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Description
Capturing an enticing fusion between magic and science, superheroes resonate with many complex and fractured identities, their stories highlighting civilization's most pressing concerns: the networked society, climate change, nuclear war, Artificial Intelligence, and the emergence of transhuman and posthuman bodies.
Superculture examines superhero narratives from their assemblage in the 1930s to the present day, diving into the ways in which these fictions give form to – and have sometimes even foreshadowed – key ideas and anxieties across the 20th century. Focusing on United States history from the Second World War to 9/11 and surveying the Anglophone superhero mythos in film, television, gaming, merchandizing, fandom and in the urban myths of daily life, Reynolds takes a chronological look at the superhero and social change.
Superculture digs into:
· The genre's origins
· The relationship between the genre's creatives and their film-making ambitions and achievements within the publishing industry and media
· The link between the development of superhero narratives and key historical moments for the US including World War II, the Cold War and the Vietnam War
· The genre's expansion into new narrative forms and cultural niches from radio and animation to merchandizing
· The impact of developments in science and technology on superhero stories
· How the genre questioned and deconstructed itself in the 1980s and how this spawned a fraction in approaches in 1990s
· How creators fashioned narratives responding to the new geopolitics of the new millennia.
Expansive and with hard-hitting implications for way we view superheroes, Superculture offers a way into 100 years of history and ideas, demonstrating that the popularity of the super's story lies in the fact that it has moved from the realms of fantasy into everyday lived reality of the contemporary world.
Accessibility Information
Additional accessibility information
- EPUB 3.0
- Conforms with the requirements of EPUB Accessibility Spec v1.1
- WCAG level AA
- WCAG v2.2 compliant
- accessibility@bloomsbury.com
Hazards
The publication contains no hazards
Support for non-visual reading
- No accessibility features offered by the reading system, device or reading software are disabled or otherwise unusable with the product
- Has alternative text descriptions for images
Visual adjustments
Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified according to the capabilities of the reading system (font family and size, spaces, as well as color of background and text)
Navigation
- Page list to go to pages from the print source version
- Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation
- All or substantially all textual matter is arranged in a single logical reading order
- Content is enhanced with ARIA roles to optimize organization and facilitate navigation
- Purposes of all links are made clear
Rich content
Language tagging provided
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Loving the Alien
Chapter Two: Knowing the Enemy
Chapter Three: Stretching the Limits
Chapter Four: America is Waiting
Chapter Five: Superscience
Chapter Six: The Superculture meets the Counterculture
Chapter Seven: No direction home
Chapter Eight: Deconstructing Superheroes
Chapter Nine: Reinventing Superheroes
Chapter Ten: Millennial Superheroes
Chapter eleven: The Age of Anxiety
Chapter Twelve: After such Knowledge…
Afterword: The Sorcerer's Gift
Bibliography
Index
Product details
| Published | Jan 21 2027 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | 9781350519046 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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