How are David Lynch's films as much in dialogue with literary and musical traditions as they are cinematic ones?
By interrogating this question, David Lynch's American Dreamscape broadens the interpretive horizons of Lynch's filmography, calling for a new approach to Lynch's films that goes beyond cinema and visual art to explore how Lynch's work engages with literary and musical works that have shaped the American imagination. As much as Lynch stands as a singular artistic voice, his work arises from and taps into the cultural zeitgeist in a way that illuminates not only his approach to creativity but also the way works interact with each other in an age of mass media. From children's literature to teen tragedy ballads, Nathanael West and Cormac McCarthy to folk music and mixtapes, David Lynch's American Dreamscape investigates the cultural frequencies Lynch's films tune into and positions Lynch's work as a conduit for American popular culture, a medium or channel through which the subconscious of American life finds its way into full view.
The book expands upon this approach by discussing how artists such as David Foster Wallace and Lana Del Rey graft Lynch's affiliative, cinematic sensibility onto their own projects. Reading their work as intertextual engagements with Lynch's films further illustrates the versatile interactions among creators and audiences to generate more works, readers, and readings.
Although nearly every other television form or genre has undergone a massive critical and popular reassessment or resurgence in the past twenty years, the game show’s reputation has remained both remarkably stagnant and remarkably low. Scholarship on game shows concerns itself primarily with the history and aesthetics of the form, and few works assess the influence the format has had on American society or how the aesthetics and rhythms of contemporary life model themselves on the aesthetics and rhythms of game shows.
In Truth and Consequences: Game Shows in Fiction and Film, author Mike Miley seeks to broaden the conversation about game shows by studying how they are represented in fiction and film. Writers and filmmakers find the game show to be the ideal metaphor for life in a media-saturated era, from selfhood to love to family to state power. The book is divided into “rounds,” each chapter looking at different themes that books and movies explore via the game show.
By studying over two dozen works of fiction and film―bestsellers, blockbusters, disasters, modern legends, forgotten gems, award winners, self-published curios, and everything in between―Truth and Consequences argues that game shows offer a deeper understanding of modern-day America, a land of high-stakes spectacle where a game-show host can become president of the United States.
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Much like his novels, Steve Erickson (b. 1950) exists on the periphery of our perception, a shadow figure lurking on the margins, threatening to break through, but never fully emerging. Despite receiving prestigious honors, Erickson has remained a subterranean literary figure, receiving effusive praise from his fans, befuddled or cautious assessments from reviewers, and scant scholarly attention. Erickson’s obscurity comes in part from the difficulty of categorizing his work within current trends in fiction, and in part from the wide variety of concerns that populate his writing: literature, music, film, politics, history, time, and his fascination with his home city of Los Angeles. His dream-fueled blend of European modernism, American pulp, and paranoid late-century postmodernism makes him essential to an appreciation of the last forty years of American fiction but difficult to classify neatly within that same realm. He is at once thoroughly of his time and distinctly outside it.
In these twenty-four interviews Erickson clarifies how his aesthetic and political visions are inextricable from each other. He diagnoses the American condition since World War II, only to reveal that America’s triumphs and failures have been consistent since its inception—and that he presciently described decades ago certain features of our present. Additionally, the interviews expose the remarkable consistency of Erickson’s vision over time while simultaneously capturing the new threads that appear in his later fiction as they emerge in his thought. Conversations with Steve Erickson will deepen readers’ understanding of how Erickson’s books work—and why this utterly singular writer deserves greater attention.
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A list of lectures, talks, and media appearances by Mike Miley
Mike appears as a “game show expert” in the 2023 documentary.
Mike gave four talks on David Foster Wallace’s nonfiction for the 92nd St. Y’s Roundtable series.
Mike appeared on Jim Jefferies’ podcast to quiz him about game shows.
Mike talks to Jen about Dennis Hopper’s performances in The American Friend and Rumble Fish. (May 2023)
Mike is interviewed by Luke Winkie for an essay in Slate. (April 2023)
Mike and Matt Luter interview Steve Erickson
Mike discusses Truth and Consequences on the New Books Network podcast.
Mike discussed David Lynch’s adaptation of Dune on the Green Screen Podcast on November 11, 2020
Lecture, New Orleans Film Festival, 2018
Moderator, New Orleans Film Festival, 2017
Lecture, New Orleans French Film Festival, 2016
Films and video essays by Mike Miley
A video essay produced in 2011 for Moving Image Source.
A short film produced in 2004 for Esquire Magazine’s Celluloid Style Competition.
Based on the short story by George Saunders.
Written for the screen and directed by Mike Miley.
A short film produced in 2001.
Based on the short story by Valerie Martin.
Written for the screen and directed by Mike Miley.
A short film produced in 2003.
Based on the short story by Tim Gautreaux.
Written for the screen and directed by Mike Miley.
