Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film

Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film
by Jerome Shapiro

Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film
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Book Summary Information

Author: Jerome Shapiro
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2001-12-07
ISBN: 0415936608
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Routledge

Book Reviews of Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film

Book Review: Teacher Gets an F
Summary: 1 Stars

Jerome F. Shapiro, an Associate Professor of Cinema and Comparative Culture at Hiroshima University in Japan, must possess a prodigious ego because he spends much of ATOMIC BOMB CINEMA issuing opinions as if they were the word of God. One's enjoyment of his book will depend on how well one cottons to Prof. Shapiro's self-reverential writing style and his film preferences.

It might also help if you are a male chauvinist.

Indeed, I was surprised to see the gender-biased criticism heaped upon Lynne Littman's powerful 1983 film TESTAMENT in Atomic Bomb Cinema. On page 185 of the book, the presumably super-macho Shapiro dismisses Littman's work as a "postnuclear feminist weepie." He then goes on to assign a ridiculous and non-negotiable assessment of TESTAMENT's audience: "TESTAMENT appeals only to those who are already convinced of the film's basic ideology of powerlessness: because men ignore women, women (and children) suffer. It appeals to the victims in our society, not survivors, for, rather than critiquing power relationships, the film merely wallows in self-pity." Shapiro clearly prefers the can-do attitude of the Wolverines in RED DAWN (1984).

Summary of Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film

Unfathomably merciless and powerful, the atomic bomb has left its indelible mark on film. In Atomic Bomb Cinema, Jerome F. Shapiro unearths the unspoken legacy of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and its complex aftermath in American and Japanese cinema.

According to Shapiro, a "Bomb film" is never simply an exercise in ideology or paranoia. He examines hundreds of films like Godzilla, Dr. Strangelove, and The Terminator as a body of work held together by ancient narrative and symbolic traditions that extol survival under devastating conditions. Drawing extensively on both English-language and Japanese-language sources, Shapiro argues that such films not only grapple with our nuclear anxieties, but also offer signs of hope that humanity is capable of repairing a damaged and divided world.

www.atomicbombcinema.com

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