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
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Bloomsbury USA
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter