With close attention to the nuances of language, tone, metaphor and figure, Media Spectacles brings together critics from general fields to examine a series of remarkable news and media spectacles. Sixteen contributors explore the languages of word and image that produce current events as spectacle, reading the world in which we live through the lens of interpretation. Included are such topics as The Gulf War, the AIDS epidemic and the crisis in health care, the Clarence THomas hearings and the testimony of Anita Hill, Oliver Stone's JFK and the consequent call to open the files on the Kennedy assassination, President Bush's trade mission to Japan, the Mike Tyson and William Kennedy Smith rape trials, and Hurrican Bob and the end of the Cold War. Influenced by deconstruction, cultural materialism, philosophy, literature, ethnic studies and gay and lesbian theory, these scholars apply their interdisciplinary skills to the close reading of television, newspapers and magazines, feature films and documentaries and political issues and rhetoric.
Timely and provocative, Media Spectacles extensively explores the way literary and cultural critics interpret current events, popular culture and the political world.