American Dreamtime A Cultural Analysis of

Despite America's practical and technological aims, the money spent on film and sports events tends to convey an image of a whimsical nation. This work explores these conflicting images through an analysis of movies, revealing the ties that daily activity and thought have with a world of myth.

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

xiii

Introduction

1

(22)

Beginning at the Beginning

1

(1)

An Anthropologist Goes to the Movies

2

(4)

Cultural Anthropology and the Movies

6

(5)

Which Movies?

11

(7)

An Anthropologist Goes to the Movies, Take 2

18

(5)

The Primacy of Myth

23

(28)

What Is Myth?

23

(4)

The Nature of Myth

27

(2)

The Foundations of a Cultural Analysis of Myth

29

(7)

A Semiotic Approach to Modern Culture: Myth Today, Totemism Today

36

(8)

Myth and Language

44

(7)

A Theory of Culture as Semiospace

51

(76)

Before and Beyond Language: Cultural Anthropology, Quantum Mechanics, and Cosmology

51

(5)

Metaphor, Quality Space, and Semiospace

56

(3)

Dimensionality in Nature and Culture

59

(13)

Processual Analysis and Cultural Dimensionality: Liminality, Social Drama, and Social Field

72

(4)

Intersystem and Continuum

76

(12)

Cultural Generativity

88

(8)

The Semiotic Dimensions of Culture

96

(31)

The Story of Bond

127

(42)

James Bond: An American Myth?

127

(3)

How to Do---and Not to Do---Cultural Analysis: The Novel-Bond and the Movie-Bond

130

(7)

Gadgets and Gladiators: The Master of Machines

137

(11)

Low Brows and High Stakes: Bond Movies in a World of Consumer Capitalism

148

(5)

Folklore Past: James Bond, Wild Bill Hickok, and John Henry

153

(7)

Folklore Present: Secret Agents, Football Players, and Rock Stars

160

(7)

The Story of America

167

(2)

Metaphors Be with You: A Cultural Analysis of Star Wars

169

(30)

A Bookstore Browse

169

(3)

Inside the Theatre: Semiosis in Star Wars

172

(13)

Outside the Theatre: Luke Skywalker, James Bond, and Indiana Jones in the Temple of the Technological State

185

(11)

Gone to Look for (Post-Literate) America

196

(3)

It and Other Beasts: Jaws and the New Totemism

199

(42)

The Fish: An Anthropologist Goes to the Movie Studio

199

(3)

Totemic Animals in a Technological Age

202

(4)

The Fish Takes a Bite: The Myth of Ecology and the Ecology of Myth

206

(12)

The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea: The Story of Chief Brody, The Great White Shark...and Flipper

218

(11)

The Collapse of a Dichotomy: Mechanistic Animals and Animalistic Machines in Jaws and Jurassic Park

229

(12)

Phone Home: E. T. as a Saga of the American Family

241

(20)

From Creature Feature and Saucer Saga to E. T.

241

(2)

What is E. T.?

243

(4)

Machines at Home: The Suburban Family in a Technological State

247

(6)

Monsters at Home: E. T. and Poltergeist

253

(3)

Ambivalence at Home: The Myth of Family

256

(5)

Conclusions

261

(30)

Understanding Our Movies and Ourselves: Cultural Analysis and Film Criticism

261

(4)

The Logic of Things That Just Happen: The Sandpile and Cellular Automation as Models of Cultural Process

265

(18)

Something Else

283

(8)

Notes

291

(20)

References

311

(8)

Index of Movies

319

(4)

Index

323

(12)

Note on the Author

335

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American Dreamtime A Cultural Analysis of Popular Movies, and Their Implications for a Science of Humanity

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials