Bringing critical attention to a particular set of science fiction and fantasy films--Larry and Andy Wachowski's The Matrix, George Lucas' Star Wars saga, and Joss Whedon's Avengers--this book utilizes a wide-ranging set of critical tools to illuminate their political ideologies, while also examining any resistant and complicating turns or byways the films may provide. What they all have in common ideologically is that they--or at least the genres they belong to--tend to be regarded as belonging to politically conservative frames of sociocultural reference. With the Star Wars saga, however, this idea is shown to be superficial and weak.

From Tolkien to Star Trek and from Game of Thrones to The Walking Dead, imaginary worlds in fantastic genres offer us complex and immersive environments beyond capitalism. This book examines the ways in which these popular storyworlds offer valuable tools for anticapitalist theory and practice. Building on Hardt and Negri’s concept of Empire as a way of understanding globalization, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics shows how popular fantastic fiction has the potential of offering more than a momentary escape from capitalist realism in the age of media convergence and participatory culture. The book approaches fantastic world-building as an ideologically ambiguous way of imagining alternatives to global capitalism. By approaching transmedia world-building both as a narrative form and as a growing industry derived from fan culture, it shows on the one hand the limitations inherent in the political economy of popular genre fiction. But at the same time, it also explores the productive ways in which fantastic storyworlds contain a radical energy that can give us new ways of thinking about politics, popular culture, and anticapitalism.

This book uses several fantasy movies or movie series and television series to explain political and international relations (IR) concepts and theories. It begins with an overview of the importance of fantasy in literature, film and television, and its increasing impact on the field of International Relations. It then presents the political, IR, and social issues in each franchise, and in five chapters uses these tales’ key story arcs or plot points to illustrate major political and IR themes. The volume pays particular attention to such fantasy franchises as Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the Harry Potter films, recent fairytale and children’s stories, and female-led fantasy projects.

Fantasy is often condemned as escapist, unsophisticated and superficial. This collection of new essays puts such easy dismissals to the test by examining the ways in which Fantasy narratives present diverse, politically relevant discourses--gender, race, religion or consumerism--and thereby serve as indicators of their real-world contexts. Through their depiction of other worlds allegedly disconnected from our own, these texts are able to actualize political attitudes. Instead of categorizing Fantasy either as conservative or progressive, the essays suggest that its generic peculiarity allows the emergence of productive forms of oscillation between these extremes. Covered are J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire sequence, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, the vampire TV series True Blood, and the dystopian computer game Fallout 3.

Bringing critical attention to a particular set of science fiction and fantasy films--Larry and Andy Wachowski's The Matrix, George Lucas' Star Wars saga, and Joss Whedon's Avengers--this book utilizes a wide-ranging set of critical tools to illuminate their political ideologies, while also examining any resistant and complicating turns or byways the films may provide. What they all have in common ideologically is that they--or at least the genres they belong to--tend to be regarded as belonging to politically conservative frames of sociocultural reference. With the Star Wars saga, however, this idea is shown to be superficial and weak.

"C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are two of the most interesting and entertaining writers of fantasy in the twentieth century. Certainly they are two of the most popular, and in their own domain, they have been considered among the very best of popular practitioners. The literary and artistic merits of their work are in themselves enough to justify an extended discussion of their work. But they have another interest for the student of intellectual and cultural history. They present striking examples of the moral dilemma with which all conscientious intellectuals must deal. Not out of society but unhappy in it, they are among many who have attempted a mode of escape and criticism of modern society. They have been among the most sensitive registers of the moral crisis in modern capitalist society." --

On German literature in the Weimar Republic

We live in a country fantasising about its ability to run up debts seemingly without end, to enjoy high-paid employment for which it is not qualified, to project military power that it does not possess and in general to assume, in defiance of the evidence, a superior economic and political position in relation to most of the rest of the world. Then there is the apparent conviction that limitless growth can co-exist with environmental protection, that the over-borrowed and abundantly staffed state machine is actually being courageously pruned even while its payroll rises and, finally, that the just-around-the-corner radiant future is one in which will work in the 'creative economy'. Welcome to Fantasy Island. He may be the most spectacular election winner in modern British political history but Blair leaves behind him a seedy dreamworld mired in debt and bankruptcy, drifting into a crisis of employment and employability, hallucinating into existence a diplomatic and military role that it cannot possibly afford. It's time to take stock of the future he and Brown have mapped out for us while there's still time to do something about it.