Download or read book Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory written by Angela M. Cirucci and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Mirror is The Twilight Zone of the twenty-first century. Already a philosophical classic, the series echoes the angst of an era, a civilization and consciousness fully engulfed in the 24/7 media spectacle spanning the planet. With clever plots and existential themes, Black Mirror presents near-futures where humans collide with technology and each other—tomorrows that might arrive in five years or five minutes. Featuring scholars from three continents and ten nations, Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory is an international collection of critical media theory applied to one of the most intellectually provocative TV shows of our time and the all-too-real conditions that inspire it. Drawing from thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Marshall McLuhan, and Paul Virilio, the authors reverse-engineer Black Mirror by probing the ideas, meanings, and conditions embedded in the episodes. This book is organized around six key topics reflected and explored in Black Mirror—human identity, surveillance culture, spectacle and hyperreality, aesthetics, technology and existence, and dystopian futures.
Download or read book Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory written by Angela M. Cirucci and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2020-03-15 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides insight into why Black Mirror has garnered so much attention. Featuring international scholars, the book reverse-engineers Black Mirror episodes and invites readers to consider their own relationships with digital technology through the work of theorists including Foucault, Baudrillard, Debord, McLuhan, and Virilio.
Download or read book Reading Black Mirror written by German A. Duarte and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2021-01-31 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very few contemporary television programs provoke spirited responses quite like the dystopian series Black Mirror. This provocative program, infamous for its myriad apocalyptic portrayals of humankind's relationship with an array of electronic and digital technologies, has proven quite adept at offering insightful commentary on a number of issues contemporary society is facing. This timely collection draws on innovative and interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks to provide unique perspectives about how confrontations with such issues should be considered and understood through the contemporary post-media condition that drives technology use.
Download or read book Borges and Black Mirror written by David Laraway and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Borges and Black Mirror convenes a dialogue between one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, the philosophical fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, and one of the most important writers and producers of the twenty-first century, Charlie Brooker, whose Black Mirror series has become a milestone in an age of “post-television” programming. The book’s introduction provides a detailed examination of the terms of engagement of Borges and Brooker and each of the chapters explores in a sustained way the resonances and affinities between one particular story by Borges and one particular episode of Black Mirror. The result is a series of essays that locate Brooker’s work with respect to a rich literary and philosophical tradition on the one hand and, on the other, demonstrate the relevance of Borges’s work for anyone who wishes to understand one of our most emblematic cultural artifacts in the age of Netflix.
Download or read book Philosophical Reflections on Black Mirror written by Dan Shaw and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Mirror is a cultural phenomenon. It is a creative and sometimes shocking examination of modern society and the improbable consequences of technological progress. The episodes - typically set in an alternative present, or the near future - usually have a dark and satirical twist that provokes intense question both of the self and society at large. These kind of philosophical provocations are at the very heart of the show. Philosophical reflections on Black Mirror draws upon thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault to uncover how Black Mirror acts as 'philosophical television' questioning human morality and humanity's vulnerability when faced with the inexorable advance of technology.
Download or read book EBOOK Critical Theories of Mass Media Then and Now written by Paul Taylor and published by McGraw-Hill Education (UK). This book was released on 2007-12-16 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is a welcome critical corrective to complacent mainstream accounts of the media's cultural impact". Prof. Slavoj Zizek, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London "A powerful and highly engaging re-assessment of past critical thinkers (including those not normally thought of as critical) in the light of today's mediascape". Jorge Reina Schement, Distinguished Professor of Communications, Penn State University With the exception of occasional moral panics about the coarsening of public discourse, and the impact of advertising and television violence upon children, mass media tend to be viewed as a largely neutral or benign part of contemporary life. Even when criticisms are voiced, the media chooses how and when to discuss its own inadequacies. More radical external critiques are often excluded and media theorists are frequently more optimistic than realistic about the negative aspects of mass culture. This book reassesses this situation in the light of both early and contemporary critical scholarship and explores the intimate relationship between the mass media and the dis-empowering nature of commodity culture. The authors cast a fresh perspective on contemporary mass culture by comparing past and present critiques. They: Outline the key criticisms of mass culture from past critical thinkers Reassess past critical thought in the changed circumstances of today Evaluate the significance of new critical thinkers for today's mass culture The book begins by introducing the critical insights from major theorists from the past - Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor Adorno, Marshall McLuhan and Guy Debord. Paul Taylor and Jan Harris then apply these insights to recent provocative writers such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek, and discuss the links between such otherwise apparently unrelated contemporary events as the Iraqi Abu Ghraib controversy and the rise of reality television. Critical Theories of Mass Media is a key text for students of cultural studies, communications and media studies, and sociology.
