{"product_id":"nightmare-factories-the-asylum-in-the-american-im-hardcover","title":"Nightmare Factories: The Asylum in the American Im (Hardcover)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eHow the insane asylum came to exert such a powerful hold on the American imagination.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMadhouse, funny farm, psychiatric hospital, loony bin, nuthouse, mental institution: no matter what you call it, the asylum has a powerful hold on the American imagination. Stark and foreboding, they symbolize mistreatment, fear, and imprisonment, standing as castles of despair and tyranny across the countryside. In the \"asylum\" of American fiction and film, treatments are torture, attendants are thugs, and psychiatrists are despots. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eNightmare Factories\u003c\/i\u003e, Troy Rondinone offers the first history of mental hospitals in American popular culture. Beginning with Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 short story \"The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether,\" Rondinone surveys how American novelists, poets, memoirists, reporters, and filmmakers have portrayed the asylum and how those representations reflect larger social trends in the United States. Asylums, he argues, darkly reflect cultural anxieties and the shortcomings of democracy, as well as the ongoing mistreatment of people suffering from mental illness. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eNightmare Factories\u003c\/i\u003e traces the story of the asylum as the masses have witnessed it. Rondinone shows how works ranging from \u003ci\u003eMoby-Dick\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDracula\u003c\/i\u003e to \u003ci\u003eOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHalloween\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eAmerican Horror Story\u003c\/i\u003e have all conversed with the asylum. Drawing from fictional and real accounts, movies, personal interviews, and tours of mental hospitals both active and defunct, Rondinone uncovers a story at once familiar and bizarre, where reality meets fantasy in the foggy landscape of celluloid and pulp.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rondinone, Troy","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52337256366354,"sku":"9781421432670","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0270\/9238\/5846\/files\/2008443482694_4146dbdc-345d-4679-a48e-a0bc6fc926c1.jpg?v=1780438124","url":"https:\/\/hbswarehousesale.com\/products\/nightmare-factories-the-asylum-in-the-american-im-hardcover","provider":"Harvard Book Store Warehouse Sale","version":"1.0","type":"link"}