Lost in the funhouse: Allegorical horror and cognitive mapping in Jordan Peele’s Us

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Keith Booker ◽  
Isra Daraiseh
Keyword(s):  
Social Problems ◽  
Cognitive Mapping ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
General Characterization ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
The Rich ◽  
American Society ◽  
Contemporary American Society ◽  
The Way

Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) is an entertaining horror film that also contains a number of interesting interpretive complications. The film is undoubtedly meant as a commentary on the inequity, inequality and injustice that saturate our supposedly egalitarian American society. Beyond that vague and general characterization, though, the film offers a number of interesting (and more specific) allegorical interpretations, none of which in themselves seem quite adequate. This article explores the plethora of signs that circulate through Us, demanding interpretation but defeating any definitive interpretation. This article explores the way Us offers clues to its meaning through engagement with the horror genre in general (especially the home invasion subgenre) and through dialogue with specific predecessors in the horror genre. At the same time, we investigate the rich array of other ways in which the film offers suggested political interpretations, none of which seem quite adequate. We then conclude, however, that such interpretive failures might well be a key message of the film, which demonstrates the difficulty of fully grasping the complex and difficult social problems of contemporary American society in a way that can be well described by Fredric Jameson’s now classic vision of the general difficulty of cognitive mapping in the late capitalist world.

Goldilocks and Mrs. Ilych: A Critical Look at the “Philosophy of Hospice”

1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicia Ackerman
Keyword(s):  
Shared Values ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Care Givers ◽  
Dying Patients ◽  
Hospice Movement ◽  
American Society ◽  
Care Costs ◽  
Contemporary American Society ◽  
The Way

Anyone who thinks contemporary American society is hopelessly contentious and lacking in shared values has probably not been paying attention to the way the popular media portray the hospice movement. Over and over, we are told such things as that “Humane care costs less than high-tech care and is what patients want and need,” that hospices are “the most effective and least expensive route to a dignified death,” that hospice personnel are “heroic,” that their “compassion and dedication seem inexhaustible,” and that “few could argue with the powerful message that it is better [for dying patients] to leave wrapped in the love of family and care givers than locked in the cold, metallic embrace of a machine.“

The Unified World Order

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-100
Author(s):  
Bakare Adewale Muteeu
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
International System ◽  
World Order ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
World Peace ◽  
Technological Determinism ◽  
Open World ◽  
The World ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
The Rich

In pursuit of a capitalist world configuration, the causal phenomenon of globalization spread its cultural values in the built international system, as evidenced by the dichotomy between the rich North and the poor South. This era of cultural globalization is predominantly characterized by social inequality, economic inequality and instability, political instability, social injustice, and environmental change. Consequently, the world is empirically infected by divergent global inequalities among nations and people, as evidenced by the numerous problems plaguing humanity. This article seeks to understand Islam from the viewpoint of technological determinism in attempt to offset these diverging global inequalities for its “sociopolitical economy”1existence, as well as the stabilization of the interconnected world. Based upon the unifying view of microIslamics, the meaning of Islam and its globalizing perspectives are deciphered on a built micro-religious platform. Finally, the world is rebuilt via the Open World Peace (OWP) paradigm, from which the fluidity of open globalization is derived as a future causal phenomenon for seamlessly bridging (or contracting) the gaps between the rich-rich, rich-poor, poor-rich and poor-poor nations and people based on common civilization fronts.

Cognitive Sociology

2019 ◽  
pp. 29-41
Author(s):  
Eviatar Zerubavel
Keyword(s):  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Ludwik Fleck ◽  
Cognitive Sociology ◽  
Karl Mannheim ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Thought Communities ◽  
The Way

Following in the rich intellectual footsteps of Emile Durkheim, Karl Mannheim, Alfred Schutz, and Ludwik Fleck, this chapter lays out the foundations for the sociology of thinking, or “cognitive sociology.” Focusing on the impersonal, normative, and conventional dimensions of the way we think (and, as such, on its distinctness from both cognitive individualism and universalism), it highlights the distinctly sociological concern with intersubjectivity as well as epistemic commitment to the study of thought communities, cognitive traditions, cognitive norms, cognitive socialization, cognitive conventions, and the politics of cognition.

Broadway Goes to War

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. McLaughlin ◽  
Sally E. Parry
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
American Theater ◽  
History Of ◽  
Battle Fatigue ◽  
The Rich ◽  
American Society

The American theater was not ignorant of the developments brought on by World War II, and actively addressed and debated timely, controversial topics for the duration of the war, including neutrality and isolationism, racism and genocide, and heroism and battle fatigue. Productions such as Watch on the Rhine (1941), The Moon is Down (1942), Tomorrow the World (1943), and A Bell for Adano (1944) encouraged public discussion of the war's impact on daily life and raised critical questions about the conflict well before other forms of popular media. American drama of the 1940s is frequently overlooked, but the plays performed during this eventful decade provide a picture of the rich and complex experience of living in the United States during the war years. McLaughlin and Parry's work fills a significant gap in the history of theater and popular culture, showing that American society was more divided and less idealistic than the received histories of the WWII home front and the entertainment industry recognize.

Managing Race in the American Workplace

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Skrentny
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
The Way

This chapter introduces the problems of the roles racial differences play in the workplace. It discusses the changes in the way Americans talk about race and what pragmatic and progressive voices say that they want since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Never before has such a wide variety of employers, advocates, activists, and government leaders in American society discussed the benefits of racial diversity and the utility of racial difference in such a broad range of contexts. Thus, the chapter points out the emerging discourse of race as a qualification for employment, and briefly details the many issues as well as the role of established laws on such an issue. It also lays out the conceptual foundations upon which the following chapters will be based on.

Epilogue: Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón 2013), Birdman (Alejandro G. Iñárritu 2014), The Revenant (G. Iñárritu 2015) and Crimson Peak (Guillermo Del Toro 2015)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dolores Tierney
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Global South ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
American Perspective ◽  
Alfonso Cuaron ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Way

The Epilogue draws together the major arguments of the book in its focus on art cinema realism and the use and manipulation of genres (the Western, the [space] disaster film, the horror film) in some of the recent films by the transnational auteurs: Cuarón’s Gravity, Iñárritu’s Birdman, and The Revenant and del Toro’s Crimson Peak. It looks at the shifting contexts of their production and settings now situated in the ideological, institutional and industrial complex of Hollywood studio filmmaking and located narratologically for the most part in the Global North or off planet. It explores whether it is possible to think of Gravity, Birdman, The Revenant and Crimson Peak as speaking, in the way the book has argued these directors’ previous films speak, from a position rooted in a peripheral, Global South or Latin American perspective.

British film production and the horror genre

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johnny Walker
Keyword(s):  
Horror Films ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Home Video ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Distinctive Aspect ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Audience Demographics ◽  
New Millennium

Chapter 2 contemplates why British horror was revived at the dawning of the new millennium, and also considers some of the reasons why British horror films produced in the 2000s and 2010s can be viewed as constituting a distinctive aspect of contemporary British cinema. I discuss the establishment of the UK Film Council (UKFC) in 2000 and contextualise the contemporary British horror film in the international film marketplace, drawing parallels between British horror and British film production more broadly, British horror and international horror production, and the audience demographics targeted by distributers and film production companies. This involves examining British horror’s shift from a theatrical genre to one associated primarily with the home video and online market.

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