A World in Chaos: Social Crisis and the Rise of Postmodern Cinema traces the evolution of postmodern cinema through its multiple and overlapping expressions. Through an analysis of films such as American Beauty, Blade Runner, Natural Born Killers, and Thelma and Loiuse, Carl Boggs and Thomas Pollard explore the historical and theoretical shift from the long era of modernity to an emergent postmodernity and examine its intersection with film culture. Unlike most works on media studies, Boggs and Pollard bring together elements of sociology, history, economics, literature, communications, and pop culture to fully explore the complex developmental interaction between film and society. The resulting work illuminates the different, often conflicted and contradictory, currents at work in the film industry that long ago departed from the ritualized practices of the classical studio system. Engagingly and clearly written, A World in Chaos is perfect for film and pop culture enthusiasts as well as everyone interested in the role of film in American society.

"Boggs and Pollard emphasize the complex developmental interaction between film and its broader social environment, seeing American film culture equally as an aesthetic form, a mode of entertainment, a component of the mass media, and a profitable industry within a globalized setting. This postmodernism allows for diversity, critique, marginality, and even rebelliousness within the mainstream culture industry." - Art Book News Annual

"...It is a good introductory book for anyone who is new to postmodern cinema, needs to learn more about how cultural products need to be interpreted in their social contexts, or anyone interested in reading a survey of some of the most well known movies made in Hollywood in the last two decades." - Contemporary Sociology