Full Description
Twenty-first century American television series such as Revolution, Falling Skies, The Last Ship and The Walking Dead have depicted a variety of doomsday scenarios--nuclear cataclysm, rogue artificial intelligence, pandemic, alien invasion or zombie uprising. These scenarios speak to longstanding societal anxieties and contemporary calamities like 9/11 or the avian flu epidemic.
Questions about post-apocalyptic television abound: whose voices are represented? What tomorrows are they most afraid of? What does this tell us about the world we live in today? The author analyzes these speculative futures in terms of gender, race and sexuality, revealing the fears and ambitions of a patriarchy in flux, as exemplified by the "return" to a mythical American frontier where the white male hero fights for survival, protects his family and crafts a new world order based on the old.
Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
1. Nuclear Attack or Nanite Apocalypse? The New Wild West
Jericho
Revolution
Conclusion
2. Pandemics, Plagues and Contagion
Jeremiah
The Last Ship
Conclusion
3. The Alien Other
Falling Skies
Colony
Defiance
Conclusion
4. The Zombie Renaissance
The Walking Dead
Fear the Walking Dead
Z Nation
Conclusion
5. Parody and the Post-Apocalypse
The Last Man on Earth
Conclusion
6. After the Fall—The Post-Post-Apocalypse
Into the Badlands
The 100
Wayward Pines
Conclusion
Contexts and Conclusions
Chapter Notes
Works Cited
Index
