1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910816491603321

Autore

Rothe Anne

Titolo

Popular trauma culture [[electronic resource] ] : selling the pain of others in the mass media / / Anne Rothe

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Brunswick, N.J., : Rutgers University Press, c2011

ISBN

1-283-86430-4

0-8135-5220-6

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (223 p.)

Disciplina

302.23

Soggetti

Psychic trauma and mass media

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in mass media

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-201) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : Oprah at Auschwitz -- Popular trauma culture : generating the paradigm in Holocaust discourse. Holocaust tropes -- Victim talk -- American survivors -- Trauma kitsch -- Television : watching the pain of others on daytime talk shows. Talking cures -- Trauma camp -- Popular literature : reading the pain of others in misery memoirs. Selling misery -- Fake suffering -- Forging child abuse -- Simulating Holocaust survival -- Epilogue : fantasies of witnessing.

Sommario/riassunto

In Popular Trauma Culture, Anne Rothe argues that American Holocaust discourse has a particular plot structure-characterized by a melodramatic conflict between good and evil and embodied in the core characters of victim/survivor and perpetrator-and that it provides the paradigm for representing personal experiences of pain and suffering in the mass media. The book begins with an analysis of Holocaust clichés, and then explores the embodiment of popular trauma culture in two core mass media genres: daytime TV talk shows and misery memoirs.