Download or read book PopLit PopCult and The X Files written by Jan Delasara and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For six acclaimed seasons, FBI paranormal detectives Mulder and Scully have been chasing monsters and little green men and exposing government conspiracies, while espousing the mantras "trust no one" and "the truth is out there." This work takes a close look at the popular television series and shows how its style, character and narrative structure have continued to tease and please a wide viewing audience every week for six years. The first section examines the text of the series and the progression of its mythic story arc. This part also looks at the show's use of expressionistic techniques in both its visual and sound effects; the related tropes of self-reflexive humor, irony and the grotesque; and its ability to give the audience an occasional strong sensory jolt. The second section explores the context that has given rise to The X-Files phenomenon in the 1990s. The show's gothic horror tradition is established, and its contribution to the Zeitgeist of the 90s is also acknowledged.

Download or read book The X Files written by Theresa L. Geller and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A social and cultural analysis of The X-Files focusing on the genres the program employed in its interrogation of American history, politics, and identity. Premiering in 1993 on FOX Network, The X-Files followed the investigations of two FBI special agents, Fox Mulder and Dr. Dana Scully as they pursued the supernatural, the bizarre, and the alien, as well as the government conspiracies at work to conceal the truth of their existence. For nine seasons, Chris Carter's series broke new ground in complex narrative television by integrating science fiction and horror with the forensic investigation of the detective genre. Shaped by the conspiracy films of the 1970s, the series had the ability to comment on the contemporary political climate one week and poke fun at its own self-seriousness the next. Responding to its cinematic visual style, haunting score, complex and nuanced writing, witty dialog, and the exceptional acting of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, who elevated the show with their chemistry, fans embraced The X-Files, making it one of the most beloved cult television series to this day. The aim of this book is to provide the reader with several points of entry into the television series, with social, cultural, and political analyses framed by the examination of the show's many overlapping genres. Divided into chapters highlighting the episodic standalones known as the "monster-of-the-week" (MOTW) and the serial mythology or "mytharc," the first section of the book explores the ways the MOTWs represented social differences in stories of fantastic, supernatural beings both strange and estranged. Through comparative analyses and detailed discussions of individual episodes, it becomes clear that the MOTWs were less concerned with the alien than with alienation, using the figure of the "monster" to focus on a range of ethnic, racial, and social outsiders. The latter half of the book turns to the serialized mythology, examining both the arc of the alien conspiracy as well as the fan-driven relationship between Mulder and Scully. While the romance subplot was powered in part by the show's fans, the alien-government conspiracy mythology was Carter's unique vision. This volume argues that The X-Fileswas a milestone because it employed the generic tropes of science fiction to call our attention to contemporary global politics and the history behind them.Specifically, Theresa Geller maps the ways the series used the mytharc not to predict the future, but to unbury the violence and injustice of our own past. With its return to television as an "event series" in 2016, this volume offers a timely assessment of the show's cultural relevance and social significance. Fans of the show, as well as readers interested in cultural studies, genre criticism, race and ethnicity, fan studies, social commentary, and gender studies will appreciate this insightful examination of the series.

