It’s a Kind of Magic: Situating Nostalgia for Technological Progress and the Occult in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes

dc.contributor.authorReisenleitner, Markus
dc.date.accessioned2018-01-28T02:42:26Z
dc.date.available2018-01-28T02:42:26Z
dc.date.issued2014
dc.description.abstractGuy Ritchie’s recent blockbuster success with a revisionist Sherlock Holmes is the latest in a series of popular films and fiction to have reinvigorated a nostalgic imaginary of London’s past that places the former capital of the Empire at the crossroads of a persistent Manichean battle between empiricist-driven technological progress and traditions of occult knowledge supposedly submerged in the 17th century yet continuing to trickle into the heart of the Empire from its colonies. By tracing some of these historical layers sedimented into 21st-century popular imaginaries of London’s past, this paper explores the mechanisms of popular culture’s production of nostalgia that mediate public memories and histories and suture them to the imaginary urban geographies that constitute the space of the global city through its metonymic sites and its materialized histories.en_US
dc.description.abstractLe succès récent du blockbuster de Guy Ritchie revisitant la figure de Sherlock Holmes s’inscrit dans une lignée récente de films et de récits populaires qui ont revivifié un imaginaire nostalgique du passé londonien dans lequel le centre de l’ancien empire britannique se trouve au croisement d’un conflit manichéen entre un progrès scientifico-technologique et les traditions d’un savoir occulte supposément enfouis dans les siècles précédents mais qui continue à s’insinuer au cœur de l’empire à partir de ses colonies. En retraçant certaines de ces couches historiques dans les recréations contemporaines du Londres impérial, cet article explore les mécanismes de production de la nostalgie dans la culture populaire en tant qu’ils font le pont entre la mémoire publique et la mémoire historique en rattachant celles-ci à un imaginaire de la géographie urbaine qui pour sa part pointe vers la ville globale d’aujourd’hui.en_US
dc.identifier.citationReisenleitner, Markus. “It’s a Kind of Magic: Situating Nostalgia for Technological Progress and the Occult in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes.” Imaginations 5, no. 1 (2014): 122–34.en_US
dc.identifier.issn1918-8439
dc.identifier.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.periph.5-1.9en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/34210
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada*
dc.rights.journalhttp://imaginations.csj.ualberta.caen_US
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/*
dc.subjectUrban Cultureen_US
dc.subjectSherlock Holmesen_US
dc.subjectGuy Ritchieen_US
dc.titleIt’s a Kind of Magic: Situating Nostalgia for Technological Progress and the Occult in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmesen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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