The Great Recession in Fiction, Film, and Television
Twenty-First-Century Bust Culture
📘 About This Book
The Great Recession in Fiction, Film, and Television: Twenty-First-Century Bust Culture sheds light on how imaginary works of fiction, film, and television reflect, refract, and respond to the recessionary times specific to the twenty-first century, a sustained period of economic crisis that has earned the title the “Great Recession.” This collection takes as its focus “Bust Culture,” a concept that refers to post-crash popular culture, specifically the kind mass produced by multinational corporations in the age of media conglomeration, which is inflected by diminishment, influenced by scarcity, and infused with anxiety. The multidisciplinary contributors collected here examine mass culture not typically included in discussions of the financial meltdown, from disaster films to reality TV hoarders, the horror genre to reactionary representations of women, Christian right radio to Batman, television characters of color to graphic novels and literary fiction. The collected essays treat our busted culture as a seismograph that registers the traumas of collapse, and locate their pop artifacts along a spectrum of ideological fantasies, social erasures, and profound fears inspired by the Great Recession. What they discover from these unlikely indicators of the recession is a mix of regressive, progressive, and bemused texts in need of critical translation.
📖 Summary
The Great Recession in Fiction, Film, and Television: Twenty-First-Century Bust Culture, edited by Kirk Boyle, offers a comprehensive scholarly examination of how contemporary imaginative works engage with the severe economic downturn of the twenty-first century. Published in 2013 across 297 pages, this multidisciplinary collection investigates the emergence of what the contributors term Bust Culture. This concept defines the post-crash popular culture that is mass-produced by multinational corporations within an era of intense media conglomeration. Rather than existing merely as escapism, this body of cultural output is profoundly inflected by diminishment, shaped by scarcity, and deeply infused with widespread financial and existential anxiety. Throughout the volume, the various contributors turn their analytical lenses toward forms of mass culture that are frequently overlooked in standard economic or cultural discussions of the financial meltdown. By analyzing a wide spectrum of media including fiction, cinema, and television, the book explores unexpected cultural artifacts such as disaster films and reality television to understand how they reflect, refract, and actively respond to the realities of a sustained economic crisis. The essays interrogate the ways corporate media conglomerates package scarcity and anxiety for mass consumption, revealing the complex feedback loop between actual economic collapse and its representation in popular entertainment. Ultimately, Kirk Boyle has assembled a sharp critical anthology that demonstrates how twenty-first-century narratives capture the mood of a post-crash society. The collection serves as an essential resource for understanding how cultural products register the shocks of the Great Recession, providing readers with the critical tools to decode the anxieties embedded in modern entertainment and media.
🎯 Key Lessons
⚖️ Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
Provides a unique multidisciplinary perspective on the cultural impacts of the economic crisis.
Explores overlooked media formats such as reality television and disaster films.
Offers a cohesive theoretical framework through the concept of Bust Culture.
Sheds light on the relationship between corporate media conglomeration and post-crash anxiety.
⚠️ Cons
May feature academic language that is challenging for casual readers.
Focuses heavily on media from the immediate aftermath of the crash, which may feel dated over time.
❓ FAQ
Who is the author of The Great Recession in Fiction, Film, and Television? +
The book is edited by Kirk Boyle.
When was the book published? +
It was published in 2013.
How many pages does the book contain? +
The book spans 297 pages.
What is the central concept discussed in the collection? +
The central concept is Bust Culture, which refers to post-crash popular culture shaped by scarcity and anxiety.
What genres and media formats are examined in the book? +
The book examines fiction, film, and television, including mass culture items like disaster films and reality television.
