Description
Book SynopsisIn Popular Trauma Culture, Anne Rothe argues that American Holocaust discourse has a particular plot structure–characterized by a melodramatic conflict between good and evil and embodied in the core characters of victim/survivor and perpetrator–and that it provides the paradigm for representing personal experiences of pain and suffering in the mass media.
Trade Review"This is a passionate book of exemplary moral integrity. Anne Rothe provides a straightforward, unflinching indictment of the way that contemporary mass culture gorges itself on the display of human suffering." -- Wulf Kansteiner * Binghamton University, SUNY *
"This is a passionate book of exemplary moral integrity. Anne Rothe provides a straightforward, unflinching indictment of the way that contemporary mass culture gorges itself on the display of human suffering." -- Wulf Kansteiner * Binghamton University, SUNY *
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Oprah at Auschwitz
Part I. Popular Trauma Culture: Generating the Paradigm in Holocaust Discourse
1. Holocaust Tropes
2. Victim Talk
3. American Survivors
4. Trauma Kitsch
Part II. Television: Watching the Pain of Others on Daytime Talk Shows
5. Talking Cures
6. Trauma Camp
Part III. Popular Literature: Reading the Pain of Others in Misery Memoirs
7. Selling Misery
8. Fake Suffering
9. Forging Child Abuse
10. Simulating Holocaust Survival
Epilogue: Fantasies of Witnessing
Notes
Index
