In this book, David Walton explores European comic-book biker
publications as a subgenre of popular culture. Using a
multidisciplinary approach, he reveals an intricate amalgam of
ingenuity, irony, and highly ambiguous humor. The creative
resourcefulness of the comic-book biker authors is seen to dramatize
and celebrate the material existence of motorcycles and lifestyles
while laughing at the foibles, inconsistencies, manias, fantasies, and
practices of those characterised as motorized flâneurs. At the core
of Walton’s analysis is the exploration of identity formation,
marked by tensions between individualism and collective affinities,
undermined by egoism and competitiveness. At the same time, Walton
argues that the storylines (despite much comic invention, caricature,
and exaggeration) create resonances which hold up a distorted but
highly revealing mirror to the multiple subgroups of people who ride
motorcycles for pleasure. The author also demonstrates how the implied
biker-readers of this subgenre confront comic representations of
themselves which repeatedly undermine any positive self-image they may
possess. Yet the comics are also seen to offer valuable insights into
much broader cultural concerns ranging from subculture, consumption
habits, (in)authenticity, taste, freedom, risk, and delinquency –
without forgetting other key aspects of cultural studies like class,
race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and ecocriticism.
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Navigating the Twists and Turns
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781666965377
Publisert
2024
Utgiver
Vendor
Lexington Books
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter