Apocalyptic Dread: American Film at the Turn of the Millennium

by Thompson, Kirsten Moana

• ISBN13: 9780791470442
• ISBN10: 079147044X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-03-08
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

In Apocalyptic Dread, Kirsten Moana Thompson examines how fears and anxieties about the future are reflected in recent American cinema. Through close readings of such films as Cape Fear, Candyman, Dolores Claiborne, Se7en, Signs, and War of the Worlds, Thompson argues that a longstanding American apocalyptic tradition permeates our popular culture, spreading from science-fiction and disaster films into horror, crime, and melodrama. Drawing upon Kierkegaard's notion of dread-that is, a fundamental anxiety and ambivalence about existential choice and the future-Thompson suggests that the apocalyptic dread revealed in these films, and its guiding tropes of violence, retribution, and renewal, also reveal deep-seated anxieties about historical fragmentation and change, anxieties that are in turn displaced onto each film's particular "monster," whether human, demonic, or eschatological. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Kirsten Moana Thompson is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Wayne State University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Apocalyptic Dread, Kierkegaard, and the Cultural Landscape of the Millennium	p. 1
Cape Fear and Trembling: Familial Dread	p. 29
Strange Fruit: Candyman and Supernatural Dread	p. 59
Dolores Claiborne: Memorial Dread	p. 83
Se7en in the Morgue: Dystopian Dread	p. 105
Signs of the End of the World: Apocalyptic Dread	p. 127
War of the Worlds: Uncanny Dread	p. 145
Notes	p. 155
Works Cited	p. 175
Index	p. 181
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