Conspiracy in American Narrative

Melley, Timothy

doi:10.4324/9780429452734-4_4

Cited by 26 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For examples, see Britt (2017);Dyke (2000); Green (1990);Hallemann (2020). On the rise of literature of conspiracy and paranoia following Kennedy's assassination, see Melley (2020).…”

Section: Endnotesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship Between History and Mythology in Sondheim and Weidman’s 'Assassins'

Scheiby

2022

Reinvention

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article analyses Sondheim and Weidman’s Assassins to explore the way in which historical events are transformed into mythology. Following Barthes’ (1972) Mythologies, I propose that Assassins demonstrates how mythology simplifies history to serve a dominant narrative. Assassins creates a dialogue between contrasting historical narratives through the Balladeer, who embodies a simplified mythology, providing ironic contrast to Sondheim’s complex characterisation of the assassins. The characterisation of Guiteau provides an example to examine Sondheim’s character in comparison with historical and fictional accounts, in order to appreciate how mythology alters the perception of this figure. The scene with Lee Harvey Oswald invites discussion of cultural mythologies defining American national identity: the American Dream, independent freedoms and gun culture. These mythologies arise from historical mythology, but also through commodity fetishism and conspiracy theories. Assassins restores the complexity of characters who are otherwise reduced by mythology to consider how cultural mythology leads to the formation of these assassins, and to challenge the biased narrative of American historical mythology. By comparing Assassins to the historical accounts and folk songs it references, we can better understand the role of mythology in Assassins, illuminating the process by which historical mythology is produced, and indeed produces the fictionalised assassins.

show abstract

“…For examples, see Britt (2017);Dyke (2000); Green (1990);Hallemann (2020). On the rise of literature of conspiracy and paranoia following Kennedy's assassination, see Melley (2020).…”

Section: Endnotesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship Between History and Mythology in Sondheim and Weidman’s 'Assassins'

Scheiby

2022

Reinvention

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Just picture the city in daily life’ (Cuomo, quoted in Rosenthal, 2020 : no page). A piece in Associated Press speculated that because in New York ‘residents live in large multi-unit buildings, many with small elevators and tight hallways’, and given that ‘sidewalks are choked with walkers and commuters who flow in and out of the city’s robust subway system’, there will be higher rates and numbers of infection, hospitalisation and death than in, say, more dispersed Los Angeles ( Melley, 2020 : no page).…”

Section: Covid-19’s Urban Geographiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Commentary: Repopulating density: COVID-19 and the politics of urban value

McFarlane

2021

Urban Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How might concepts of ‘value’ and ‘population’ illuminate the present and future of urban density? The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a public debate on density in the city. While some initially blamed density for the spread of the virus, others rightly cautioned against those claims. As the pandemic progressed, an imaginary of density-as-pathology gave way to a more nuanced geographical understanding of the urban dimensions of the crisis, focused on connections, spatial conditions, domestic ‘overcrowding’ and poverty. Throughout, an interrogation and reflection on urban density and its future unfolded, throwing into question the historical relationship between ‘value’ and ‘population’ in understandings of density. I argue for a new politics of value based on shifts in three interconnected domains – governance, form and knowledge – and identify implications for research on density in urban studies.

show abstract

“…In the absence of belief, conspiracy theories may be shared as storytelling (Bangerter et al, 2020) or due to their entertainment value (van . Conspiracy theories have had considerable cultural success in popular fiction, with examples in film, comics, tv and other media (Arnold, 2008;Butter, 2020;Dorfman, 1980;Jameson, 1992;Letort, 2017;Melley, 2020). Both explicitly fictional and believed (or shared as true) conspiracy theories share similarities (Butter & Knight, 2020b) and the boundary between the two may also be unclear.…”

Section: Content Dependent Biasesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conspiracy Theories: A Cultural Evolution Theory approach

Stubbersfield¹

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Conspiracy theories have been part of human culture for hundreds of years, if not millennia, and have been the subject of research in academic fields such as Social Psychology, Political Science and Cultural Studies. At present, there has been little research examining conspiracy theories from a Cultural Evolution perspective. This chapter discusses the value of Cultural Evolution approaches to understanding the diffusion of conspiracy theories. Focusing on the role of biases in cultural transmission, it argues that a key advantage of applying a Cultural Evolution approach to this phenomenon is that it provides a strong theoretical and methodological framework to bridge the individual, inter-individual and population level factors that explain the cultural success of conspiracy theories, with potential for producing insights into how to limit their negative influence.

show abstract

Conspiracy in American Narrative

Cited by 26 publications

References 1 publication

The Relationship Between History and Mythology in Sondheim and Weidman’s 'Assassins'

The Relationship Between History and Mythology in Sondheim and Weidman’s 'Assassins'

Critical Commentary: Repopulating density: COVID-19 and the politics of urban value

Conspiracy Theories: A Cultural Evolution Theory approach

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About