<p>"With lively intelligence and winsome wit, Jesse Russell reveals the shifting and far-reaching philosophical implications embedded in Nolan's films, drawing out the deep political theses that drive the culture industry's massively influential entertainments."</p>
- Joshua Hren, Author of Infinite Regress: A Novel,
Many of Christopher Nolan’s films ironically both embrace the tradition of surrealist and Avant-Garde filmmaking while simultaneously providing (at least tacit) support for the Anglo-American liberal world order. For Nolan, this world order, which relies on global capitalism, technocratic supremacy, and ultimate control of world cultural production, is a much greater alternative to either left- or right-wing challenges to this liberalism. In Nolan’s films, this liberalism must occasionally use violence and violate some of its core principals of privacy and freedom to maintain its dominance. Nonetheless, Anglo-American liberalism, in Nolan’s vision provides a world that is freer, more humane, and more prosperous than other anarchic, Marxist, or fascist alternatives. Finally, (and perhaps most importantly for Nolan) the security, wealth, and freedom of this liberal world order enables the world of art and film to blossom, and the opportunity for Christopher Nolan to create (post-) ironic dream worlds or, in the words of Jean Baudrillard, a “hyperreality”.
Throughout his films, Christopher Nolan champions the Anglo-American Neo-Liberal world order. Nestled within this order, his characters are free to undergo their ludic creation of little worlds of selfhood.
Chapter 1: The Twilight of the American Century in Christopher Nolan’s Memento
Chapter 2: Batman Begins and the Taming of the Orient
Chapter 3: Order and the State in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight
Chapter 4: Defending the Status Quo in The Dark Knight Rises
Chapter 5: Dreaming of Capitalism in Christopher Nolan’s Inception
Chapter 6: Discovering America in Space: Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar
Chapter 7: Recruiting Blackness in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet.
Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Jesse Russell is assistant professor of English at Georgia Southwestern State University