Introduction: popular culture and spontaneous order, or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the tube
1. Freedom and order in the Western
The Western and Western drama: John Ford's The searchers and The Oresteia
The original frontier: Gene Roddenberry's apprenticeship for Star Trek in Have gun, will travel
Order out of the mud: Deadwood and the state of nature
2. Maverick creators and Maverick heroes
Mars attacks!: Tim Burton and the ideology of The flying saucer movie
Flying solo: The aviator and entrepreneurial vision
Cartman shrugged: the invisible gnomes and the invisible hand in South Park
3. Edgar G. Ulmer: the aesthete from the Alps meets the King of the B's
The fall of the House of Ulmer: Europe versus America in the Gothic vision of The black cat
America as wasteland in Detour: film noir and The Frankfurt school
4. 9/11, globalization, and new challenges to freedom
The truth is still out there: The X-files and 9/11
Un-American Gothic: the alien invasion narrative and global modernity.
