Twitchell begins the story in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the 'cheap thrills' available to mass audiences included bull-baiting and other blood sports, Punch-and-Judy shows, penny dreadfuls, and the illustrations of William Hogarth.
Graphic Violence provides an innovative introduction to the relationship between violence and visual media, discussing how media consumers and producers can think critically about and interact with violent visual content. It comprehensively surveys predominant theories of media violence and the research supporting and challenging them, addressing issues ranging from social learning, to representations of war and terrorism, to gender and hyper-masculinity. Each chapter features original artwork presenting a story in the style of a graphic novel to demonstrate the concepts at hand. Truly unique in its approach to the subject and medium, this volume is an excellent resource for undergraduate students of communication and media theory as well as anyone interested in understanding the causes and effects of violence in media.
If one culprit is suspected above all others for encouraging society to become more violent and unfeeling, it is television. This medium, which has become so pervasive in the last 50 years, seems to play an enormous role in the lives of the vast majority of people. But who controls the content which exerts such an enormous influence and to an extent controls the people? What are they doing now and what will they be doing tomorrow? Is violence essential to sell toothpaste and hamburgers? What are our children becoming and what will their children be like? Will every child carry a gun or other weapon just waiting for someone to trigger their violent nature and ignite their preprogrammed anger?
The conclusion of this professor-historian (emeritus) is that our gun culture had its uses in establishing American civilization, as slavery did. But we came to recognize (after a bloody civil war) that slavery was a gigantic mistake, and now I think it’s time to realize that our gun culture was a similarly gigantic mistake, though of a different kind. And we need to do what we can to minimize its horrible impacts and move on to a more positive development of a humane civilization.
How can Christianity continue to rejoice over a redemption that came at the cost of the violent suffering and death of Jesus Christ? In the wake of increasing revulsion toward oppression and abuse--both historic and contemporary--traditionally Protestant and evangelical theology is in the precarious position of defending one of its cardinal doctrines amidst a host of compelling critiques and alternatives. In I Will Repay, Dennis Oh explores how soteriology rooted in Scripture and resonant with tradition can also be conversant with the cinematic experience offered by popular films. It proposes a narrative reenvisioning of the mechanism of atonement that both supports and extends traditional theological categories and vocabularies while retaining the cross-centered conviction of an evangelical gospel.
Questioning both the popular condemnation of violent representation and the notion that violence can be constructive by empowering the identity of an integrated adult self, Wesley identifies a revealing pattern of "violent adventure" in recent fiction by American men.
When Hansel and Gretel try to eat the witch's gingerbread house in the woods, are they indulging their "uncontrolled cravings" and "destructive desires" or are they simply responding normally to the hunger pangs they feel after being abandoned by their parents? Challenging Bruno Bettelheim and other critics who read fairy tales as enactments of children's untamed urges, Maria Tatar argues that it is time to stop casting the children as villians. In this provocative book she explores how adults mistreat children, focusing on adults not only as hostile characters in fairy tales themselves but also as real people who use frightening stories to discipline young listeners.
Essays reflecting on our understanding and moral judgement of violence. The essays argue that even serious violence is not a simple fact, but a category of thought and practice rooted in history, culture and society.
The stereotypical hillbilly figure in popular culture provokes a range of responses, from bemused affection for Ma and Pa Kettle to outright fear of the mountain men in Deliverance. In Hillbillyland, J. W. Williamson investigates why hillbilly images are so pervasive in our culture and what purposes they serve. He has mined more than 800 movies, from early nickelodeon one-reelers to contemporary films such as Thelma and Louise and Raising Arizona, for representations of hillbillies in their recurring roles as symbolic 'cultural others.' Williamson's hillbillies live not only in the hills of the South but anywhere on the rough edge of society. And they are not just men; women can be hillbillies, too. According to Williamson, mainstream America responds to hillbillies because they embody our fears and hopes and a romantic vision of the past. They are clowns, children, free spirits, or wild people through whom we live vicariously while being reassured about our own standing in society.
'In an illuminating and darkly intelligent study, William Miller...has revealed...humiliation as the closet dominatrix she is, an emotion whose power to discipline us makes the world go round...Miller makes his pages blaze and roar...by throwing another handful of hollow complacencies upon the fire....The five essays making up this book...are about the persistence of the norm of reciprocity in our daily lives, about the ways in which shame and envy and especially humiliation sustain 'cultures of honor' to this day.'-Speculum