ABSTRACT
With intense and violent portrayals of death becoming ever more common on television and in cinema and the growth of death-centric movies, series, texts, songs, and video clips attracting a wide and enthusiastic global reception, we might well ask whether death has ceased to be a taboo. What makes thanatic themes so desirable in popular culture? Do representations of the macabre and gore perpetuate or sublimate violent desires? Has contemporary popular culture removed our unease with death? Can social media help us cope with our mortality, or can music and art present death as an aesthetic phenomenon? This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the discussion of the social, cultural, aesthetic, and theoretical aspects of the ways in which popular culture understands, represents, and manages death, bringing together contributions from around the world focused on television, cinema, popular literature, social media and the internet, art, music, and advertising.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|68 pages
Collective attitudes towards and responses to death and mortality
chapter 1|23 pages
Thoughts for the times on the death taboo
part 2|68 pages
Aesthetical aspects and mythical structures
chapter 5|20 pages
Healing comes from paradise
chapter 8|16 pages
Towards a cultural theory of killing
part 3|88 pages
Death as a significant narrative device