Gilligan Unbound

Download or read book Gilligan Unbound written by Paul Arthur Cantor and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2001 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cantor celebrates the sophistication and brilliance of shows, and he shows how pop culture is influencing not only American audiences, but the entire world.

Download or read book Gilligan Unbound written by Paul Arthur Cantor and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Cantor demonstrates how, during the 1960s, Gilligan's Island and Star Trek reflected America's faith in liberal democracy and our willingness to project it universally. Gilligan's Island, Cantor argues, is based on the premise that a representative group of Americans could literally be dumped in the middle of nowhere and still prevail under the worst of circumstances. Star Trek took American optimism even further by trying to make the entire galaxy safe for democracy. Despite the famous Prime Directive, Captain Kirk and his crew remade planet after planet in the image of an idealized 1960s America."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Gilligan's Island written by Walter Metz and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-15 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the under-studied sitcom Gilligan’s Island that addresses key questions about American social life in the 1960s. Gilligan’s Island, created by Sherwood Schwartz, aired for three seasons between 1964 and 1967 on the CBS network. While the series was typically dismissed for its episodic inanity, author Walter Metz argues that this characteristic is precisely the source of the show’s innovation as it produces a vibrant critique of dominant American values. In this analysis of Gilligan’s Island, Metz reveals the inner workings of American television and society through an intensive look at the popular sitcom. In twenty-one short sections, Metz investigates many aspects of Gilligan’s Island: the narrative, the characters, the plot, and the performativity. Through multiple episode analyses and character examinations, Metz shows how the castaways’ actions on the island held deeper meaning and illustrated American social customs. The book also looks at several different themes presented in the show and connects them to many literary traditions, including Shakespeare (The Tempest and Hamlet), existential theatre (Waiting for Godot), and classic American literature (Moby-Dick). Through this discussion, Metz examines the literacy of Gilligan’s Island and the way it knowingly returns to certain tropes from high literature, masking their expression in a distinctly populist American idiom. Metz also addresses the legacy of Gilligan’s Island and its profound effect on American television, as evidenced by popular contemporary shows like Survivor and Lost. At one point in time, Gilligan’s Island was the most syndicated show around the world, but few scholarly articles exist about it. Fans of the show and those interested in television history and popular culture will enjoy this playful and informative study that fills a gap in television history.

Download or read book Rewriting Crusoe written by Jakub Lipski and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in 1719, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is one of those extraordinary literary works whose importance lies not only in the text itself but in its persistently lively afterlife. German author Johann Gottfried Schnabel—who in 1731 penned his own island narrative—coined the term “Robinsonade” to characterize the genre bred by this classic, and today hundreds of examples can be identified worldwide. This celebratory collection of tercentenary essays testifies to the Robinsonade’s endurance, analyzing its various literary, aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural implications in historical context. Contributors trace the Robinsonade’s roots from the eighteenth century to generic affinities in later traditions, including juvenile fiction, science fiction, and apocalyptic fiction, and finally to contemporary adaptations in film, television, theater, and popular culture. Taken together, these essays convince us that the genre’s adapt- ability to changing social and cultural circumstances explains its relevance to this day. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Download or read book The American Era written by Robert J. Lieber and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-12 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Era makes a provocative argument about America's world role. It sets out the case for a grand strategy that recognizes American preponderance as necessary and desirable for coping with the perils of the post-9/11 world. The book argues firstly that, Militant Islamic terrorism and weapons of mass destruction pose a threat which requires us to alter the way we think about the pre-emptive and preventive use of force. Secondly, the UN and other international bodies are incapable of acting on these urgent problems. Thirdly, in an international system with no true central authority other countries will inevitably look for leadership to the US. The book argues that if America does not respond actively to terrorist threats, no one else will take the initiative.

Download or read book The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture written by Paul A. Cantor and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2012-11-30 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Analyzes how ideas about economics and political philosophy find their way into everything from Star Trek to Malcolm in the Middle.” —Wall Street Journal 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 their lives? In this groundbreaking work, Paul A. Cantor—whose previous book, Gilligan Unbound, was named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by the Los Angeles Times—explores the ways in which television shows such as Star Trek, The X-Files, South Park, and Deadwood and films such as The Aviator and Mars Attacks! have portrayed both top-down and bottom-up models of order. Drawing on the works of John Locke, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, and other proponents of freedom, Cantor contrasts the classical liberal vision of America?particularly its emphasis on the virtues of spontaneous order?with the Marxist understanding of the “culture industry” and the Hobbesian model of absolute state control. The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture concludes with a discussion of the impact of 9/11 on film and television, and the new anxieties emerging in contemporary alien-invasion narratives: the fear of a global technocracy that seeks to destroy the nuclear family, religious faith, local government, and other traditional bulwarks against the absolute state.

Download or read book Damned If You Do written by Margaret S. Hrezo and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Problems of individual moral choice have always been closely bound up with the larger normative concerns of political theory. There are several reasons for this continuing connection. First, the value conflicts involved in private moral choice are often reproduced on the public stage: for example, states may find it difficult to balance both justice and mercy in much the same way individuals do. Second, we frequently find conflicts between the values of our individual and public lives, such that the moral choice we must make is between the private good and the public good. Loosely speaking, choices that express these conflicts are what philosophers call moral dilemmas: choices in which, no matter what you do, you will forfeit some important moral good, in which wrongdoing is to some degree inescapable, in which (perhaps literally) you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.