Promotional Information

An argument that the slimy zombies and gore-soaked murderers who have stormed through American film and literature over the past century embody the violent contradictions of capitalism

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Capitalist Monsters 1
1. Serial Killers: Murder Can Be Work 13
2. Mad Doctors: Professional Middle-Class Jobs Make You Loose Your Mind 53
3. The Undead: A Haunted Whiteness 89
4. Robots: Love Machines of the World Unite 123
5. Mass Media: Monsters of the Culture Industry 151
Notes 185
Bibliography 199
Filmography 207
Index 211

About the Author

Annalee Newitz is a contributing editor at Wired magazine and a freelance writer in San Francisco. She is the former culture editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian and was the recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship in 2002–03. She is a coeditor of White Trash: Race and Class in America and Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life. She has written for New York magazine, and numerous other publications, including The Believer, salon.com, and Popular Science. Newitz has a Ph.D. in English and American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

"Pretend We're Dead sets our monsters free of the dank laboratory of psychosexual studies and sends them rampaging across the landscape of economic reality. A sweeping, liberating, and wonderfully readable book." Gerard Jones, author of Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book "Of all the modern (and postmodern) culture commentators, Annalee Newitz has the perfect blend of a fan's unabashed enthusiasm and a true critic's engaged, iconoclastic insights and questions. Casual and smart, bold yet breezy, Pretend We're Dead won't just make you take a second look at the landscape of modern horror--it'll make you look at modern consumerist life (and death) with fresh eyes."--James Rocchi, editor in chief of cinematical.com and film critic for CBS-5 San Francisco