Download or read book The X Files and Literature written by Sharon R. Yang and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-10-02 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The X-Files and Literature: Unweaving the Story, Unraveling the Lie to find the Truth provides an innovative and valuable exploration of the groundbreaking television program. Although much academic work has been devoted to the social, psychological, and spiritual significance of The X-Files, until this collection none has fully addressed the series’ rich adaptation of literature to interrogate our perception, definition, or recounting of the “truth.” This collection not only unveils new twists and insights into expected connections between The X-Files and Gothic writers or with its modernist and post-modernist slants on narrative, plot, and characterization. The X-Files and Literature also delves into some unexpected literary sources shaping the series, such as the Arthurian quest, Catholic and Biblical mythology, folkloristics, and James Fennimore Cooper and the “vanishing American” mythos. This collection of essays covers both how The X-Files works with literature’s own constantly morphing definition and portrayal of truth through form and content, as well as how the television program may or may not subvert our own contradictory expectations and distrust of literature’s providing us with enlightenment. "As television becomes more and more literary, with shows like Lost and Gilmore Girls sending us off to the bookstore and the library so we might read them more carefully, a book like The X-Files and Literature is welcome indeed. Sharon R. Yang’s diverse collection on one of Nineties’ TV’s richest texts finds the truth of the gothic and the Arthurian and the folkloric, of the postmodern and the metafictional, of Poe, Pynchon, Cooper, Nabokov, and Tennyson, not just “out there” but in the perhaps too complicated narrative of the perpetually frustrated quests of Mulder and Scully. Valuable-in-itself as an intellectual exercise, its real worth may come when we put the book down and return, smarter, better readers, to the primary text." --David Lavery, Co-Editor, Deny All Knowledge: Investigating The X-Files "Sharon Yang's X-Files collection deals with an important subject addressed by thoughtful writers. The idea that television can be seen as a branch of literature is certainly sustained by The X-Files, and the contributors to this volume succeed in making the case. Brian Hauser on Fenimore Cooper, Cary Jones on Mary Shelley, Tamy Burnett on Poe, Thomas Argiro on Pynchon, Matthew VanWinkle on Tennyson-these and more explore the connections with The X-Files not only in terms of sources but also themes and techniques. Both students of television and literature will want to own this book." —Rhonda V. Wilcox, Ph.D., Professor of English, Gordon College, Barnesville

Download or read book The Legacy of The X Files written by James Fenwick and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-12-14 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Legacy of The X-Files examines the content and production of the show, its reception, its use of legend and folklore, its contemporary resonance in politics and society of the 21st century, and its impact and legacy on film, television, the Internet and beyond. Having converged with the early widespread use of the Internet, The X-Files became a cultural touchstone of the 1990s, transforming from a cult TV show into a pop cultural phenomenon by the end of the decade. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of The X-Files, this collection examines the content and production of the show, its reception, its use of legend and folklore, its contemporary resonance in politics and society of the 21st century, and its impact and legacy on film, television, the Internet and beyond. The series' themes of government mistrust, conspiracy, folklore, UFOlogy, and faith are dissected and applied to how the show spirituality resonated with post-Cold War Western society. Contributors to this collection discuss the wide-ranging impact of the television show in popular culture, from Mulder and Scully 'shippers' to the show's slogan entering the contemporary lexicon. The Legacy of The X-Files serves as an all-encompassing, multi-disciplinary, contemporary account of The X-Files, reflecting upon critical, historical, political, and social contexts, and featuring an in-depth and comprehensive introduction making it a vital work for researchers and students alike.

Download or read book The Female Investigator in Literature Film and Popular Culture written by Lisa M. Dresner and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-12-24 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the author examines how women detectives are portrayed in film, in literature and on TV. Chapters examine the portrayal of female investigators in each of these four genres: the Gothic novel, the lesbian detective novel, television and film.

Download or read book The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture written by Paul Arthur Cantor and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 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 Focus On 100 Most Popular Television Series by 20th Century Fox Television written by Wikipedia contributors and published by e-artnow sro. This book was released on with total page 1154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Focus On 100 Most Popular Fox Network Shows written by Wikipedia contributors and published by e-artnow sro. This book was released on with total page 1085 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Television written by Horace Newcomb and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-03 with total page 2732 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Television, second edtion is the first major reference work to provide description, history, analysis, and information on more than 1100 subjects related to television in its international context. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Encyclo pedia of Television, 2nd edition website.

