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A Certain Tendency in Post-Occupy Cinema: The Cabin in the Woods, The Purge, and Snowpiercer

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A Cinema of Hopelessness

Part of the book series: Rhetoric, Politics and Society ((RPS))

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Abstract

This chapter explores the ways that affective energies within the culture are taken up and circulated through the affective structures within popular films. Focusing on the Occupy Wall Street Movement, this essay traces the way the affective energies associated with the movement are present in three films released in the years following the event: The Cabin in the Woods; The Purge; and Snowpiercer. Each of the three films invites audiences to share in an affective orientation toward the broader systems of life that resemble the feelings surrounding the Occupy Movement.

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Notes

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    The title of this chapter is an homage to Robert Ray’s(excellent book: R. Ray (1985) A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930–1980 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

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  39. 39.

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  41. 41.

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  42. 42.

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  43. 43.

    It is notable that the key person responsible for Snowpiercer’s limited release in the United States was producer Harvey Weinstein who, just a few years later, would become a pariah in Hollywood due to charges of his lechery and assault of young women. See, “Harvey Weinstein Timeline,” BBC News (May 29, 2020), https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41594672.

  44. 44.

    H. Arendt (2006) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books): 288.

  45. 45.

    Whether intended or not, this can be read as a Biblical allusion as Peter denied Christ three times before the roost crowed. Here the Sandin’s deny the demands of the system three times before the horn blows to signal the end of the annual purge.

  46. 46.

    M. Fleming, Jr., “Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods with Thor’s Chris Hemsworth Going to Lionsgate.” Deadline Hollywood (April 28, 2011). http://deadline.com/2011/04/joss-whedons-cabin-in-the-woods-with-thors-chris-hemsworth-goes-to-lionsgate-126778/.

  47. 47.

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    J. Weinstock (2012) “Invisible Monsters: Vision, Horror, and Contemporary Culture” in Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle, The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous (Burlington, VT: Ashgate): 284.

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Correspondence to Kendall R. Phillips .

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Phillips, K.R. (2021). A Certain Tendency in Post-Occupy Cinema: The Cabin in the Woods, The Purge, and Snowpiercer. In: A Cinema of Hopelessness . Rhetoric, Politics and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74136-5_2

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