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Ghosts in the Machine: The Dark Heart of Pop Cinema
Looking back on a century that witnessed the emergence of motion pictures to become, almost immediately, a dominant cultural force in our lives, this penetrating and provocative book argues that “movies (like cathedrals) cannot help but display the subconscious impulses oftheir society.� From D.W. Griffith to the Marx Brothers to film noir, “what are conceived and consumed as innocent pop movies ... are in fact manifestations of wild horror, superstitious ignorance, fatalistic dread and bigoted savagery.�
- GenresFilmPop Culture
230 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
2 people are currently reading
22 people want to read
About the author
Michael Atkinson
60Ìýbooks21ÌýfollowersA son of Long Island and a father of three, I love very good beer, shellfish of any sort, Italian opera in the summertime, and movies. I own more books than I do any other one thing. I love writing, though, making sentences. In addition to my books, I've written, and still write, film criticism, cultural attack, book reviews and essays for The Village Voice, The Believer, Sight & Sound, The Guardian (U.K.), In These Times, The Boston Phoenix, SPiN, Film Comment, Modern Painters, Moving Image Source, IFC.com, The Forward, Maxim, The Progressive, The American Prospect, The Poetry Foundation, The Criterion Collection, Turner Classic Movies (tcm.com), The L Magazine, LA Weekly, and elsewhere.
I have also written a certain amount of unproduced TV, and one pilot that was in fact shot and then vanquished, despite extraordinary notoriety,
BABYLON FIELDS, which can be easily Googled.
My first novel, set in 1956 Key West and ending up in the Cuban mountains with Che and Fidel, HEMINGWAY DEADLIGHTS is the first of a projected series, gallivanting around in the most famous literary biography of the 20th century with a nod to history but also a robust jones for truth, irony, cocktails and culprits.
The second volume, HEMINGWAY CUTTHROAT, finds Hemingway investigating the very real murder of Jose Robles in 1937 Spain.
For #3... methinks Paris.
Not incidentally, at least not to me, I'm also a widely published poet, the winner of Word Works' Washington Prize in 2001, a runner-up for the National Poetry Series in 2001 and 1998, a selectee for The Best American Poetry 1993 (eds. Louise Gluck & David Lehman, Collier/Macmillan, 1993), a recipient of a fellowship in poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts, 1988-89, etc. My poems have been in Epoch, Crazyhorse, The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, Ontario Review, The Laurel Review, Poetry East, The Seneca Review, Cimarron Review, Chelsea, Chicago Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Seattle Review, Graham House Review, New Orleans Review, Kansas Quarterly, Mudfish, Willow Springs, Massachusetts Review, and many other journals.
Lastly, I find pride in the fact that my children can find Timbuktu on a map, I vote anti-imperialist whenever it is possible to do so, and I believe deeply in the existence of human stupidity.
I have also written a certain amount of unproduced TV, and one pilot that was in fact shot and then vanquished, despite extraordinary notoriety,
BABYLON FIELDS, which can be easily Googled.
My first novel, set in 1956 Key West and ending up in the Cuban mountains with Che and Fidel, HEMINGWAY DEADLIGHTS is the first of a projected series, gallivanting around in the most famous literary biography of the 20th century with a nod to history but also a robust jones for truth, irony, cocktails and culprits.
The second volume, HEMINGWAY CUTTHROAT, finds Hemingway investigating the very real murder of Jose Robles in 1937 Spain.
For #3... methinks Paris.
Not incidentally, at least not to me, I'm also a widely published poet, the winner of Word Works' Washington Prize in 2001, a runner-up for the National Poetry Series in 2001 and 1998, a selectee for The Best American Poetry 1993 (eds. Louise Gluck & David Lehman, Collier/Macmillan, 1993), a recipient of a fellowship in poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts, 1988-89, etc. My poems have been in Epoch, Crazyhorse, The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, Ontario Review, The Laurel Review, Poetry East, The Seneca Review, Cimarron Review, Chelsea, Chicago Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Seattle Review, Graham House Review, New Orleans Review, Kansas Quarterly, Mudfish, Willow Springs, Massachusetts Review, and many other journals.
Lastly, I find pride in the fact that my children can find Timbuktu on a map, I vote anti-imperialist whenever it is possible to do so, and I believe deeply in the existence of human stupidity.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 19, 2012
A great book which will, among other things, reveal to you the origins of the Blondeness Cult in America and the hidden messages behind the Planet of the Apes...
June 30, 2019
Quite unlike the majority of contemporary film critics, Atkinson is not completely cucked (e.g. his PLANET OF THE APES essay) and he actually seems to love cinema and appreciate truly idiosyncratic auteurs (e.g. The Quay Brothers). He's also a fairly decent writer and never succumbs to pomposity, pretentiousness and/or trendy academic lingo (despite being more knowledgeable than academic types). As a fan of road movies, I also appreciated his essay on the (sub)genre.
I also have some complaints, namely his rather weak and politically correct essay on the dubious history of the dumb blonde diva archetype, which he doesn't seem to even have a clue is a distinctly Judaic invention of the weaponized/vengeful post-shoah sort. In fact, I once had a Jewish film professor even admit so much. After all, who was behind Marilyn Monroe, who was undoubtedly the most popular/iconic of these dumb blonde shiksa beastesses?! For starters, Billy Wilder who, after fleeing to Nazi Germany, returned to his former homeland to direct holocaust agitprop (e.g. DEATH MILLS (1945)). And who wrote the scripts? Tribesmen like I. A. L. Diamond, Charles Lederer, George Axelrod, etc. It is also no coincidence that overrated trash like THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH has an obvious Freudian influence. I'm just scratching the surface...
I also have some complaints, namely his rather weak and politically correct essay on the dubious history of the dumb blonde diva archetype, which he doesn't seem to even have a clue is a distinctly Judaic invention of the weaponized/vengeful post-shoah sort. In fact, I once had a Jewish film professor even admit so much. After all, who was behind Marilyn Monroe, who was undoubtedly the most popular/iconic of these dumb blonde shiksa beastesses?! For starters, Billy Wilder who, after fleeing to Nazi Germany, returned to his former homeland to direct holocaust agitprop (e.g. DEATH MILLS (1945)). And who wrote the scripts? Tribesmen like I. A. L. Diamond, Charles Lederer, George Axelrod, etc. It is also no coincidence that overrated trash like THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH has an obvious Freudian influence. I'm just scratching the surface...
April 2, 2018
An interesting read(for the most part) for movie buffs. Some chapters/essays were more interesting to me than others. stands out for me were the ones on: the Brothers Quay, Ray Harryhausen, and found footage films. Since some of the essays are a bit out of date it'd be interesting to hear the author's take on some of the reboots that hadn't happened by the time of their writing.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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