American Disaster Movies of the 1970s: Crisis, Spectacle and Modernity

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The 1970s witnessed the golden age of American disaster movies. This book defines the generic characteristics, such as ensemble acting and visual spectacle to place this dystopian genre within its immediate American context: the end of the civil rights and countercultural era, the Watergate crisis, and the defeat in Vietnam. Many of the themes dramatized by films such as Airport (1970) and The Towering Inferno (1974) anticipate present-day debates such as irresponsible and corrupt corporate capitalism, misplaced faith in science and technology, eco-collapse, political terrorist threats, natural disasters, threatened and displaced populations, unwarranted suffering, plus other monstrosities of modernity. In American Disaster Movies of the 1970s, Scott Freer examines the 1970s cultural phenomenon of the disaster movie genre, introducing a historicist perspective by placing the film genre within the immediate context of the 1970s American high modernity whilst engaging with relevant philosophical, theological and eco-critical ideas on evil, determinism, and human nature. The book contextualizes the 1970s disaster cycle by drawing on the longer cultural history of modernist reactions to modern anxieties including the widespread dependence on technology and corporate power. Freer explores the aesthetic theories of modern tragedy (i.e. the hubris of human fate and the aesthetic pleasure of exaggerated horror/terror on screen) as a means of explaining the power of disaster movies as a form of ethical criticism.

Reviews

Dr Scott Freers excellent book offers a distinctive angle on a classic film genre a form of cinema that more than many others reflected the concerns of its time. Addressing such fascinating, multi-layered movies as The Airport, Earthquake, and The Poseidon Adventure, as well as bringing to light unfamiliar examples, his unique combination of film studies diligence and theological flair delivers a series of towering insights which more than do justice to their subject. Strap yourself in and enjoy the ride. * Mark Duffett, Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Chester, UK *
American Disaster Movies of the 1970s, in taking genre study into innovative and imaginative areas, demonstrates (in no uncertain terms) the value of treating underrated films more seriously than is usually the case. So, even allegedly bad films, such as The Swarm, are shown to be worthy of fruitful and complex analysis, while themes in familiar films are assessed in ways that go far beyond the conventional approaches usually favoured in film studies. * Chris Horn, University of Leicester, UK, and author of The Lost Decade (Bloomsbury, 2023) *
Written with dexterity and verve, Scott Freers book changes our view of the disaster movie, and the role it has taken in shaping our responses to these disastrous times. Packed full of scholarly insights into the genre, American Disaster Movies of the 1970s is a tour de force. * Philip Shaw, Professor of Romantic Studies, University of Leicester, UK *

Author Bio

Scott Freer is Teaching Fellow in English Literature at the University of Leicester, UK. He is the author of Modernist Mythopoeia: The Twilight of the Gods (2015), co-editor with Professor Michael Bell of Religion and Myth in T.S. Eliot's Poetry (2016) and editor of The Journal for the T.S. Eliot Society.