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Popular media are powerful mirrors and makers of meaning around suicide.
This book brings together scholars from across disciplines to examine how suicide is mythologized, politicized and challenged across film, TV, young adult literature, digital platforms, online communities, and more. From news coverage of celebrity suicide to social media interventions with at-risk youth, this wide-ranging collection explores suicide’s intersections with class, gender, chronic illness and cultural identity.
Bridging academic analysis and lived realities, this volume offers vital tools for understanding, teaching and reimagining how suicide circulates in the stories we consume and create.
‘An engaging collection with a broad, varied range of methodological approaches, conceptual ideas, textual analyses and projects on show – it offers a fresh and insightful addition to critical suicide studies.’ Michael-Fox, The Death Studies Podcast
'The book transcends traditional psychological or epidemiological approaches to suicide... It offers a rigorous, interdisciplinary interrogation of the frames through which popular culture constructs, commodifies and communicates self-destruction.' The Journal of Popular Culture
M. F. Alvarez is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire and the author of three previous books.
Warren J. Bareiss is Professor of Communication at the University of South Carolina Upstate.
Jolane Flanigan is Professor of Communication Studies at Rocky Mountain College and a licensed mental health counsellor.
Introduction - M. F. Alvarez, Warren J. Bareiss, Jolane Flanigan
1. “Buried in the Open Fields”: Early Modern Suicide and the Case of Ofelia – Janet Clare
2. “To Live Deliberately”: Agency and Locus of Control in ‘Dead Poets Society’ - Brennan Thomas
3. The Complexities of the Documentary ‘The Bridge’ as Heterotopia - Alessandra Seggi
4. “I (Don’t) Want to Kill Myself”: Tensions Between Suicidal Hope and Joyful Despair in HBO’s ‘The Leftovers’ – Adam Lauver
5. Pain Advocates: Reimagining Suicide Narratives from the Perspectives of Chronic Pain Patients - Elizabeth Spradley and R. Tyler Spradley
6. Celebrity Suicide as Opportunity for Public Education: Professional Medical Sources and Themes in Press Coverage of Anthony Bourdain’s Suicide - Warren J. Bareiss
7. Media Representations of Farmer Suicide as Social Drama: From Breach to Crisis to Redressive Action - Jolane Flanigan
8. Reducing Suicide Risks among Transgender, Non- Binary, and Gender Diverse Youth through Social Media Interventions - Gary L. Kreps, Farrokh Alem, Suzanne Carmack, David Gustafson, Judith Jacobson, Yan Leykin, Priya Nambisan, Jack D. Simons, John Strang, and Rediet Woldeselassie
9. Suicide Goes Public: Suicide Prevention/Education and Grief Literacy in the Young Adult Literature Section of the Public Library - Carla Sofka
10. Pop Culture as Pedagogy: Breaking the Silence on Suicide in the Undergraduate Classroom - M. F. Alvarez