'A Nation Reborn': Right to Law and Right to Life in The Purge Franchise. Issue 3 (27th May 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Armstrong, Megan A.
• Is Part Of: Journal of intervention and statebuilding. Volume 13:Issue 3(2019)
• Page Start: 377
• Page End: 392
• Publication Date: 2019-05-27
• Subjects: Horror film -- neoliberalism -- popular culture -- state of exception -- state narrative; Intervention (International law) -- Periodicals; Nation-building -- Periodicals; Economic assistance -- Periodicals; Postwar reconstruction -- Periodicals; International cooperation -- Periodicals; 320
• DOI: 10.1080/17502977.2018.1562683
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1750-2977

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Popular culture matters for helping make sense of our political lives. This article addresses the value of dystopian horror films in challenging narratives about the state. It is situated within broader understandings of popular culture and politics, and specifically within narrative understandings of the state as a performative body. It presents The Purge film franchise as an example of such a challenge to state narratives, and argues that through its distortion of dominant state narratives, the franchise reveals and challenges the intersections of economic and racial inequality in the neoliberal United States. It examines in particular the emergency broadcast featured in all four films, which positions citizens in a relationship with law and life where the right to law conflates the right to life, and argues that the films present an understanding of vulnerability and abandonment that are in some ways already present in the state. It concludes by questioning what, if any, the capacities are for resistance.