Research Catalog

Title

The eternal future of the 1950s : essays on the lasting influence of the decade's science fiction films / edited by Dennis R. Cutchins and Dennis R. Perry ; afterword by Thomas Leitch.

Publication

Jefferson, North Carolina : McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, [2023]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Cutchins, Dennis R. (Dennis Ray), 1963-
• Perry, Dennis R.
• Leitch, Thomas M.

Description

viii, 303 pages : illustrations; 26 cm

Summary

"Science fiction cinema, once relegated to the undervalued "B" movie slot, has become one of the dominant film genres of the 21st century, with Hollywood alone producing more than 400 science fiction films annually. Many of these owe a great deal of their success to the films of one defining decade: the 1950s. Essays in this book explore how classic '50s science fiction films have been recycled, repurposed, and reused in the decades since their release. Tropes from Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), for instance, have found surprising new life in Netflix's wildly popular Stranger Things. Interstellar (2014) and Arrival (2016) have clear, though indirect roots in the iconic 1950s science fictions films Rocketship X-M (1950) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and The Shape of Water (2017) openly recalls and reworks the major premises of The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954). Essays also cover 1950's sci-fi influences on video game franchises like Fallout, Bioshock and Wolfenstein"--

Alternative Title

Essays on the lasting influence of the decade's science fiction films

Subject

• 1900-1999
• Science fiction films > United States > History and criticism
• Motion pictures > United States > History > 20th century
• Nineteen fifties
• Motion pictures
• Science fiction films
• United States

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction : the past and present future / Dennis R. Cutchins and Dennis R. Perry -- Presenting Frank Darabont's The Mist (2007) in glorious black & white : the remaking of a 1950s Sci-Fi aesthetic / Greg Semenza -- Retro reboots : adapting 1950s science fiction in Bioshock, Fallout, and Wolfenstein / Daniel Singleton -- The truth is out there : 1950s science fiction, The X-Files, and the shifting dynamics of national anxiety / Jessica Metzler -- Extinction panic : prehistoric creatures of the Anthropocene / Zak Bronson -- "Forget the world and hang on to the people you care about the most" : giant monster movies from the 1950s and their twenty-first-century counterparts / Robin Jeremy Land -- "Something's lost in the translation!" : hemimetabolic adaptation (or incomplete metamorphosis) in David Cronenberg's The Fly / Richard Berger -- Adapting the monstrous other : del Toro re-shapes The Creature from the Black Lagoon / Glenn Jellenik -- The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World, and the creation of two archetypes / Dennis R. Cutchins -- Queer anxieties and perverse desires in the alien infiltration / Mica A. Hilson -- War of the worlds : masculine heroism and symbolic spaces in invasion narratives / Joan Ormrod -- The space children and the alien : magic and paranoia at world's end / Dennis R. Perry -- The alien in the graveyard : extraterrestrial reanimation in Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space and Walter Mosley's The Wave / Paul Piatkowski -- Double trouble : Martin Guerre, Invaders from Mars, and the Body Snatchers films / Sam Umland -- Escaping earth : the uninhabitable home in Rocketship X-M, Interstellar, and Ad Astra / Christopher Love -- From the promise of the 1950s to the uncertainty of the 1960s : the surety of forbidden planet against the empty center of Solaris / Robert Mayer -- New maps of hell : Racebending and Fahrenheit 451 / William Hart -- Still captive? : The maternal body in 1950s science fiction disaster films and Mad Max: Fury Road / Rebecca Johinke -- Yesterday's tomorrows : the double consciousness of science fiction / Thomas Leitch.

Call Number

MFL 23-4006

ISBN

• 9781476687858
• 1476687854
• 9781476649276 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2023017486

OCLC

1378631579

Title

The eternal future of the 1950s : essays on the lasting influence of the decade's science fiction films / edited by Dennis R. Cutchins and Dennis R. Perry ; afterword by Thomas Leitch.

Publisher

Jefferson, North Carolina : McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, [2023]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Added Author

Cutchins, Dennis R. (Dennis Ray), 1963- editor.

Perry, Dennis R., editor.

Leitch, Thomas M., writer of afterword.

Research Call Number

MFL 23-4006