Popular Trauma Culture – Selling the Pain of Others in the Mass Media Rothe

Popular Trauma CultureSelling the Pain of Others in the Mass Media\nAuthor(s): Anne Rothe\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Rutgers University Press, United States\nImprint: Rutgers University Press\nISBN-13: 9780813551296, 978-0813551296\nSynopsis\nIn Popular Trauma Culture, Anne Rothe argues that American Holocaust discourse has a particular plot structure-characterized by a melodramatic conflict between good and evil and embodied in the core characters of victim/survivor and perpetrator-and that it provides the paradigm for representing personal experiences of pain and suffering in the mass media. The book begins with an analysis of Holocaust clichs, including its political appropriation, the notion of vicarious victimhood, the so-called victim talk rhetoric, and the infusion of the composite survivor figure with Social Darwinism. Readers then explore the embodiment of popular trauma culture in two core mass media genres: daytime TV talk shows and misery memoirs.\n\nRothe conveys how.