World History - General & Miscellaneous, Socio-Cultural Anthropology - General & Miscellaneous, Popular Culture - General & Miscellaneous
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Overview
From the mid-nineteenth century onwards the construction and representation of the body has been deeply implicated in the development of capitalist economies. Stratton reveals how the ideologies of state power and gender politics become literally embodied, through an analysis of literature, art and film. Using the accounts of commodity and sexual fetishism outlined by Marx and Freud, Stratton traces the complex relationship between desire and consumption. Man-made female bodies, from the animated doll in E.T.A. Hoffman's famous story, The Sandman, to the 1974 horror movie, The Stepford Wives, have exerted a strong hold over the modern imagination, oscillating between disgust and desire. As well as the changing image of the beautiful female body, Stratton looks at the more recent commodification of male bodies as presented in fashion magazines and by film stars such as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In this powerful and insightful study, Jon Stratton looks at mannequins, gynoids, replicants and robots as indices of how we view modern bodies in a complex triangulation between simulation, spectacularisation and death.Book Details
Published
August 1, 1996
Publisher
Manchester, UK ; Manchester University Press ; 1996.
Pages
320
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780719047015