Download or read book Humanity in a Black Mirror written by Jacob Blevins and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2022-12-20 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The presentation of technology as a response to human want or need is a defining aspect of Black Mirror, a series that centers the transhumanist conviction that ontological deficiency is a solvable problem. The articles in this collection continue Black Mirror's examination of the transhuman need for plentitude, addressing the convergence of fantasy, the posthuman, and the dramatization of fear. The contributors contend that Black Mirror reveals both the cracks of the posthuman self and the formation of anxiety within fantasy's empty, yet necessary, economy of desire. The strength of the series lies in its ability to disrupt the visibility of technology, no longer portraying it as a naturalized, unseen background, affecting our very being at the ontological level without many of us realizing it. This volume of essays argues that this negative lesson is Black Mirror's most successful approach. It examines how Black Mirror demonstrates the Janus-like structure of fantasy, as well as how it teaches, unteaches, and reteaches us about desire in a technological world.
Download or read book The Moral Uncanny in Black Mirror written by Margaret Gibson and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-05 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This erudite volume examines the moral universe of the hit Netflix show Black Mirror. It brings together scholars in media studies, cultural studies, anthropology, literature, philosophy, psychology, theatre and game studies to analyse the significance and reverberations of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian universe with our present-day technologically mediated life world. Brooker’s ground-breaking Black Mirror anthology generates often disturbing and sometimes amusing future imaginaries of the dark side of ubiquitous screen life, as it unleashes the power of the uncanny. This book takes the psychoanalytic idea of the uncanny into a moral framework befitting Black Mirror’s dystopian visions. The volume suggests that the Black Mirror anthology doesn’t just make the viewer feel, on the surface, a strange recognition of closeness to some of its dystopian scenarios, but also makes us realise how very fragile, wavering, fractured, and uncertain is the human moral compass.
Download or read book New Blood written by Eddie Falvey and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book signifies innovative developments in horror cinema research, as well as the current state of the genre within the film and media industries. It is an injection of fresh insights into horror cinema scholarship. This is a book that includes academic studies from established scholars and early career researchers, as well as fans of horror cinema.
Download or read book Age and Ageing in Contemporary Speculative and Science Fiction written by Sarah Falcus and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-01-12 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the contemporary period, this book brings together critical age studies and contemporary science fiction to establish the centrality of age and ageing in dystopian, speculative and science-fiction imaginaries. Analysing texts from Europe, North America and South Asia, as well as television programmes and films, the contributions range from essays which establish genre-based trends in the representation of age and ageing, to very focused studies of particular texts and concerns. As a whole, the volume probes the relationship between speculative/science fiction and our understanding of what it is to be a human in time: the time of our own lives and the times of both the past and the future.
Download or read book Algorithmic Desire written by Matthew Flisfeder and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Algorithmic Desire shows that social media is a metaphor that reveals the dominant form of contemporary ideology: neoliberal capitalism. The author interprets the social media metaphor through dialectical, Marxist, and Lacanian frameworks"--
Download or read book A New Handbook of Rhetoric written by Michele Kennerly and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2021-07-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like every discipline, Rhetorical Studies relies on a technical vocabulary to convey specialized concepts, but few disciplines rely so deeply on a set of terms developed so long ago. Pathos, kairos, doxa, topos—these and others originate from the so-called classical world, which has conferred on them excessive authority. Without jettisoning these rhetorical terms altogether, this handbook addresses critiques of their ongoing relevance, explanatory power, and exclusionary effects. A New Handbook of Rhetoric inverts the terms of classical rhetoric by applying to them the alpha privative, a prefix that expresses absence. Adding the prefix α- to more than a dozen of the most important terms in the field, the contributors to this volume build a new vocabulary for rhetorical inquiry. Essays on apathy, akairos, adoxa, and atopos, among others, explore long-standing disciplinary habits, reveal the denials and privileges inherent in traditional rhetorical inquiry, and theorize new problems and methods. Using this vocabulary in an analysis of current politics, media, and technology, the essays illuminate aspects of contemporary culture that traditional rhetorical theory often overlooks. Innovative and groundbreaking, A New Handbook of Rhetoric at once draws on and unsettles ancient Greek rhetorical terms, opening new avenues for studying values, norms, and phenomena often stymied by the tradition. In addition to the editor, the contributors include Caddie Alford, Benjamin Firgens, Cory Geraths, Anthony J. Irizarry, Mari Lee Mifsud, John Muckelbauer, Bess R. H. Myers, Damien Smith Pfister, Nathaniel A. Rivers, and Alessandra Von Burg.
