Review of Retcon Game: Retroactive Continuity and the Hyperlinking of America

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

Spring 4-27-2018

Publication Title

Popular Culture Review

Volume

29

Issue

1

Abstract

In his introduction to Retcon Game: Retroactive Continuity and the Hyperlinking of America, author Andrew J. Friedenthal notes in part, “I contend that the editable hyperlink, rather than the stable footnote, has become the de facto source of information in America today, and that the groundwork for this major cultural shift has been laid for decades via our modes of entertainment” (8). On that intriguing and compelling note begins Friedenthal’s wide-ranging investigation into how Americans increasingly find themselves viewing history not as fixed, but as malleable and transformable. He looks first to media in many forms, from the comic book to episodic television, as the source from which American culture has been increasingly accustomed to the idea that nothing, not even fixed history, lies beyond the boundaries of change.

Disciplines

Film and Media Studies

Language

English


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