This groundbreaking collection provides students with a timely and accessible overview of current trends within contemporary popular fiction.

Approx. 700 pages

Jamie Dornan came to the role of Christian Grey in the motion picture Fifty Shades of Grey as Hollywood's answer to a prayer when the original actor, Charlie Hunnam, left the picture a scant three weeks before production was set to begin. But the reality was that Dornan's being thrust into “Instant” celebrity was more than a decade in the making chronicled in entertaining depth in the Inside Grey's Anatomy: The Unauthorized Biography of Jamie Dornan by New York Times best-selling author Marc Shapiro. Dornan' story is ripe with pathos, talent, determination and luck. After losing his mother at an early age, Dornan struggled with frustration and aimlessness as he attempted to find his way in the world. Luck entered the picture when he stumbled into the world of international modeling where, after being dubbed The Golden Torso, he reluctantly rode the glitz and glamour, making money, dating the most sought-after women but ultimately chaffing as he dreamed of becoming an actor. His determination finally kicked open the door with important works in both television and film. Finally the phone rang early one morning and Christian Grey was born.

Adaptations in the Franchise Era re-evaluates adaptation's place in a popular culture marked by the movement of content and audiences across more media borders than ever before. While adaptation has historically been understood as the transfer of stories from one medium to another-more often than not, from novel to film-the growing interconnectedness of media and media industries in the early twenty-first century raises new questions about the form and function of adaptation as both a product and a process. Where does adaptation fit within massive franchises that span pages, stages, screens, and theme parks? Rising scholar Kyle Meikle illuminates adaptation's enduring and essential role in the rise of franchises in the 2000s and 2010s. During that decade-and-a-half, adaptations set the foundation for multiplexed, multiplied film series, piloted streaming television's forays into original programming, found their way into audiences' hands in apps and video games, and went live in theatrical experiences on Broadway and beyond. The proliferation of adaptations was matched only by a proliferation of adaptation, as fans remixed and remade their favourite franchises online and off-. This volume considers how producers and consumers defined adaptations-and how adaptations defined themselves-through the endless intertextual play of the franchise era.

The intersections of law and contemporary culture are vital for comprehending the meaning and significance of law in today’s world. Far from being unsophisticated mass entertainment, comics and graphic fiction both imbue our contemporary culture, and are themselves imbued, with the concerns of law and justice. Accordingly, and spanning a wide variety of approaches and topics from an international array of contributors, Graphic Justice draws comics and graphic fiction into the range of critical resources available to the academic study of law. The first book to do this, Graphic Justice broadens our understanding of law and justice as part of our human world—a world that is inhabited not simply by legal concepts and institutions alone, but also by narratives, stories, fantasies, images, and other cultural articulations of human meaning. Engaging with key legal issues (including copyright, education, legal ethics, biomedical regulation, and legal personhood) and exploring critical issues in criminal justice and perspectives on international rights, law and justice—all through engagement with comics and graphic fiction—the collection showcases the vast breadth of potential that the medium holds. Graphic Justice will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students in: cultural legal studies; law and the image; law, narrative and literature; law and popular culture; cultural criminology; as well as cultural and comics studies more generally.

In 1960, Paul Goodman argued that the Fordist system that treated people as mere cogs in a machine had created a profound unhappiness in young people and in American society as a whole. More than half a century later, professor David Blacker recognizes that decades of neoliberalism have pushed young people beyond unhappiness and into a collective identity crisis. Overall, Americans no longer feel needed to do jobs that had previously anchored them in society and are becoming disconnected and purposeless. The proliferation of new identities, based not on work but on consumption, is symptomatic of neoliberalism and its hyper-commodification and deregulation of everyday life.

When Stephenie Meyer’s first novel, Twilight, was published in 2005, it had an astounding reception, selling millions of copies. The three sequels that followed—New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn—became international bestsellers as well. The worldwide success of the movie adaptations further cemented the series as a cultural force on par with other popular franchises such as Harry Potter. But why is this? What is it about Twilight that makes it so appealing to people? And what does Twilight’s success reveal about transnational cultural trends? In The Twilight Saga: Exploring the Global Phenomenon, Claudia Bucciferro has assembled a collection of essays that examine the series from a variety of perspectives. The essays in this volume consider both the books and the movies, emphasizing the relationships among the texts, the audience, the entertainment industry, and other aspects of the multimillion-dollar franchise. Organized into five sections, the chapters offer a contextualization of the series’ appeal, explore different types of Twilight audiences, analyze the cultural referents associated with the main characters, and present new ideas regarding representations of gender, sex, class, and race. Concluding essays examine the saga’s influence, unveiling its links to newer workssuch as The Hunger Games, True Blood, and Fifty Shades of Grey. Making sense of how the popular franchise fits within larger contexts, this collection addresses Twilight from an interdisciplinary framework, including insights from history, philosophy, literature, sociology, fan studies, intercultural communication, film studies, and more. Featuring contributions by scholars from the United States, France, Spain, Chile, and Australia, this book emphasizes the international and intercultural relevance of the Twilight phenomenon. The collection is aimed at scholars and students of media and popular culture, but it will also appeal to general readers who are familiar with the series.