While mid-nineteenth-century Russian nihilism has generally been seen as part of a radical tradition that culminated in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the author argues that nihilism’s intellectual trajectory was in fact quite different. Analysis of such sources as Nikolai Chernyshevskii’s What is to Be Done? (1863) and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957), archival research in Rand’s papers, and broad attention to late-nineteenth century Russian intellectual history all lead the author to conclude that nihilism’s legacy is deeply implicated in one of America’s most widely-read philosophers of capitalism and libertarian freedom.

The Philosophy of TV Noir

The Philosophy of TV Noir PDF Author: Steven Sanders
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813181569
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Film noir reflects the fatalistic themes and visual style of hard-boiled novelists and many émigré filmmakers in 1940s and 1950s America, emphasizing crime, alienation, and moral ambiguity. In The Philosophy of TV Noir, Steven M. Sanders and Aeon J. Skoble argue that the legacy of film noir classics such as The Maltese Falcon, Kiss Me Deadly, and The Big Sleep is also found in episodic television from the mid-1950s to the present. In this first-of-its-kind collection, contributors from philosophy, film studies, and literature raise fundamental questions about the human predicament, giving this unique volume its moral resonance and demonstrating why television noir deserves our attention. The introduction traces the development of TV noir and provides an overview and evaluation of the book's thirteen essays, each of which discusses an exemplary TV noir series. Realism, relativism, and integrity are discussed in essays on Dragnet, Naked City, The Fugitive, and Secret Agent. Existentialist themes of authenticity, nihilism, and the search for life's meaning are addressed in essays on Miami Vice, The Sopranos, Carnivale, and 24. The methods of crime scene investigation in The X-Files and CSI are examined, followed by an exploration of autonomy, selfhood, and interpretation in The Prisoner, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and Millennium. With this focus on the philosophical dimensions of crime, espionage, and science fiction series, The Philosophy of TV Noir draws out the full implications of film noir and establishes TV noir as an art form in its own right.