Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture

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W. W. Norton & Company, 1998 - 368 páginas
From Frankenstein to Jurassic Park, the mad scientist is one of the modern world's most instantly recognizable cultural icons. This is an exploration of popular culture's perennial fascination with demented doctors, crazed clinicians, and technologically obsessed fiends. A prototype outsider, shunted off to the sidelines of serious discourse - to B-movies, pulp novels and comic books - the mad scientist, the author argues, serves as a necessary lightning rod for otherwise unbearable anxieties about the consequences of modern science and technology. Skal chronicles the mad scientist's quest for world domination, from 19th-century literature to the snap-crackle-scream apotheosis of 1930s Hollywood to the mad-science mystique that colours the cult of the computer, UFO abduction folklore, and the demonization of contemporary medicine.

Dentro del libro

Páginas seleccionadas

Contenido

INTRODUCTION
15
CHAPTER
31
CHAPTER
88
ABombs B Pictures and C Cups
166
CHAPTER FIVE
195
CHAPTER
230
CHAPTER SEVEN
271
CONCLUSION
305
APPENDIX
319
Acknowledgments
335
Index
343
CHAPTER THREE
344
Derechos de autor

Términos y frases comunes

Acerca del autor (1998)

David J. Skal is a respected scholar of all things macabre. A frequent talk-show guest and lecturer, his many media appearances include "The CBS Evening News," " Joan Rivers," "Charlie Rose," and NPR's "All Things Considered." He is the author of The Monster Show, Hollywood Gothic, and Dark Carnival. He has written, produced and appeared in a variety of film and television documentaries on occult and pop-culture subjects.

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