Author: Frank Dikã¶tter File Type: epub After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958?1962, an aging Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalistic elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. Young students formed the Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semiautomatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people.The Cultural Revolution A Peoples History, 1962?1976 draws for the first time on hundreds of previously classified party documents, from secret police reports to unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches. Frank DikAtter uses this wealth of material to undermine the picture of complete conformity that is often supposed to have characterized the last years of the Mao era. After the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the market and hollow out the partys ideology. In short, they buried Maoism. By showing how economic reform from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges and entrenched fear, The Cultural Revolution casts Chinas most tumultuous era in a wholly new light.

Author: Steven Sanders File Type: pdf Film noir reflects the fatalistic themes and visual style of hard-boiled novelists and many emigre filmmakers in 1940s and 1950s America, emphasizing crime, alienation, and moral ambiguity. In The Philosophy of TV Noir, Steven M. Sanders and Aeon J. Skoble argue that the legacy of film noir classics such as The Maltese Falcon, Kiss Me Deadly, and The Big Sleep is also found in episodic television from the mid-1950s to the present. In this first-of-its-kind collection, contributors from philosophy, film studies, and literature raise fundamental questions about the human predicament, giving this unique volume its moral resonance and demonstrating why television noir deserves our attention. The introduction traces the development of TV noir and provides an overview and evaluation of the books thirteen essays, each of which discusses an exemplary TV noir series. Realism, relativism, and integrity are discussed in essays on Dragnet, Naked City, The Fugitive, and Secret Agent. Existentialist themes of authenticity, nihilism, and the search for lifes meaning are addressed in essays on Miami Vice, The Sopranos, Carnivale, and 24. The methods of crime scene investigation in The X-Files and CSI are examined, followed by an exploration of autonomy, selfhood, and interpretation in The Prisoner, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and Millennium. With this focus on the philosophical dimensions of crime, espionage, and science fiction series, The Philosophy of TV Noir draws out the full implications of film noir and establishes TV noir as an art form in its own right. **Review This book features a wide diversity of essays, written from many provocative perspectives on the nature of TV noir as presented in various television series. Viewed through the lenses of philosophy, history, and other disciplines, it will appeal to both scholars and intelligent non-specialists. Given the centrality of television as an organ of popular culture, this book is profoundly important to understanding the legacy of film noir. This anthology is a natural, necessary, and BRILLIANT addition to the series.Chris Matthew Sciabarra, author of Total Freedom Given the centrality of television as an organ of popular culture, this book is profoundly important to understanding the legacy of film noir. This anthology is a natural, necessary, and BRILLIANT addition to the series.Chris Matthew Sciabarra, author of Total Freedom The Philosophy of TV Noir is insightful and accessible, offering an introduction to philosophical wisdom that is fun and weighty through the inherently interesting genre of Noir.Jacob M. Held, co-editor of James Bond and Philosophy Questions are Forever The contributors thoughtful inquiry and analysis of these canonical programs draws on staple philosophical concepts- moral ambiguity, nihilism, existentialism, postmodernism, and so on. The resulting discussions are lucid and informative, and they adroitly balance film theory and philosophy.Choice About the Author Steven M. Sanders, emeritus professor of philosophy at Bridgewater State College, is the editor of The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film. Aeon J. Skoble, associate professor of philosophy at Bridgewater State College, is coeditor of The Simpsons and Philosophy The Doh! of Homer.