Alan Nadel is a professor of American literature and culture at the University of Kentucky and the author of seven books, including Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age and Demographic Angst: Cultural Narratives and American Films of the 1950s.
Description
List of Illustrations Preface Introduction. A Banner Day for a War that Oughta' Be in Pictures Chapter 1. Narrative, Culture, and Cinema Chapter 2. Private Ryan and the Last Good War (Narrative) Chapter 3. Lost in Iraq and the Collapse of Wartime Chapter 4. It's Not an Occupation, It's War, and War Is a Shit Occupation Chapter 5. Us, Them, and the Spoils of War Chapter 6. Collateral Jobs and Collateral Damage Chapter 7. The Only Mission Is to Get Out Notes Filmography Works Cited Index
Mission Unaccomplished is a timely, inventive, and provocative project. Through imaginative readings of films such as Jarhead (2005), Redacted (2007), and The Hurt Locker (2008), Alan Nadel provides a project unlike most academic endeavors.--Donald E. Pease, Dartmouth University, author of The New American Exceptionalism Alan Nadel has compiled an extraordinary work on what he calls cultural narratives--the often unstated but powerful explanatory metanarratives that shape identity, politics, and cultural production. Mission Unaccomplished not only offers an original argument about the role of film in the conception and prosecution of war, but he also offers a master class on cultural narrative.--Timothy Melley, Miami University, author of The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State