Consuming youth : vampires, cyborgs, and the culture of consumption / Rob Latham.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Latham, Rob, 1959-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Consumer behavior--United States.

Consumer behavior.

Young adult consumers--United States--Attitudes.

Young adult consumers.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (333 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

From the novels of Anne Rice to The Lost Boys, from The Terminator to cyberpunk science fiction, vampires and cyborgs have become strikingly visible figures within American popular culture, especially youth culture. In Consuming Youth, Rob Latham explains why, showing how fiction, film, and other media deploy these ambiguous monsters to embody and work through the implications of a capitalist system in which youth both consume and are consumed. Inspired by Marx's use of the cyborg vampire as a metaphor for the objectification of physical labor in the factory, Latham shows how contemporary images of vampires and cyborgs illuminate the contradictory processes of empowerment and exploitation that characterize the youth-consumer system. While the vampire is a voracious consumer driven by a hunger for perpetual youth, the cyborg has incorporated the machineries of consumption into its own flesh. Powerful fusions of technology and desire, these paired images symbolize the forms of labor and leisure that American society has staked out for contemporary youth. A startling look at youth in our time, Consuming Youth will interest anyone concerned with film, television, and popular culture.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction. The Cybernetic Vampire of Consumer Youth Culture

One. Youth Fetishism: The Lost Boys Cruise Mallworld

Two. Dreams of Social Flying: The Yuppie-Slacker Dialectic

Three. Voracious Androgynes: The Vampire Lestat on MTV

Four. Microserfing the Third Wave: The Dark Side of the Sunrise Industries

Five. Fast Sofas and Cyborg Couch Potatoes: Generation X on the Infobahn

Six. Teenage Mutant Cyborg Vampires: Consumption As Prosthesis

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9786611125844

9781281125842

1281125849

9780226467023

0226467023

OCLC:

236345432