Download or read book Aliens in Popular Culture written by Michael M. Levy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-03-22 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An indispensable resource, this book provides wide coverage on aliens in fiction and popular culture. The wide impact that the imagined alien has had upon Western culture has not been surveyed before; in many cases the essays in Aliens in Popular Culture are the first written on the topic. The book is a compendium of short entries on notable uses of aliens in popular culture across different media and platforms by almost 90 researchers in the field. It covers science fiction from the late nineteenth century into the twenty-first century, including books, films, television, comics, games, and even advertisements. Individual essays point to the ways in which the imagined alien can be seen as a reflection of different fears and tensions within society, above all in the Anglo-American world. The book additionally provides an overview for context and suggestions for further reading. All varieties of readers will find it to be a comprehensive reference about the extra-terrestrial in popular culture.

Download or read book We Want to Believe written by Amy M. Donaldson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-04-14 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the first episode to the latest feature film, two main symbols provide the driving force for the iconic television series The X-Files: Fox Mulder's "I Want to Believe" poster and Dana Scully's cross necklace. Mulder's poster may feature a flying saucer, but the phrase "I want to believe" refers to more than simply the quest for the truth about aliens. The search for extraterrestrial life, the truth that is out there, is a metaphor for the search for God. The desire to believe in something greater than ourselves is part of human nature: we want to believe. Scully's cross represents this desire to believe, as well as the internal struggle between faith and what we can see and prove. The X-Files depicts this struggle by posing questions and exploring possible answers, both natural and supernatural. Why would God let the innocent suffer? Can God forgive even the most heinous criminal? What if God is giving us signs to point the way to the truth, but we're not paying attention? These are some of the questions raised by The X-Files. In the spirit of the show, this book uses the symbols and images presented throughout the series to pose such questions and explore some of the answers, particularly in the Christian tradition. With a focus on key themes of the series--faith, hope, love, and truth--along the way, this book journeys from the desire to believe to the message of the cross.

Download or read book Strange TV written by M. Keith Booker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-12-30 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years since World War II, commercial television has become the most powerful force in American culture. It is also the quintessential example of postmodernist culture. This book studies how The Twilight Zone, The Prisoner, Twin Peaks, and The X-Files display many of the central characteristics that critics and theorists have associated with postmodernism, including fragmentation of narratives and characters, multiplicity in style and genre, and the collapse of traditional categorical boundaries of all kinds. The author labels these series strange TV since they challenge the conventions of television programming, thus producing a form of cognitive estrangement that potentially encourages audiences to question received ideas. Despite their challenges to the conventions of commercial television, however, these series pose no real threat to the capitalist order. In fact, the very characteristics that identify these series as postmodern are also central characteristics of capitalism itself, especially in its late consumerist phase. An examination of these series within the context of postmodernism thus confirms Fredric Jameson's thesis that postmodernism is a reflection of the cultural logic of late capitalism. At the same time, these series do point toward the potential of television as a genuinely innovative medium that promises to produce genuinely new forms of cultural expression in the future.

Download or read book The Paranormal and the Paranoid written by Aaron Gulyas and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-06-11 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toward the end of the twentieth century, science fiction television took a dark turn. Series like The X-Files, Millennium, and Dark Skies wove menacing technologies, paranormal forces, and shadowy government agencies into complex tales of corruption and cover-ups. Mind control, alien abductions, secret government laboratories, and implacable “men in black” moved from the fringes to the mainstream of American culture, making weekly appearances in living rooms everywhere. Other series that played on fears of new technologies—such as virtual reality—set the stage for unfamiliar kinds of exploitation, while Dark Angel offered glimpses of a near-future wasteland devastated by a technological catastrophe. In The Paranormal and the Paranoid: Conspiratorial Science Fiction Television, Aaron John Gulyas explores the themes that permeated and defined science fiction television at the turn of the millennium. The author traces the roots of this phenomenon in an earlier generation of series including The Invaders, Kolchak: The Night Stalker,and Project U.F.O. and examines how changes in the cultural landscape led to the proliferation of these types of shows. This book delves into the internal mythology of shows like The X-Files, resurrects now-forgotten series like Wild Palms and VR.5, and provides an important glimpse into American culture at the close of the twentieth century. While exploring the pervasive grimness of these shows, Gulyas also examines how they offer hope in the form of heroes—like agents Scully and Mulder—who relentlessly dug through the tissue of lies and distortions to find and expose the truth. The Paranormal and the Paranoid will appeal to scholars of media studies, sociology, and science fiction—not to mention fans of these programs and even conspiracy theorists.

