List of Illustrations
Introduction
Part 1: When Disaster Strikes
1. Blackouts, Bad Guys, and Belly Laughs: Exploring America's First Cascading Power Failure in Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968)
Julie A. Cohn
2. Meltdown: Nuclear Cinema and the Martha Mitchell Effect in The China Syndrome (1979) and Silkwood (1983)
Caroline Peyton
3. "The Juice": The Road Warrior (1981) and the Cultural Logic of Energy Denial in the Early Days of Modern Globalization
Christopher R. W. Dietrich
4. Built for Pyro: A Perfect Inferno on the Deepwater Horizon (2016)
Tyler Priest
5. Chernobyl (2019): A Soviet Propaganda Win Delivered Thirty-Three Years Late
Kate Brown
Part 2: Energy and Nature
6. Wings (1927): Aviation, War, and Energy
Conevery Bolton Valencius
7. Derricks and Skulls: Filming and Promoting the Extractive Landscapes of Boom Town (1940)
Michaela Rife
8. Petrodocumentary in the 1940s: The Standard Oil Photography Project, Louisiana Story (1948), and the Domestication of the US Oil Industry
Emily Roehl
9. TVA and the Price of Progress: Elia Kazan's Wild River (1960)
Donald C. Jackson
10. Do Action Movies and an Environmental Message Mix? About as Much as Oil and Water: On Deadly Ground (1994)
Teresa Sabol Spezio
Part 3: Critiquing the Western
11. Selling the American "Oil Frontier": Tulsa (1949), Giant (1956), and American Resource Politics during the Early Cold War
Sarah Stanford-McIntyre
12. Ranches to Oil Wells: Reconfiguring the Western Hero in Hellfighters (1968) and Fires of Kuwait (1992)
Ila Tyagi
13. Revisiting Matewan (1987): Upending the Appalachian "Western" and Broadening an Old Labor Tale
James R. Allison III
14. "This Is the Third World": Coal-Fired America in Montana (1990) and Powwow Highway (1989)
Ryan Driskell Tate
15. Hydrocarbon Nostalgia and Climate Disaster: An Environmental History of Hell or High Water (2016)
Mark Boxell
Part 4: Energy and Morality
16. Control of the Industry: Nineteenth-Century Oil and Capitalism in High, Wide and Handsome (1937)
Alexander Finkelstein
17. The Formula (1980): Corporate Villains, Synthetic Fuel, and Environmental Fantasies
Raechel Lutz
18. "Keep Moving": Convoy (1978), Car Films, and Petropopulism in the 1970s
Caleb Wellum
19. There Will Be Petroleum Cinema: Portraying the Corrosion of Oil Addiction in There Will Be Blood (2007)
Brian C. Black
Part 5: Energy and the State
20. There's No Business Like Oil Business: The Allure of Tax-Sheltered Oil Income to Hollywood's Wealthy
Yuxun Willy Tan
21. "Limitless Power at Man's Command": A Is for Atom (1953), the Cold War, and Visions of the Nuclear Future in the 1950s
Sarah E. Robey
22. Syriana (2005): The Oil Curse and Hollywood's 9/11 Film
Robert Lifset
23. Hoover Dam in Hollywood: Energy Anxiety in Superman (1978), Transformers (2007), and San Andreas (2015)
Daniel Macfarlane
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index
