2024-03-29T01:31:32Zhttps://riubu.ubu.es/oai/requestoai:riubu.ubu.es:10259/47202022-04-29T12:02:48Zcom_10259.4_2548com_10259_5086com_10259_2604col_10259.4_2549
The discourse of fear in american TV fiction: a furedian reading of person of interest
Fernández Morales, Marta
Menéndez Menéndez, María Isabel
Post-9/11 TV
fear
precautionary culture
inevitability
agency
Communication
Comunicación
Inserted in the ongoing discussion about the post-9/11 cultural archive, this paper analyzes
the TV series Person of Interest (CBS, 2011–2016), created by Jonathan Nolan, through Frank
Furedi’s theories about the discursive formation of fear as presented in his texts Politics of Fear.
Beyond Left and Right (2005), Invitation to Terror. The Expanding Empire of the Unknown (2007),
The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is the ‘Culture of Fear’ Itself (2007), and Precautionary Culture and
the Rise of Possibilistic Risk Assessment (2009). We make these works converse with several
American and European sociological views, offering a transnational perspective over the issues at
hand. With an interdisciplinary approach and with a critical-cultural methodology supported by
selected instances from the first four seasons of the show, we argue that, despite timid hints at a
critique of the flawed American democracy, the show feeds into an ever-growing array of media
proposals of a citizenship based on precaution, contributing to the reinforcement of the post-9/11
atmosphere of fear through a logic predicated on inevitability and a deflated sense of agency on the
part of common people that discourages practices of resistance.
Spanish Ministry of Economy and
Competitiveness (National 2013-2016 Research & Development Program. Reference: FFI2014-55781-R
2018-02-01T10:40:43Z
2018-02-01T10:40:43Z
2016
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
2386-3935
http://hdl.handle.net/10259/4720
10.5209/CJES.51449
eng
Complutense Journal of English Studies. 2016, V. 24, p. 7-23
http://dx.doi.org/10.5209/CJES.51449
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/MINECO/FFI2014-55781-R
Attribution 4.0 International
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
application/pdf
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
https://riubu.ubu.es/bitstream/10259/4720/7/Fern%c3%a1ndez-CJES_2016.pdf.jpg
Hispana
TEXT
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
RIUBU. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Burgos
http://hdl.handle.net/10259/4720