Download or read book The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader written by J.P. Telotte and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2008-05-02 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A richly detailed and critically penetrating overview . . . from the plucky adventures of Captain Video to the postmodern paradoxes of The X-Files and Lost.” —Rob Latham, coeditor of Science Fiction Studies Exploring such hits as The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Lost, among others, The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader illuminates the history, narrative approaches, and themes of the genre. The book discusses science fiction television from its early years, when shows attempted to recreate the allure of science fiction cinema, to its current status as a sophisticated genre with a popularity all its own. J. P. Telotte has assembled a wide-ranging volume rich in theoretical scholarship yet fully accessible to science fiction fans. The book supplies readers with valuable historical context, analyses of essential science fiction series, and an understanding of the key issues in science fiction television.

Download or read book Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History 2 volumes written by Christopher R. Fee and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-05-24 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This up-to-date introduction to the complex world of conspiracies and conspiracy theories provides insight into why millions of people are so ready to believe the worst about our political, legal, religious, and financial institutions. Unsupported theories provide simple explanations for catastrophes that are otherwise difficult to understand, from the U.S. Civil War to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Ideas about shadowy networks that operate behind a cloak of secrecy, including real organizations like the CIA and the Mafia and imagined ones like the Illuminati, additionally provide a way for people to criticize prevailing political and economic arrangements, while for society's disadvantaged and forgotten groups, conspiracy theories make their suffering and alienation comprehensible and provide a focal point for their economic or political frustrations. These volumes detail the highly controversial and influential phenomena of conspiracies and conspiracy theories in American society. Through interpretive essays and factual accounts of various people, organizations, and ideas, the reader will gain a much greater appreciation for a set of beliefs about political scheming, covert intelligence gathering, and criminal rings that has held its grip on the minds of millions of American citizens and encouraged them to believe that the conspiracies may run deeper, and with a global reach.

Download or read book The Eternal Future of the 1950s written by Dennis R. Cutchins and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-07-17 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science fiction cinema, once relegated to the undervalued "B" movie slot, has become one of the dominant film genres of the 21st century, with Hollywood alone producing more than 400 science fiction films annually. Many of these owe a great deal of their success to the films of one defining decade: the 1950s. Essays in this book explore how classic '50s science fiction films have been recycled, repurposed, and reused in the decades since their release. Tropes from Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), for instance, have found surprising new life in Netflix's wildly popular Stranger Things. Interstellar (2014) and Arrival (2016) have clear, though indirect roots in the iconic 1950s science fictions films Rocketship X-M (1950) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and The Shape of Water (2017) openly recalls and reworks the major premises of The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954). Essays also cover 1950's sci-fi influences on video game franchises like Fallout, Bioshock and Wolfenstein.

Download or read book Contemporary Television Series written by Michael Hammond and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2005-05-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging and provocative study of the contemporary prime-time 'quality' serial television format, this book gives a timely account of prominent programmes such as 24, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ER, The Sopranos and The West Wing and explores their influential position within the television industry. Divided into the areas of history, aesthetics and reception, the text provides an illuminating overview of an increasingly hybrid television studies discipline. Chapters consider the formal and aesthetic elements in the contemporary television serial through approaches ranging from those concerned with issues of gender and sexuality, national identity, and reception to industry history and textual analysis. The book also includes British examples of 'quality' serial television emphasizing not only their cultural specificity but also the transnational context in which these programmes operate. Features*Section introductions provide student-friendly explanations of the various approaches and methodologies employed in the book*Chapters are written by an international team of experts in the field of television studies*Ideal for use as a textbook on courses in contemporary television taught at undergraduate level