American Dreamtime: A Cultural Analysis of Popular Movies, and Their Implications for a Science of Humanity / Edition 1

by Lee Drummond

Overview

Despite America's practical and technological aims, the money spent on film and sports events tends to convey an image of a whimsical nation. This work explores these conflicting images through an analysis of movies, revealing the ties that daily activity and thought have with a world of myth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822630470
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	03/26/1996
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

Editorial Reviews

In his innovative and original study of popular American films Drummond finds a virtual forest of symbols-not disembodied, language-based meanings but of pervasive images of machines and animals that are generative of the mythic ambiguities of American culture.

Richard J. Parmentier

An important work in contemporary social theory. Presents well-constructed arguments that simply cannot be ignored.

Paul Stoller

In a radical challenge to both anthropology and the popular imagination, Drummond's marvelously irreverent wit probes the extraordinary fascination with both animal and machine through which popular entertainments grapple with the boundaries of human identity.

Michael Herzfeld