John Wills – författare

While the Western was dying a slow death across the cultural landscape, it was blazing back to life as a video game in the early twenty-first century. Rockstar Games’ Red Dead franchise, beginning with Red Dead Revolver in 2004, has grown into one of the most critically acclaimed video game franchises of the twenty-first century. Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West offers a critical, interdisciplinary look at this cultural phenomenon at the intersection of game studies and American history.Drawing on game studies, western history, American studies, and cultural studies, the authors train a wide-ranging, deeply informed analytic perspective on the Red Dead franchise—from its earliest incarnation to the latest, Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). Their intersecting chapters put the series in the context of American history, culture, and contemporary media, with inquiries into issues of authenticity, realism, the meaning of play and commercial promotion, and the relationship between the game and the wider cultural iterations of the classic Western. The contributors also delve into the role the series’ development has played in recent debates around working conditions in the gaming industry and gaming culture.In its redeployment and reinvention of the Western’s myth and memes, the Red Dead franchise speaks to broader aspects of American culture—the hold of the frontier myth and the “Wild West” over the popular imagination, the role of gun culture in society, depictions of gender and ethnicity in mass media, and the increasing allure of digital escapism—all of which come in for scrutiny here, making this volume a vital, sweeping, and deeply revealing cultural intervention.

Cultural scholar John Wills takes readers on a cultural tour of Doom Town, USA, designed to be the model 1950s American city and destroyed by an atomic bomb on live television to educate Americans on the need to prepare for possible nuclear war—but also to sell new products in the emerging postwar economic boom.In March 1953 and May 1955, government officials—including the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA), the US Department of Defense, and the Atomic Energy Commission—released nuclear bombs on two model towns at Nevada Test Site, the continental nuclear test facility during the Cold War. These so-called “Doom Towns” were designed to illustrate in the most vivid way possible what might happen to a “typical American home” caught in a Soviet atomic blast. Instead of training troops for war overseas, the Doom Towns literally brought the Cold War home.Drawing on newspaper articles, FCDA reports, and corporate documents, John Wills brings readers into Doom Town, USA—a place where life-size mannequins of the archetypal Mr. and Mrs. America walked the streets in JCPenney clothes, drove Chrysler cars, and lived in the latest trailer homes, tailor-made to escape in the event of nuclear war. The two Doom Towns of Operation Doorstep (1953) and Operation Cue (1955) were far more than just an exercise in developing a new civilian home front. They were a media spectacle and a cultural flashpoint, attracting corporate sponsors, drawing in atomic tourists, and generating new consumer products. The atom bomb may have been bad for world peace, but it was good for business. In the excitement about these experiments, real people even volunteered to be living test subjects—but most were turned away.Doom Town became an unusual but effective banner for corporate and consumer life in the 1950s. Doom Town was an effective simulacrum of white middle-class America, right down to the racially segregated social spaces and the hierarchical gender roles of the dummies living in their classic suburban homes. But these homegrown Hiroshimas also contributed to a broader culture of catastrophe and fear in the late 1950s. Concerns over Communist invasion, Soviet spies, and ICBM missiles coalesced in the Nevada desert, framing a national culture of anxiety. The sudden explosion of the model towns revealed the shocking fragility of postwar living, calling into question the 1950s American Dream and the survivability of American ideals. The cultural crater left by these nuclear test sites exists even today in the many movies, television shows, and video games that dwell on the existential crisis of impending apocalypse.Doom Town, USA is an eye-opening tour guide of one of the most bizarre and uniquely American places in history.

The word 'park' conjures a kaleidoscope of bucolic images. Childhood frolics in urban playgrounds. Strolls through the country estates of Stourhead and Versailles. Wilderness adventures in the Serengeti. White-knuckle thrill rides at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Coney Island. The Invention of the Park explores our fascination with making parks. In a broad-ranging environmental and social history, authors Karen Jones and John Wills search for a common set of ideas that inform park design. From Greek philosophers wandering sacred groves in the ancient world to today's kids watching Mickey Mouse in Disney's Magic Kingdom, the park has inspired and thrilled in equal measure. In a work spanning all five continents and several thousand years, Jones and Wills chart the evolution of the park idea. They ponder the intersection of the green pleasure ground with notions of democracy and freedom, welfare and consumption, conservation and nature. They forward the principle of a universal park idea malleable enough to survive war and revolution.Contributing to a growing literature on global environmental history, the Invention of the Park explores how the park idea has come to transcend national boundaries and found appeal among a worldwide audience. Jones and Wills situate the park as a complex product of natural and cultural forces. Their work is of interest not just to students and scholars of environmental philosophy, history, and landscape design, but to amateur gardeners, rollercoaster 'adrenalin junkies' and all those who like to take a 'walk in the park.'

