Americanism, media and the politics of culture in 1930s France / David A. Pettersen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pettersen, David A., author.

Series:

French and francophone studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

France--Intellectual life--American influences.

France.

Intellectual life.

France--Intellectual life--20th century.

France--Civilization--20th century.

Civilization.

Intellectual life--American influences.

Physical Description:

316 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

[Cardiff, Wales] : University of Wales Press , 2016.

Summary:

Gangsters, aviators, hard-boiled detectives, gunslingers, jazz and images of the American metropolis were all an inextricable part of the cultural landscape of interwar France. While the French 1930s have long been understood as profoundly anti-American, this book shows how a young, up-and-coming generation of 1930s French writers and filmmakers approached American culture with admiration as well as criticism. For some, the imaginary America that circulated through Hollywood films, newspaper reports, radio programming and translated fiction represented the society of the future, while for others it embodied a dire threat to French identity. This book brings an innovative transatlantic perspective to 1930s French culture, focusing on several of the most famous figures from the 1930s - including Marcel Carne, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Julien Duvivier, André Malraux, Jean Renoir and Jean-Paul Sartre - to track the ways in which they sought to reinterpret the political and social dimensions of modernism for mass audiences via an imaginary America. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Mass Culture and Leftist Politics in Jean Renoir 26

Chapter 2 The American Gangster in French Poetic Realism 62

Chapter 3 The Rise and Fail of the Gangster in Andre Malraux's Revolutionary Novels 109

Chapter 4 White Primitivism in Pierre Drieu la Rochelle 141

Chapter 5 Whitewashing the Transatlantic in Louis-Ferdinand Céline 174

Chapter 6 The Americanist Anti-American ism of Jean-Paul Sartre's Les Chemins de la liberté 206.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 292-303) and index.

ISBN:

9781783168507

1783168501

9781783168514

178316851X

OCLC:

928780047