Born in Flames

Howard Hampton

ISBN 10: 0674027329 / ISBN 13: 9780674027329

Published by Harvard University Press, 2008

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 38416A240C0CC9B

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Born in Flames
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674027329
• ISBN 13: 9780674027329
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Twenty years as an outsider scouring the underbelly of American culture has made Howard Hampton a uniquely hardnosed guide to the heart of pop darkness. Bridging the fatalistic, intensely charged space between Apocalypse Now Redux and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" his writing breaks down barriers of ignorance and arrogance that have segregated art forms from each other and often from the world at large. In the freewheeling spirit of Pauline Kael, Lester Bangs, and Manny Farber, Hampton calls up the extremist, underground tendencies and archaic forces simmering beneath the surface of popular forms. Ranging from the kinetic poetry of Hong Kong cinema and the neo-New Wave energy of Irma Vep to the punk heroines of Sleater-Kinney and Ghost World, Born in Flames plays odd couples off one another: pitting Natural Born Killers against Forrest Gump, contrasting Jean-Luc Godard with Steven Spielberg, defending David Lynch against aesthetic ideologues, invoking The Curse of the Mekons against Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism, and introducing D. H. Lawrence to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. "We are born in flames" sang the incandescent Lora Logic, and here those flames are a source of illumination as well as destruction, warmth as well as consumption. From the scorched-earth works of action-movie provocateurs Seijun Suzuki and Sam Peckinpah to the cargo cult soundscapes of Pere Ubu and the Czech dissidents Plastic People of the Universe, Born in Flames is a headlong plunge into the passions and disruptive power of art. (20070204)

About the Author

Howard Hampton has written for Film Comment, Artforum, the Believer, the Village Voice, L.A. Weekly, Black Clock, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times, among other publications.