Lexington Books
Pages: 200
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-66693-644-5 • Hardback • August 2024 • $105.00 • (£81.00)
978-1-66693-645-2 • eBook • August 2024 • $45.00 • (£35.00)
Rosalind Sibielski is assistant professor of English and film studies at Rhode Island College
Chapter 1
Mad With Grief: Trauma, Loss, and the Fracturing of Reality in Mind-Game Films
Chapter 2
Crisis of Reality as Crisis of the Patriarch: Grief, Guilt, and the Failures of Husbands and Fathers in Memento, Inception, and Shutter Island
Chapter 3
The Stuff of (Urban) Legend: Making Sense of Loss and What It Means to Be a Man in Urbania
Chapter 4
Lost Mothers, Abusive Fathers, and Damaged Sons: Alternate Realities and Oedipal Crises in Bandersnatch and Mr. Robot
Chapter 5
Spectacles of Grief and Madness: The Visual Representation and Fetishization of Mental Health Crises in Mind-Game Media Narratives
Positioned at the intersection of gender studies and film narratology, Rosalind Sibielski’s book contributes significantly to both disciplines. Its key argument – that mind-game films and TV series create male protagonists impaired by their perceived failure to live up to the values of patriarchal masculinity – is both provocative and perceptive. Sibielski offers commentary on the psychodramas of guilt and traumatic loss that drive the puzzle plots of Memento, Inception, Mr. Robot, and other compelling examples of mind-game storytelling.
— Warren Buckland, editor of Puzzle Films (2009) and Hollywood Puzzle Films (2014)