Screening the Crisis

"The financial meltdown of 2008 brought to light the contradictions of a sociopolitical settlement built around market values. Over the last several decades, neoliberal culture has transformed how we think about all aspects of life and has determined both the context within which we make sense of the multiple crises facing society and the perceived possibilities for change. Through in-depth analyses of a wide range of contemporary films - among others , Moonlight, Winter's Bone, Wendy and Lucy, Get Out, The Social Network, Nightcrawler, Hell or High Water, The Florida Project, Joker, Ex-Machina , and Dragged Across Concrete - Screening the Crisis offers an examination of the impact of neoliberal policies on society. Drawing on different critical perspectives, contributors explore how new narrative and aesthetic tendencies in US cinema engage with the assemblage of forces that characterize the contemporary moment of crisis and provide spectators with a critical awareness of pressing issues like the rise of corporate power, the surge of inequality and social segregation, the effects of racial and gender divisions, the degradation of the environment, and the decline in public values. What emerges is a complex picture of how economic liberalism is transforming social relations in the United States."--