Othering the Self

Dissonant Visual Culture and Quotidian Trauma in United States Suburbia

Bibliographic Data

ID2408267
AuthorsTed Gournelos (0000-0003-1708-8531)
Year2009
Volume9
Issue4
Pages509-532
Publication date2009-08-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCulture Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1532-7086 • E-ISSN: 1552-356X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1532708608321400
OpenAlexW2038973912
LanguageEN
References cited20

At a time when American politics has reached an almost uncanny level of absurdity in its self-contradictions, nationalistic appeals, and stunning disregard for large majorities of the population, it becomes increasingly necessary to look for clues as to why various public spheres speak and exist and how those interested in change can locate and infiltrate nodes of instability or change. Rhetoric surrounding the suburbs in high and popular culture provides such a framework, as it maps out areas of creation and consumption that have great appeal but are either logically incoherent or dangerously fragmented. This article enters the discussion through Gregory Crewdson's famous staged photographs before turning to traumatic identity in the films Pleasantville, American Beauty, and True Lies. The resulting dissonant political ambiguity in daily life suggests a new, flexible line of postmodern discourse in the post-9/11 public spheres

Absurdity · Aesthetics · Appeal · Art · Beauty · Consonance and dissonance · Identity (music · Literature · Political science · Politics · Population · Postmodernism · Rhetoric · Sociology · Uncanny · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Photography and Visual Culture · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Law · Philosophy

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