Escape into the future : cultural pessimism and its religious dimension in contemporary American popular culture / John Stroup and Glenn W. Shuck.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stroup, John, 1946-

Contributor:

Shuck, Glenn W.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religion and culture--United States.

Religion and culture.

United States.

Popular culture--Religious aspects.

Popular culture.

Popular culture--United States.

United States--Religion--1960-.

Religion.

Physical Description:

xx, 313 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Waco, Tex. : Baylor University Press, [2007]

Summary:

Escape into the Future analyzes the power of pessimism, showing links between present-day religious pessimism and the nihilism of popular culture. Stroup and Shuck rummage through an interesting and eclectic body of pop culture-from Fight Club to X-Files to the Left Behind series-pointing out the presence of pessimistic themes throughout. This volume identifies and illuminates the religious language used in these works to articulate America's need to escape from its present cultural path and, ultimately, provide hope that it might do so.

Contents:

Secret agents : visions of escape, glimpses of hope

Do we still want to believe? The X-Files and the American struggle with progressive action

Perhaps today : the dialectic of despair and activism in popular evangelical literature

God's unwanted : Fight club and the myth of "total revolution"

Relocating the American dream : the challenges and ambiguities of contemporary cultural pessimism

The quest for a real-world correlate : sightings of cultural pessimism in the domains of scholarship and journalism

The question of real-world correlates to fantasy processes of decline : the deep structure of decay, or, descent into the engine room of the Titanic

Epilogue: Into the great wide open.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-304) and index.

ISBN:

9781932792522

193279252X

OCLC:

145943527