The word 'park' conjures a kaleidoscope of bucolic images. Childhood frolics in urban playgrounds. Strolls through the country estates of Stourhead and Versailles. Wilderness adventures in the Serengeti. White-knuckle thrill rides at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Coney Island. The Invention of the Park explores our fascination with making parks. In a broad-ranging environmental and social history, authors Karen Jones and John Wills search for a common set of ideas that inform park design. From Greek philosophers wandering sacred groves in the ancient world to today's kids watching Mickey Mouse in Disney's Magic Kingdom, the park has inspired and thrilled in equal measure. In a work spanning all five continents and several thousand years, Jones and Wills chart the evolution of the park idea. They ponder the intersection of the green pleasure ground with notions of democracy and freedom, welfare and consumption, conservation and nature. They forward the principle of a universal park idea malleable enough to survive war and revolution.Contributing to a growing literature on global environmental history, the Invention of the Park explores how the park idea has come to transcend national boundaries and found appeal among a worldwide audience. Jones and Wills situate the park as a complex product of natural and cultural forces. Their work is of interest not just to students and scholars of environmental philosophy, history, and landscape design, but to amateur gardeners, rollercoaster 'adrenalin junkies' and all those who like to take a 'walk in the park.'

The American West used to be a story of gunfights, glory, wagon trails, and linear progress. Historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner and Hollywood movies such as Stagecoach (1939) and Shane (1953) cast the trans-Mississippi region as a frontier of epic proportions where 'savagery' met 'civilization' and boys became men.During the late 1980s, this old way of seeing the West came under heavy fire. Scholars such as Patricia Nelson Limerick and Richard White forged a fresh story of the region, a new vision of the West, based around the conquest of peoples and landscapes.This book explores the bipolar world of Turner's Old West and Limerick's New West and reveals the values and ambiguities associated with both historical traditions. Sections on Lewis and Clark, the frontier and the cowboy sit alongside work on Indian genocide and women's trail diaries. Images of the region as seen through the arcade Western, Hollywood film and Disney theme parks confirm the West as a symbolic and contested landscape.Tapping into popular fascination with the Cowboy, Hollywood movies, the Indian Wars, and Custer's Last Stand, the authors show the reader how to deconstruct the imagery and reality surrounding Western history.Key Features*Uses popular subjects (the Cowboy, Hollywood westerns, the Indian Wars, and Custer's Last Stand) to enliven the text*Includes 13 b+w illustrations*Interdisciplinary approach covers film, literature, art and historical artefacts

The American West used to be a story of gunfights, glory, wagon trails, and linear progress. Historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner and Hollywood movies such as Stagecoach (1939) and Shane (1953) cast the trans-Mississippi region as a frontier of epic proportions where 'savagery' met 'civilization' and boys became men.During the late 1980s, this old way of seeing the West came under heavy fire. Scholars such as Patricia Nelson Limerick and Richard White forged a fresh story of the region, a new vision of the West, based around the conquest of peoples and landscapes.This book explores the bipolar world of Turner's Old West and Limerick's New West and reveals the values and ambiguities associated with both historical traditions. Sections on Lewis and Clark, the frontier and the cowboy sit alongside work on Indian genocide and women's trail diaries. Images of the region as seen through the arcade Western, Hollywood film and Disney theme parks confirm the West as a symbolic and contested landscape.Tapping into popular fascination with the Cowboy, Hollywood movies, the Indian Wars, and Custer's Last Stand, the authors show the reader how to deconstruct the imagery and reality surrounding Western history.Key Features*Uses popular subjects (the Cowboy, Hollywood westerns, the Indian Wars, and Custer's Last Stand) to enliven the text*Includes 13 b+w illustrations*Interdisciplinary approach covers film, literature, art and historical artefacts

Environmental issues in the USA are more important now than ever before. The devastation inflicted by Hurricane Katrina, growing evidence of global warming, and a struggling national energy supply highlight the unfolding crisis. Environmental fears translate into US automobile giants plying consumers with 'fuel efficient' cars in the 'MPG Lounge' of sales. Politicians talk of energy independence and getting tough on polluters. Fears gravitate around a fast-approaching doomsday scenario, an environmental endgame, of wholesale collapse, unless something is done.Yet fears of doomsday are nothing new. John Wills shows how the current environmental crisis is firmly rooted in the past. As well as explaining how today's problems are manifestations of older systems of economics, culture and politics, he also argues that America has already witnessed a range of 'doomsday scenarios,' both real and imagined. He identifies and explores a cast of 'doomsday landscapes' that includes the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia, the Santa Barbara Oil Spill, the 'Fable for Tomorrow' town featured in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), and Nevada's Doom Towns 1 and 2 blown apart by atomic testing in the 1950s. He reflects on contemporary ruminations over whether nature as a category endures given both the rising contamination of the US landscape and consumer proclivity for celebrating fake mementos of the outdoors (such as plastic lawn flamingos and artificial plants). And most significantly, he poses the question of whether Americans have been inviting doomsday through their long-term environmental actions.

