Sky Is Falling

How Vampires, Zombies, Androids and Superheroes Made America Great for Extremism

256 pages

English language

Published Aug. 24, 2018 by Penguin Books, Limited.

ISBN:
978-0-241-37385-9
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OCLC Number:
1056244769

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2 stars (1 review)

In The Sky is Falling! bestselling cultural critic Peter Biskind takes us on a dizzying ride across two decades of pop culture to show how the TV and movies we love - from Game of Thrones and 24 to Homeland and Iron Man - have taught us to love political extremism. Welcome to a darkly pessimistic, apocalyptic world where winter has come, the dead are walking, and ultra violence, revenge and torture are all in a day's work. Welcome to the new normal.

4 editions

reviewed Sky Is Falling by Peter Biskind

Rare nuggets of insight lost amidst torrents of careless punditry

2 stars

Oh this was bad.

I was given this as a gift years ago and I would have stopped less than halfway through if it weren't. Decided to knock it off the list as a light non-fiction to finish out the summer, and while it was easy enough to get through it is a god-awful mess.

Biskind takes on all and sundry in a cocaine rush of allusions to pop-culture, whiplashing from modern superhero films to 50s B-movies, Westerns (old and some younger) to science fiction. The thesis on the cover of the book is that icons of pulp culture have 'made America great for extremism'. The book makes no clear statement of the same - there is no argument that representations in popular culture shapes or forms what is likely or easy for people to imagine as possible. Nor is there a clear argument that things work the other …

Subjects

  • Popular culture, united states
  • Radicalism
  • Political culture
  • Right and left (political science)
  • Polarization (social science)
  • United states, civilization, 21st century
  • United states, politics and government, 21st century