The Contemporary American Survival Film - by Cassice Last (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This book examines this survival space across film, television, video games, literature and online, asking four questions. Firstly, what does the post 2000s survival space look and behave like, how is it new or distinct? Secondly, how responsible is the setting for triggering narrative events, does the character have any agency? Thirdly, the environment damages the human body. How does this corporeal destruction interact with the notion of a specifically American fleshiness of the American survivor? Finally, could/would one ever willingly choose to enter the survival space and why? How is this survival space employing, rejecting and reworking past rubrics?"--

Book Synopsis

The Contemporary American Survival Film investigates and breaks down the contemporary American Survival Film (from Cast Awayonwards), focusing on film, television, literature and video games.

In the contemporary (and highly popular) American survival film, a lone figure is lost, trapped or stuck. Whether a desert island, cramped canyon, floating raft or the Alaskan tundra, the space cuts the characters off from their loved ones, communication technologies, transport or a means of escape. The sun burns flesh, the dry air dehydrates, the lack of food starves, the snow chills bodies and the sharp rocks pierce limbs.

This book examines this survival space across film, television, video games, literature and online, asking four questions. Firstly, what does the post 2000s survival space look and behave like, how is it new or distinct? Secondly, the natural environment seems to hold all the power. How responsible is the setting for triggering narrative events, does the character have any agency at all? Thirdly, the environment damages the human body. How does this corporeal destruction interact with the notion of a specifically American fleshiness of the American survivor? Finally, could/would one ever willingly choose to enter the survival space and why? How is this survival space employing, rejecting and reworking past rubrics?

Review Quotes

Cassice Last offers a compelling analysis of subjectivity, the body, and the natural environment in filmic survival spaces. Focusing on a range of media texts, The Contemporary American Survival Film profoundly engages us to reconsider the relationship between humans and survival environments in the digital era.
Thomas J. Connelly, Lecturer, New York University Los Angeles, USA, and author of Cinema of Confinement (2019) and Capturing Digital Media: Perfection and Imperfection in Contemporary Film and Television (2019)

This excellent and thorough book demonstrates why the survival film should be taken seriously as a genre. Cassice Last demonstrates the importance of understanding the survival space as integral to this genre, and as speaking to concerns about post-millennial American experience. The Contemporary American Survival Film is an important, and welcome, addition to genre studies, film studies and American studies.
Claire Jenkins, Lecturer in Film and television Studies, University of Leicester, UK

This is an extremely insightful and provocative study of lone-survivalism in American media which greatly adds to eco-media scholarship as well as genre study, not to mention providing a very detailed examination of the human body in extremis, covering video games, reality television shows as well as an extremely satisfying analysis of a number of well-chosen American films, which are both confidently handled and well balanced throughout. My personal favourite is an exploration of the ending of Into the Wild and Last's useful comparison with (Bear) Grylls, where she concludes that while McCandless space offers death for those that seek counter-cultural values, Grylls' space accepts the human outposts that help make up the world in which humans survive. The author's firm hope is that further study into the survival film will address our new geological epoch, driven by human interference. Cassice Last has made a great start in this important project with this book.
Pat Brereton, Emeritus Professor, Dublin City University, Ireland

About the Author

Cassice Last is a Doctoral Researcher at University of St Andrews, UK.