Twilight of the Idols

If Mark Lynn Anderson is correct, society is in trouble. In Twilight of the Idols, his provocative and thoughtful study of early twentieth-century film and social and behavioral phenomena, Anderson argues that cinema, like other modern cultural institutions, is a conduit through which the masses understand themselves. If the television programs Keeping Up with the Kardashians (2007–) and Two and a Half Men (2003–) are means to understanding ourselves, then we are witnessing an unraveling of social fabric and the values that uphold our families, communities, and friendships. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Anderson notes that 1920s Hollywood's promotion of particular stars deemed deviant or subversive closely aligned with the media's sensationalizing of sex, drugs, and crime, and the abnormal personalities and noncomformity that allegedly accompanied them. Anderson argues that the celebrity scandals of the nascent star system and the eventual dismantling of the studio system established “a set of new hegemonic categories of social deviance and psychological abnormality” (p. 7). In short, Hollywood is responsible for our transformed understanding of deviance and eccentric and peculiar personalities

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Deviance (statistics · Hollywood · Literature · Media studies · Movie theater · Sociology · Twilight · Cinema and Media Studies · History