Abject Spaces in American Cinema : I.B. Tauris : 9781848855977 : 1848855974 : 30 May 2013 : American cinema abounds with films set in prisons, asylums, hospitals and other institutions. Rather than orderly places of recovery and rehabilitation, these institutional settings emerge as abject spaces of control and repression in which adult identity is threatened as a narrative impetus. Exploring the abject through issues as diverse as racism, mental illness or the preservation of bodies for organ donation, thi book analyses a range of films including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Girl, Interrupted (1999) through to cult films such as Carrie (1976) and Bubba Ho-tep (2002). In these films, locations of coherence and order become places where the internal and repressed aspects of the body, individual and social, threaten to overwhelm the individual. Identity is compromised through harsh conditions, extreme discipline, th