The Last Midnight

Leisa A. Clark is a professor of arts and humanities, teaching diverse class subjects such as art history, media studies, and film history. She is the author of a variety of books, ranging from fictional comedic space opera to critical edited collections. She lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. Amanda Firestone is an assistant professor at the University of Tampa in the Department of Communication, teaching media studies and digital identity. Mary F. Pharr is a professor emeritus of English at Florida Southern College. She lives in Lakeland, Florida.

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments

Preface

Amanda Firestone

Introduction (Mary F. Pharr, Leisa A. Clark and Amanda Firestone)

Prelude—We Don’t Want to Miss a Thing: Millennial

Technologies of Participation and Intimacy (Andrew McAlister)

I: Culture, Values and Anxiety

The South Will Rise Again: Contagion, War and Reconstruction in The Walking Dead, Seasons One Through Five (Angela Tenga)

The Recuperation of Wounded Hegemonic Masculinity

on Doomsday Preppers (Tiffany A. Christian)

The Last ­Non-Judgment: Postmodern Apocalypse

in Battlestar Galactica (Stephen Joyce)

The Emergence of the Lost Apocalypse from 28 Days Later to Snowpiercer (Mark McCarthy)

II. Globalization, Corporate Power and Class Struggles

Going Viral in a World Gone Global: How Contagion Reinvents the Outbreak Narrative (Dahlia Schweitzer)

The Second Coming of Left Behind and the Deglobalization

of Christian Apocalypse (Tim Bryant)

Corporate Abuse and Social Inequality in RoboCop and Fido

(Bill Clemente)

We Go Forward: An Inquiry into The Hunger Games

and Other ­Class-Based Dystopias in Millennial Cinema

(Lennart Soberon)

III. Memory and Identity

Determined About Determinism: Genetic Manipulation, Memory and Identity in Shaping the Postapocalyptic Self in Dark Angel and Divergent (Max Despain)

The Apocalyptic Mental Time Travel Film: Erasing Disaster in Edge of Tomorrow and ­X-Men: Days of Future Past (Ryan Lizardi)

In the Flesh: The Politics of Apocalyptic Memory (Frances Auld)

In Search of a New Paradise and the Construction of Hell

in The 100 (Ceren Mert and Amanda Firestone)

IV. Simulation, Psychology and Inevitability

The Apocalypse Will Not Take Place: Megamonster Films

(Cloverfield, Pacific Rim, Godzilla) in the Postmodern Age (Sharon Diane King)

Psychological Significance Within Postapocalyptic Film: Two Unique Approaches to Adaptation (Patrick L. Smith)

“To Err Is Human”: The Human Species and the Inevitable

Apocalypse in The World’s End (Mary F. Pharr)

V. Being Human in a ­Techno-Universe

More Man Than Machine: The Construction of Body

and Identity in Battlestar Galactica and Terminator: The

Sarah Connor Chronicles (Leisa A. Clark)

­Techno-Apocalypse: Technology, Religion and Ideology

in Bryan Singer’s H+ (Eddie Brennan)

Technoscience as Alien Invasion in XCOM: Enemy Within (Bjarke Liboriussen)

Running for My Life: Convergence Culture, Transmedia

Storytelling and Community Building in the Smartphone Application Zombies, Run! (Amanda Firestone)

Appendix: Apocalyptic Criticism, Films, Television Series

and Video Games (Leisa A. Clark, Mary F. Pharr and Amanda Firestone)

About the Contributors

Index