Environmental issues in the USA are more important now than ever before. The devastation inflicted by Hurricane Katrina, growing evidence of global warming, and a struggling national energy supply highlight the unfolding crisis. Environmental fears translate into US automobile giants plying consumers with 'fuel efficient' cars in the 'MPG Lounge' of sales. Politicians talk of energy independence and getting tough on polluters. Fears gravitate around a fast-approaching doomsday scenario, an environmental endgame, of wholesale collapse, unless something is done.Yet fears of doomsday are nothing new. John Wills shows how the current environmental crisis is firmly rooted in the past. As well as explaining how today's problems are manifestations of older systems of economics, culture and politics, he also argues that America has already witnessed a range of 'doomsday scenarios,' both real and imagined. He identifies and explores a cast of 'doomsday landscapes' that includes the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia, the Santa Barbara Oil Spill, the 'Fable for Tomorrow' town featured in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), and Nevada's Doom Towns 1 and 2 blown apart by atomic testing in the 1950s. He reflects on contemporary ruminations over whether nature as a category endures given both the rising contamination of the US landscape and consumer proclivity for celebrating fake mementos of the outdoors (such as plastic lawn flamingos and artificial plants). And most significantly, he poses the question of whether Americans have been inviting doomsday through their long-term environmental actions.

While the Western was dying a slow death across the cultural landscape, it was blazing back to life as a video game in the early twenty-first century. Rockstar Games’ Red Dead franchise, beginning with Red Dead Revolver in 2004, has grown into one of the most critically acclaimed video game franchises of the twenty-first century. Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West offers a critical, interdisciplinary look at this cultural phenomenon at the intersection of game studies and American history.Drawing on game studies, western history, American studies, and cultural studies, the authors train a wide-ranging, deeply informed analytic perspective on the Red Dead franchise—from its earliest incarnation to the latest, Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). Their intersecting chapters put the series in the context of American history, culture, and contemporary media, with inquiries into issues of authenticity, realism, the meaning of play and commercial promotion, and the relationship between the game and the wider cultural iterations of the classic Western. The contributors also delve into the role the series’ development has played in recent debates around working conditions in the gaming industry and gaming culture.In its redeployment and reinvention of the Western’s myth and memes, the Red Dead franchise speaks to broader aspects of American culture—the hold of the frontier myth and the “Wild West” over the popular imagination, the role of gun culture in society, depictions of gender and ethnicity in mass media, and the increasing allure of digital escapism—all of which come in for scrutiny here, making this volume a vital, sweeping, and deeply revealing cultural intervention.

Over the past century, Disney has grown from a small American animation studio into a multipronged global media giant. Today, the company’s annual revenue exceeds the GDP of over 100 countries, and its portfolio has grown to include Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, ABC, and ESPN. With a company so diversified, is it still possible to identify a coherent Disney vision or message?Disney Culture proposes that there is still a unifying Disney ethos, one that can be traced back to the corporate philosophy that Walt Disney himself developed back in the 1920s. Yet, as cultural historian John Wills demonstrates, Disney’s values have also adapted to changing social climates. At the same time, the world of Disney has profoundly shaped how Americans view the world.Wills offers a nuanced take on the corporate ideologies running through animated and live-action Disney movies from Frozen to Fantasia, from Mary Poppins to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But Disney Culture encompasses much more than just movies as it explores the intersections between Disney’s business practices and its cultural mythmaking.  Welcome to “the Disney Way.”

Over the past century, Disney has grown from a small American animation studio into a multipronged global media giant. Today, the company’s annual revenue exceeds the GDP of over 100 countries, and its portfolio has grown to include Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, ABC, and ESPN. With a company so diversified, is it still possible to identify a coherent Disney vision or message?Disney Culture proposes that there is still a unifying Disney ethos, one that can be traced back to the corporate philosophy that Walt Disney himself developed back in the 1920s. Yet, as cultural historian John Wills demonstrates, Disney’s values have also adapted to changing social climates. At the same time, the world of Disney has profoundly shaped how Americans view the world.Wills offers a nuanced take on the corporate ideologies running through animated and live-action Disney movies from Frozen to Fantasia, from Mary Poppins to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But Disney Culture encompasses much more than just movies as it explores the intersections between Disney’s business practices and its cultural mythmaking.  Welcome to “the Disney Way.”

This book explores what it means to study America in the twenty-first century and what the emergence of the field of New Area Studies means for the development of American Studies.By analysing the meaning of interdisciplinarity, aesthetics, temporality, and periodisation, this book reveals both fields of study through the lens of interdisciplinary cases studies, innovative methodologies, and a global perspective. Exploring the imagined geographies of America across space and time, this book rethinks the meaning and production of place, and questions what —and where—it means to study America now.By addressing the key issues of nation, place and people in this new disciplinary moment, this book will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of American Studies and Area Studies.