Popular Culture and the Austerity Myth

Contemporary popular culture is engaged in a rich and multi-levelled set of representational relations with austerity. This volume seeks to explore these relations, to ask: how does popular culture give expression to austerity; how are its effects conveyed; how do texts reproduce and expose its mythic qualities? It provides a reading of cultural texts in circulation in the present age of austerity. Through its central focuspopular cultureit considers the impact and influence of austerity across media and textual categories. The collection presents a theoretical deconstruction of popular cultures reproduction of, and response to, mythical expressions of austerity in Western culture, spanning the United Kingdom, North America, Europe and the Middle East and textual events from political media discourse, music, videogames, social media, film, television, journalism, folk art, food, protest movements, slow media and the practice of austerity in everyday life