Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Romancing the Zombie
The zombie--popular culture's undead darling--shows no signs of stopping. But as it develops to suit changing audience tastes, its characteristics transform. This collection of new essays examines the latest incarnation, the romantic zombie, a re-humanized monster we want to help, heal and connect with rather than destroy. The authors discuss our increasingly sympathetic view of the reanimated dead as more than physical bodies devoid of life and personality. Their essays cover a range of topics, including audience obsession with Apocalyptic love; the problem of a kinder, gentler undead; the millennial reinvention of the "sexy zombie"; and "uncanny valley romance."
The Subversive Zombie
Historically, zombies have been portrayed in films and television series as mindless, shuffling monsters. In recent years, this has changed dramatically. The undead are fast and ferocious in 28 Days Later... (2002) and World War Z (2013). In Warm Bodies (2013) and In the Flesh (2013-2015), they are thoughtful, sensitive and capable of empathy. These sometimes radically different depictions of the undead (and the still living) suggest critical inquiries: What does it mean to be human? What makes a monster? Who survives the zombie apocalypse, and why? Focusing on classic and current movies and TV shows, the author reveals how the once-subversive modern zombie, now more popular than ever, has been co-opted by the mainstream culture industry.
Reading the Great American Zombie
Challenging the human understanding of life and death, the zombie figure represents a fragmentation of personhood. From its earliest appearances in literature, the zombie characterized a human being that was no longer an indivisible whole, embodying the ontological debate over which elements of personhood are most uniquely human. Through its literary evolution, the zombie's missing element gradually approached a finer definition, as narratives moved beyond highlighting metaphysically opaque concepts like "soul" or "will." Studying over a century of American literary history, this book explores how zombies translate cultural concepts and definitions of personhood. Chapters detail how literary zombies have long presented narratives of American cultural self-examination.
Dead, White and Blue
Science fiction and horror television shows predict how the world might be different if zombies were real, or if artificial intelligence could develop consciousness. Pop culture critics reveal that these not-quite humans are often proxies for race, and the post-apocalyptic landscapes set the stage for reimagining social and political institutions. This book advances horror scholarship by placing those stories within a long tradition of mythologizing U.S. history. It demonstrates how Disney's Zombies reenacts the civil rights movement, how The Walking Dead fulfills Thoreau's fantasy against the backdrop of founding a new nation, and how Westworld permits visitors to experience the Old West while bearing witness to Indian Removal. Each of these narratives imagines a future that retells the past. The chapters within look at that tradition in order to understand the present.
Parenting in the Zombie Apocalypse
Parenting is difficult under the best of circumstances--but extremely daunting when humanity faces cataclysmic annihilation. When the dead rise, hardship, violence and the ever-present threat of flesh-eating zombies will adversely affect parents and children alike. Depending on their age, children will have little chance of surviving a single encounter with the undead, let alone the unending peril of the Zombie Apocalypse. The key to their survival--and thus the survival of the species--will be the caregiving they receive. Drawing on psychological theory and real-world research on developmental status, grief, trauma, mental illness, and child-rearing in stressful environments, this book critically examines factors influencing parenting, and the likely outcomes of different caregiving techniques in the hypothetical landscape of the living dead.
Beyond the Living Dead
In 1968, George Romero's film Night of the Living Dead premiered, launching a growing preoccupation with zombies within mass and literary fiction, film, television, and video games. Romero's creativity and enduring influence make him a worthy object of inquiry in his own right, and his long career helps us take stock of the shifting interest in zombies since the 1960s. Examining his work promotes a better understanding of the current state of the zombie and where it is going amidst the political and social turmoil of the twenty-first century. These new essays document, interpret, and explain the meaning of the still-budding Romero legacy, drawing cross-disciplinary perspectives from such fields as literature, political science, philosophy, and comparative film studies. Essays consider some of the sources of Romero's inspiration (including comics, science fiction, and Westerns), chart his influence as a storyteller and a social critic, and consider the legacy he leaves for viewers, artists, and those studying the living dead.
The Politics of Race, Gender and Sexuality in The Walking Dead
From the beginning, both Robert Kirkman's comics and AMC's series of The Walking Dead have brought controversy in their presentations of race, gender and sexuality. Critics and fans have contended that the show's identity politics have veered toward the decidedly conservative, offering up traditional understandings of masculinity, femininity, heterosexuality, racial hierarchy and white supremacy. This collection of new essays explores the complicated nature of relationships among the story's survivors. In the end, characters demonstrate often-surprising shifts that consistently comment on identity politics. Whether agreeing or disagreeing with critics, these essays offer a rich view of how gender, race, class and sexuality intersect in complex new ways in the TV series and comics.
Faith and the Zombie
Themes of faith and religion have been threaded through popular representations of the zombie so often that they now seem inextricably linked. Whether as mindless servants to a Vodou Bokor or as evidence of the impending apocalypse, the ravenous undead have long captured something of society's relationships with spirituality, religion and belief. By the start of the 21st century, religious beliefs are as varied as the many manifestations of the zombie itself, and both themes intersect with various ideological, environmental and even post-human concerns. This book surveys the various modern religious associations in zombie media. Some characters believe that the undead are part of God's plan, others theorize that the environment might be saving itself or that zombies might be predicting life and hybridity beyond human existence. Timely and important, this work is a meditation on how faith might not just be a forerunner to the apocalypse, but the catalyst to new kinds of life beyond it.
Policing the Monstrous
This collection of new essays examines how the injection of supernatural creatures and mythologies transformed the hugely popular crime procedural television genre. These shows complicate the predictable and comforting patterns of the procedural with the inherently unknowable nature of the supernatural. From Sherlock to Supernatural, essays cover a range of topics including the gothic, the post-structural nature of The X-Files, the uncanny lure of Twin Peaks, trickster detectives, forensic fairy tales, the allure of the vampire detective, and even the devil himself.
The Collected Sonnets of William Shakespeare, Zombie
What if one of literature's greatest poets was actually a zombie, writing in an Elizabethan world teeming with the undead hiding in plain sight? Inviting readers to see the sublime in the looming apocalypse, this book presents all 154 Shakespearean sonnets (with minor alterations transfigured into "zonnets") in their horrifying glory, highlighting transcendent themes of love, death, beauty and feasting on the flesh of the living. Each sonnet portrays a zombie encounter, with accompanying vignettes revealing the struggles of undead life in early modern England. Original illustrations by Anna Pagnucci bring the nightmare to life. Shakespeare will never be the same.
