Cyberpop: Digital Lifestyles and Commodity Culture

ISBN-13: 9780415649018 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 206 str.

Sidney Eve Matrix

Opis

Cyberpop is an analysis of cyberculture and its popular cultural productions. The study begins with a Foucaultian model of cyberculture as a discursive formation, and explains how some key concepts (such as 'virtuality,' 'speed,' and 'Connectivity') operate as a conceptual architecture network linking technologies to information and individual subjects. The chapters then each focus on a particular cyberfiguration, including Hollywood films (GATTACA, The Matrix), popular literature (William Gibson's Neuromancer, Scott Westerfeld's Polymorph), advertising for digital products and services (Apple Computer's '1984/McIntosh' campaign, AT&T's 'mLife' campaign), digital artworks (including virtual females such as Motorola's 'Mya' and Elite Modeling Agency's 'Webbie Tookay,' and work by visual artist Daniel Lee for Microsoft's 'Evolution' campaign), and video games (Tomb Raider). Each close reading illustrates the ways in which representations of digital lifestyles and identities - which typically fetishize computers and celebrate a 'high tech' aesthetic encourage participation in digital capitalism and commodity cyberculture. Matrix argues that popular representations of cyberculture often function as forms of social criticism that creatively inspire audiences to 'think different' (in the words of Mac advertising) about the consequences of the digitalization of everyday life.

Spis treści

Introduction Chapter 1 Cyberfigurations, Cyberpop and Cyberpoetics Cyberculture as Discursive Formation Cyberfigurations Cyberfigurations and Paradox Analyzing Paradox in Cyberculture From Repurposing Critique to a Digital Analytic From Digital Analytic to Cyberpoetics Chapter 2 Cyber-Commerce & Computerized Subjectivity: ICT Marketing as Cyberpop The BLUR Manifesto: Your Job is to Master the BLUR The BLURred Individual: Computerized Subjectivity Rules of Formation: The Trinity The Trinity Part 1: Intangibility-Screen Culture, Simulation and Terminal Identity The Trinity Part 2: Connectivity-Virtual Freedom, E-Powerment and the Palm Phenomenon The Trinity Part 3: Speed-Technology that Follows You Chapter 3 Cyberpop & the Technomasculine: GenderBLUR in The Matrix Blurring Masculinity The Hacker Ethic Geek Chic In Virtual Reality There is No Spoon: Digital Embodiment and the Mythos of Technomasculinity in The Matrix Commodifying Geek Chic, Appropriating the Hacker Ethic, Technomasculinity in ICT Advertising Chapter 4 Technomasculinity: GATTACA , Gender and Genoism Bioengineering and the Genomic Order of Things Extreme Measures: The Corporeal Contract Genomic Femininity Genomic Masculinity A New Underclass The Bodies that Matter Chapter 5 Cyberfemininity: Pixel Vixens Mya Ananova Webbie Tookay Syndi Chapter 6 Technoeroticism, Cyberfeminity & Interactivity: The Lara Croft Phenomenon Cybercelebrity, Digital Siren Elusive Dreamgirl Avatar and Body Double Postfeminist Role Model and Caricature Conclusion Dangerous Mixtures and Uncanny Flexibility: The Shapeshifter in Contemporary Cyberfiction Illustrating Technoscience and Cyberculture Portraying the Genomic Subject The Shapeshifter Polymorph

O autorze

Sidney Eve Matrix (Ph.D. University of Minnesota, 2003) is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Winnipeg.