Air Travel Fiction and Film

Air Travel Fiction and Film: Cloud People explores how, over the past four decades, fiction and film have transformed our perceptions and representations of contemporary air travel. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of a wide range of international cultural productions, and elucidates the paradigms and narratives that constitute our current imaginary of air mobility. Erica Durante advances the hypothesis that fiction and film have converted the Airworld-the world of airplanes and airport infrastructures-into a pivotal anthropological place that is endowed with social significance and identity, suggesting that the assimilation of the sky into our cultural imaginary and lifestyle has metamorphosed human society into "Cloud People." In its examination of the representations of air travel as an epicenter of today's world, the book not only illustrates a novel perspective on contemporary fiction, but fills an important gap inthe study of globalization within literary and film studies.

Auteur

Erica Durante is Visiting Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown University, USA. She is the author of two books, several edited books, and numerous articles in the fields of Comparative Literature and Global Studies.

Texte du rabat

Air Travel Fiction and Film: Cloud People explores how, over the past four decades, fiction and film have transformed our perceptions and representations of contemporary air travel. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of a wide range of international cultural productions, and elucidates the paradigms and narratives that constitute our current imaginary of air mobility. Erica Durante advances the hypothesis that fiction and film have converted the Airworldthe world of airplanes and airport infrastructuresinto a pivotal anthropological place that is endowed with social significance and identity, suggesting that the assimilation of the sky into our cultural imaginary and lifestyle has metamorphosed human society into Cloud People. In its examination of the representations of air travel as an epicenter of today's world, the book not only illustrates a novel perspective on contemporary fiction, but fills an important gap in the study of globalization within literary and film studies.

Contenu

1. Introduction

1.1 Skyward

1.2 From aeromobilities to airportness

1.3 From airborne to air-born: Cloud People

1.4 The Airworld as a methodology

2. The Airworld as an In-Between Space

2.1 Urban center versus airport periphery 2.2 The traveler and the absent city

2.3 Globalizing the local

2.4 Crossing(s) from the micro-world to the meta-world 2.5 The telephone as a cable between the city and the Airworld

3. Time Out of Control

3.1 The ever-present and unrelenting burden of time

3.2 Crystallized waiting time 3.3 The compressed time of jet lag

4. Luxury in the Sky with More than Diamonds

4.1 Luxury as an air travel brand

4.2 Semiotics of luxury

4.3 Fashion and the eroticization of the air cabin crew

5. Cloud People: Identities and Paradoxes

5.1 Airworld personnel

5.2 The fluid passenger

5.3 The vulnerable passenger

6. Connections, Disconnections, and Reconnections

6.1 Airborne families and relationships

6.2 Chance encounters and existential turning points

6.3 Love out of the blue

7. Coda: Flying Over