David Sweeney – författare

Created by the team of Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, and starring Marling in the role of Prairie Johnston, the Netflix Originals series The OA (2016–19) is a generically ambiguous, and ambitious, vehicle for exploring a variety of themes, chief among them identity, belief and the nature and construction of reality. Prairie claims that she has learned the secret of inter-dimensional travel after a near-death experience and subsequent imprisonment at the hands of a deranged scientist obsessed with that phenomenon – but is she a potentially unreliable narrator, a sincere one or, finally, a metafictional character playing a version of herself in a fictional drama?This Constellation discusses The OA’s thematic concerns in the context of the creators’ earlier collaborations and in terms of influences on it, such as the work of David Lynch, particularly the TV series Twin Peaks (1990–2017) and the films Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006), and comparable texts such as the Netflix Originals series Sense8 (2015–18) and Maniac (2018); the writings of Jorge Luis Borges and Philip K Dick. The discussion will be supported by sources from the fields of media and social theory, including the work of Jean Baudrillard, Steven Shaviro, Jodi Dean, Mark Fisher and Shoshana Zuboff. Negative criticisms of The OA will also be addressed, such as accusations of superficiality, which will be considered alongside the themes of deception, manipulation and artificiality identifiable in The OA specifically, and in Marling and Batmanglij’s wider oeuvre.

Created by the team of Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, and starring Marling in the role of Prairie Johnston, the Netflix Originals series The OA (2016–19) is a generically ambiguous, and ambitious, vehicle for exploring a variety of themes, chief among them identity, belief and the nature and construction of reality. Prairie claims that she has learned the secret of inter-dimensional travel after a near-death experience and subsequent imprisonment at the hands of a deranged scientist obsessed with that phenomenon – but is she a potentially unreliable narrator, a sincere one or, finally, a metafictional character playing a version of herself in a fictional drama?This Constellation discusses The OA’s thematic concerns in the context of the creators’ earlier collaborations and in terms of influences on it, such as the work of David Lynch, particularly the TV series Twin Peaks (1990–2017) and the films Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006), and comparable texts such as the Netflix Originals series Sense8 (2015–18) and Maniac (2018); the writings of Jorge Luis Borges and Philip K Dick. The discussion will be supported by sources from the fields of media and social theory, including the work of Jean Baudrillard, Steven Shaviro, Jodi Dean, Mark Fisher and Shoshana Zuboff. Negative criticisms of The OA will also be addressed, such as accusations of superficiality, which will be considered alongside the themes of deception, manipulation and artificiality identifiable in The OA specifically, and in Marling and Batmanglij’s wider oeuvre.

Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open initiative.This critical study engages with the films of the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, from his first feature Pusher (1996) up to and including Copenhagen Cowboy (2023), Refn's TV series for Netflix, considered here as a long-form, auteur work comparable to David Lynch's mini-series Twin Peaks: The Return (2017).By focusing on the treatment of genre, gender and glamour in Refn’s work, Sweeney argues that the director is often misunderstood as a purveyor of ‘macho’ films when, in fact, his representations of masculinity are much more complex and layered.'Drawing on a range of critical theory, most prominently the work of Paul B Preciado, and building on the existing criticism of Refn’s work by Justin Vicari, Susanne Kappesser and Sofia Glasl, among others, this book provides a comprehensive and accessible analysis of Refn’s oeuvre.