Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- Songs of fate, hope and oblivion: Bob Dylan's dystopianism and apocalyticism
- End of the world music: is extreme metal the sound of the apocalypse?
- Babylon's burning: reggae, Rastafari and millenarianism
- Apocalypse at the Millennium
- “The days are numbered”: the romance of death, doom, and deferral in contemporary apocalypse films
- Making things new: regeneration and transcendence in Anime
- Selling faith without selling out: reading the Left Behind novels in the context of popular culture
- “The shadow of the end”: the appeal of apocalypse in literary science fiction
- An end times virtual “Ekklesia”: ritual deliberation in participatory media
- Index
Introduction
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- Songs of fate, hope and oblivion: Bob Dylan's dystopianism and apocalyticism
- End of the world music: is extreme metal the sound of the apocalypse?
- Babylon's burning: reggae, Rastafari and millenarianism
- Apocalypse at the Millennium
- “The days are numbered”: the romance of death, doom, and deferral in contemporary apocalypse films
- Making things new: regeneration and transcendence in Anime
- Selling faith without selling out: reading the Left Behind novels in the context of popular culture
- “The shadow of the end”: the appeal of apocalypse in literary science fiction
- An end times virtual “Ekklesia”: ritual deliberation in participatory media
- Index
Summary
Of all the books of the Bible, few have had the enduring influence on western culture—and particularly on the arts—as has the Book of Revelation. From at least the fourth century CE down to the present day, its beguiling narrative and striking visual imagery have inspired a variety of artists and musicians (and more recently, film makers) from Albrecht Dürer, Hieronymus Bosch and William Blake through to Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky and Jake and Dinos Chapman. It has also, albeit in a secularized form, found expression in innumerable horror and science fiction comic books, as well as in an equally innumerable number of Hollywood movies dealing with planetary disaster and “the end of the world”. Indeed, for reasons that are clear from even a cursory reading of the text (particularly in its King James Version), the Book of Revelation, perhaps more so than any other book, Biblical or otherwise, cries out for such artistic representation.
The nine essays in this volume focus on the influence of the Book of Revelation and the apocalypse more generally on various sites within popular culture, tracing the way in which its themes, language and motifs are manifested across film and music and in literary and online texts. In his essay, Gary Baines examines the way in which apocalyptic themes are found in the work of Bob Dylan. Dylan's repertoire, Baines argues, is rich in symbolism and reflects not only his own concerns as an artist but also those of his audience.
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- Information
- The End All Around UsThe Apocalypse and Popular Culture, pp. ix - xivPublisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2009