Mike Miley
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496825384
- eISBN:
- 9781496825438
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496825384.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The works discussed transpose the conceit of The Most Dangerous Game to the world of commercial broadcast entertainment, pitting characters against each other in competition for the ultimate prize: ...
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The works discussed transpose the conceit of The Most Dangerous Game to the world of commercial broadcast entertainment, pitting characters against each other in competition for the ultimate prize: their own lives. Round Four discusses how the game show has come to represent the political and personal dangers of citizenship in an America governed by a late-capitalist consumerism that has morphed into a new brand of totalitarianism that turns people into trivial objects and trivial objects into subjects of the highest importance. The “reality” of these games and their rules represent a simulated and heavily mediated environment posing as real to conceal a sinister truth. In order to challenge the dominance of this inverted world order, the protagonists must first defeat totalitarianism’s synecdoche: the game show.Less
The works discussed transpose the conceit of The Most Dangerous Game to the world of commercial broadcast entertainment, pitting characters against each other in competition for the ultimate prize: their own lives. Round Four discusses how the game show has come to represent the political and personal dangers of citizenship in an America governed by a late-capitalist consumerism that has morphed into a new brand of totalitarianism that turns people into trivial objects and trivial objects into subjects of the highest importance. The “reality” of these games and their rules represent a simulated and heavily mediated environment posing as real to conceal a sinister truth. In order to challenge the dominance of this inverted world order, the protagonists must first defeat totalitarianism’s synecdoche: the game show.
Jordan J. Dominy
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496826404
- eISBN:
- 9781496826459
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496826404.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter addresses recent portrayals of the US South in popular texts of the 2010s. Through the reality television program Duck Dynasty and J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy (2017), it ...
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This chapter addresses recent portrayals of the US South in popular texts of the 2010s. Through the reality television program Duck Dynasty and J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy (2017), it demonstrates how Cold War intellectuals’ and authors’ influence on discourse around the term “southern” has thoroughly permeated the imagination and political sentiments of Americans. The analysis and close reading of Duck Dynasty shows how popular culture perpetuates ideas associated with southern exceptionalism into the twenty-first-century. In the fractured political climate since the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, these portrayals of southern dialect, imagery, and values become not only a shibboleth for American, democratic values of liberty, tradition, and honor, but also are coded language for white nationalism and resistance to progressive social values.Less
This chapter addresses recent portrayals of the US South in popular texts of the 2010s. Through the reality television program Duck Dynasty and J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy (2017), it demonstrates how Cold War intellectuals’ and authors’ influence on discourse around the term “southern” has thoroughly permeated the imagination and political sentiments of Americans. The analysis and close reading of Duck Dynasty shows how popular culture perpetuates ideas associated with southern exceptionalism into the twenty-first-century. In the fractured political climate since the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, these portrayals of southern dialect, imagery, and values become not only a shibboleth for American, democratic values of liberty, tradition, and honor, but also are coded language for white nationalism and resistance to progressive social values.
