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Author Elliott, Jane, 1969- author.

Title The microeconomic mode : political subjectivity in contemporary popular aesthetics / Jane Elliott
Published New York : Columbia University Press, [2018]

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Live models -- Life-interest -- Survival games -- Sovereign capture -- Partial fictions -- Binary life
Summary "Much as realism was born out of an attempt to understand and depict the world and the individual's place in it during the rise of industrial capitalism, Jane Elliott argues that the 'microeconomic mode' represents an attempt to understand subjectivity in the current economic moment. Elliott reveals how different films, novels, and television shows reflect the contemporary moment by adopting a mode of storytelling, focused on individualistic choice but one that is severly limited. Examples can be seen in the choices and options open to characters in works ranging from 127 Hours to The Road to The Hunger Games. Discussing such works as Gone Girl, the Saw film franchise, and television shows such as Survivor and Fear Factor, Elliott considers depictions in which the capacity to make decisions for oneself becomes a burden--an exercise in suffering--rather than conforming to the rhetoric of neoliberalism that celebrates agency. She suggests that the growing prevalence of this popular form offers a way to imagine personal agency as the problem, rather than the solution"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed
Subject Mass media -- Social aspects.
Storytelling in mass media.
Choice (Psychology) in mass media.
PHILOSOPHY -- Metaphysics.
Storytelling in mass media
Mass media -- Social aspects
Aesthetics, Modern
Choice (Psychology) in literature
Microeconomics -- Philosophy
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2018040185
ISBN 9780231547512
023154751X