Download or read book Black Mirror Effect Making Media in a Digital Environment First Edition written by Brant Burkey and published by Cognella Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-26 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Mirror Effect: Making Media in a Digital Environment helps students analyze and evaluate our relationship with media as we shift from a mass media environment to an interactive digital landscape. The anthology encourages readers to improve the current media status quo and produce media content that is engaging, meaningful, and worthwhile. The anthology is divided into four units. Unit 1 features readings that introduce students to foundational thought leadership in media theory, as well as the constantly evolving concepts of media literacy, consumption, and culture. In Unit 2, students read about the ways in which digital media can challenge negative media representations and increase awareness about social justice, social movements, and social change. The focus of Unit 3 is the influence of digital media on news and media storytelling. In the final unit, readers discover how strategic and thoughtful media production can increase the impact of media across various platforms. Timely and highly engaging, Black Mirror Effect is an ideal resource for courses in mass media, mass communication, journalism, media production, and any course with an emphasis on the creation of digital media.
Download or read book Mapping Precarity in Contemporary Cinema and Television written by Francesco Sticchi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-11 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a corpus of films and TV series released since the global financial crisis, addressing them as emblematic expressions of our age of precarity. The analysis of the motifs and characters of these case studies is built around notions originating from Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary theory and, in particular, the concept of chronotope, affirming the material and dynamic connection between form and content in artistic experience. This book observes how precarious lives are enacted in forms of spatio-temporal compositions which carry conceptual and ethical challenges for their viewers. This book falls within the film-philosophy framework and, although primarily directed to an academic audience, it provides an interdisciplinary account of the notion of cinematic precarity. It puts the embodied analysis of viewers’ ethical participation in close dialogical relationship with a philosophical and sociological examination of current dynamics of inequality and exclusion.
Download or read book Seriality Across Narrations Languages and Mass Consumption written by Linda Barone and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributions gathered in this volume define and discuss concepts, themes, and theories related to contemporary audiovisual seriality. The series investigated include Black Mirror, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Penny Dreadful, Sherlock, Orange Is the New Black, Stranger Things, Vikings, and Westworld, to mention just some. Including contributions from social and media studies, linguistics, and literary and translation studies, this work reflects on seriality as a process of social, linguistic and gender/genre transformation. It explores the dynamics of reception, interaction, and translation; the relationship between authorship and mass consumption; the phenomena of multimodality, and intertextuality.
Download or read book Fifty Key Figures in Cyberpunk Culture written by Anna McFarlane and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-12 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of engaging essays on some of the most significant figures in cyberpunk culture, this outstanding guide charts the rich and varied landscape of cyberpunk from the 1970s to present day. The collection features key figures from a variety of disciplines, from novelists, critical and cultural theorists, philosophers, and scholars, to filmmakers, comic book artists, game creators, and television writers. Important and influential names discussed include: J. G. Ballard, Jean Baudrillard, Rosi Braidotti, Charlie Brooker, Pat Cadigan, William Gibson, Donna J. Haraway, Nalo Hopkinson, Janelle Monáe, Annalee Newitz, Katsuhiro Ōtomo, Sadie Plant, Mike Pondsmith, Ridley Scott, Bruce Sterling, and the Wachowskis. The editors also include an afterword of ‘Honorable Mentions’ to highlight additional figures and groups of note that have played a role in shaping cyberpunk. This accessible guide will be of interest to students and scholars of cultural studies, film studies, literature, media studies, as well as anyone with an interest in cyberpunk culture and science fiction.
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture written by Marcus Harmes and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-03 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture will be an essential reference point, providing international coverage and thematic richness. The chapters examine the real and imagined spaces of the prison and, perhaps more importantly, dwell in the uncertain space between them. The modern fixation with ‘seeing inside’ prison from the outside has prompted a proliferation of media visions of incarceration, from high-minded and worthy to voyeuristic and unrealistic. In this handbook, the editors bring together a huge breadth of disparate issues including women in prison, the view from ‘inside’, prisons as a source of entertainment, the real worlds of prison, and issues of race and gender. The handbook will inform students and lecturers of media, film, popular culture, gender, and cultural studies, as well as scholars of criminology and justice.
