A01=Robert Latham
american society
Author_Robert Latham
books
capitalism
Category=DSB
Category=JBCC1
cinema
consume
consumption
cultural studies
cyborgs
desire
empowerment
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
exploitation
fiction
film
hyper-consumerism
karl marx
leisure
literary study
literature
mass media
monsters
movies
objectification
physical labor
popular culture
symbolism
technology
trauma
united states of america
usa
vampires
young
youth
Product details
- ISBN 9780226468914
- Weight: 567g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 15 May 2002
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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.
Rob Latham is associate professor of English and American studies at the University of Iowa. He is coeditor of the journal Science Fiction Studies and of Modes of the Fantastic, a collection of essays on fantastic fiction and film.
