Romance & Capitalism at the Movies


Book Description

Table of Contents: The Balloons Conversations With The Dead During The War Envelope Eskimo Print Woman For Myself - Age Eight The Frame Gradually The Hawk Hawk Coming The Homeless It's She Kansas, Sunstruck Matthew At Thirteen Midsummer No Hanukah Bush Our Last Winter Plumb Bob Raspberries Red Moon Romance And Capitalism At The Movies The Sirenians Through The Bones What I Came For World Hunger




Love, Inc.


Book Description

The notion of “happily ever after” has been ingrained in many of us since childhood—meet someone, date, have the big white wedding, and enjoy your well-deserved future. But why do we buy into this idea? Is love really all we need? Author Laurie Essig invites us to flip this concept of romance on its head and see it for what it really is—an ideology that we desperately cling to as a way to cope with the fact that we believe we cannot control or affect the societal, economic, and political structures around us. From climate change to nuclear war, white nationalism to the worship of wealth and conspicuous consumption—as the future becomes seemingly less secure, Americans turn away from the public sphere and find shelter in the private. Essig argues that when we do this, we allow romance to blind us to the real work that needs to be done—building global movements that inspire a change in government policies to address economic and social inequality.




Consuming the Romantic Utopia


Book Description

To what extent are our most romantic moments determined by the portrayal of love in film and on TV? Is a walk on a moonlit beach a moment of perfect romance or simply a simulation of the familiar ideal seen again and again on billboards and movie screens? In her unique study of American love in the twentieth century, Eva Illouz unravels the mass of images that define our ideas of love and romance, revealing that the experience of "true" love is deeply embedded in the experience of consumer capitalism. Illouz studies how individual conceptions of love overlap with the world of clichés and images she calls the "Romantic Utopia." This utopia lives in the collective imagination of the nation and is built on images that unite amorous and economic activities in the rituals of dating, lovemaking, and marriage. Since the early 1900s, advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks, and snack foods to success in love and happiness. Illouz reveals that, ultimately, every cliché of romance—from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses—is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of consumption: material goods and happiness are available to all. Engaging and witty, Illouz's study begins with readings of ads, songs, films, and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in order to analyze the ways in which mass messages are internalized. Combining extensive historical research, interviews, and postmodern social theory, Illouz brings an impressive scholarship to her fascinating portrait of love in America.




Love’s Great Transformation: The Clash of Love and Capitalism


Book Description

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Philosophy - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, Leuven Catholic University, course: Economic Anthrogology, language: English, abstract: Love – there are few things which are as omnipresent as this phenomenon. Love is on the one hand the central heating in our universe, the feeling that gives sense to our life. On the other hand it is the source for jealousy and hate. In the search-engine google are more than eight trillion entries for the word love. In music, literature and movies again and again we are confronted with the success or failure of love – throughout the whole history. There are no real borders for the usage. You can love your fatherland, work, car, god, animals, music, chocolate and even capitalism. Some people fall in love on Friday like The Cure, other people’s business is loving wisdom (philosophers). In western societies it is used in dimensions, as it was never before the case in history. Asking people about the relationship of love and capitalism many requests claim that they have nothing to do with each other or even that they are contradictory. This leads us to an interesting point, because our economic system – capitalism – tries permanently to make use of other spheres and even, according to Polanyi, subordinates them. This paper aims to analyze the relationship of love and capitalism and to show something similar Marx did with the commodity: that love is influenced by the conditions of society (especially economy) and that its magic is one that is socially constructed. The thesis is, according to Polanyi’s great transformation, that love experienced a great transformation: at least at part was love freed up by capitalism from moral and normative chains, love has become a market and capitalism subordinated love to the economy. The analysis concentrates due to the limited frame on the western culture and on heterosexual love. Furthermore the paper is more descriptive then normative; the aim is not the critic of a specific concept of love but to find out how capitalism and love interact with each other and whether one system is subordinated to the other.




Permanent VOLTA


Book Description

A debut collection of love poems that resist subjection and ask how we might live together outside of capitalism, providing for each other through intimate acts of care and struggle




I Love Capitalism!


Book Description

New York Times Bestseller Iconoclastic entrepreneur and New York legend Ken Langone tells the compelling story of how a poor boy from Long Island became one of America's most successful businessmen. Ken Langone has seen it all on his way to a net worth beyond his wildest dreams. A pillar of corporate America for decades, he's a co-founder of Home Depot, a former director of the New York Stock Exchange, and a world-class philanthropist (including $200 million for NYU's Langone Health). In this memoir he finally tells the story of his unlikely rise and controversial career. It's also a passionate defense of the American Dream -- of preserving a country in which any hungry kid can reach the maximum potential of his or her talents and work ethic. In a series of fascinating stories, Langone shows how he struggled to get an education, break into Wall Street, and scramble for an MBA at night while competing with privileged competitors by day. He shares how he learned how to evaluate what a business is worth and apply his street smarts to 8-figure and 9-figure deals . And he's not shy about discussing, for the first time, his epic legal and PR battle with former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer. His ultimate theme is that free enterprise is the key to giving everyone a leg up. As he writes: This book is my love song to capitalism. Capitalism works! And I'm living proof -- it works for everybody. Absolutely anybody is entitled to dream big, and absolutely everybody should dream big. I did. Show me where the silver spoon was in my mouth. I've got to argue profoundly and passionately: I'm the American Dream.




Slums on Screen


Book Description

Near to one billion people call slums their home, making it a reasonable claim to describe our world as a 'planet of slums.' But how has this hard and unyielding way of life been depicted on screen? How have filmmakers engaged historically and across the globe with the social conditions of what is often perceived as the world's most miserable habitats?Combining approaches from cultural, globalisation and film studies, Igor Krstic outlines a transnational history of films that either document or fictionalise the favelas, shantytowns, barrios poulares or chawls of our 'planet of slums', exploring the way accelerated urbanisation has intersected with an increasingly interconnected global film culture. From Jacob Riis' How The Other Half Lives (1890) to Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008), the volume provides a number of close readings of films from different historical periods and regions to outline how contemporary film and media practices relate to their past predeccesors, demonstrating the way various filmmakers, both north and south of the equator, have repeatedly grappled with, rejected or continuously modified documentary and realist modes to convey life in our 'planet of slums'.




Labor of Love


Book Description

A brilliant and surprising investigation into why we date the way we do




Capitalism and Desire


Book Description

Despite creating vast inequalities and propping up reactionary world regimes, capitalism has many passionate defenders—but not because of what it withholds from some and gives to others. Capitalism dominates, Todd McGowan argues, because it mimics the structure of our desire while hiding the trauma that the system inflicts upon it. People from all backgrounds enjoy what capitalism provides, but at the same time are told more and better is yet to come. Capitalism traps us through an incomplete satisfaction that compels us after the new, the better, and the more. Capitalism's parasitic relationship to our desires gives it the illusion of corresponding to our natural impulses, which is how capitalism's defenders characterize it. By understanding this psychic strategy, McGowan hopes to divest us of our addiction to capitalist enrichment and help us rediscover enjoyment as we actually experienced it. By locating it in the present, McGowan frees us from our attachment to a better future and the belief that capitalism is an essential outgrowth of human nature. From this perspective, our economic, social, and political worlds open up to real political change. Eloquent and enlivened by examples from film, television, consumer culture, and everyday life, Capitalism and Desire brings a new, psychoanalytically grounded approach to political and social theory.