Demographic Angst : Cultural Narratives and American Films of the 1950s / Alan Nadel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nadel, Alan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Motion pictures.

Cold War in motion pictures.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Prolific literature, both popular and scholarly, depicts America in the period of the High Cold War as being obsessed with normality, implicitly figuring the postwar period as a return to the way of life that had been put on hold, first by the Great Depression and then by Pearl Harbor. Demographic Angst argues that mandated normativity-as a political agenda and a social ethic-precluded explicit expression of the anxiety produced by America's radically reconfigured postwar population. Alan Nadel explores influential non-fiction books, magazine articles, and public documents in conjunction with films such as Singin' in the Rain, On the Waterfront, Sunset Boulevard, and Sayonara, to examine how these films worked through fresh anxieties that emerged during the 1950s.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

1. The Character of Post-World War II America

2. Singin' in the (HUAC) Rain: Job Security, Stardom, and the Abjection of Lena Lamont

3. It's All about Eve

4. "What Starts Like a Scary Tale . . .": The Right to Work On the Waterfront

5. "Life Could Not Better Be": Disorganized Labor, the Little Man, and The Court Jester

6. Citizens of the Free World Unite: International Tourism and Postwar Identity in Roman Holiday, The Teahouse of the August Moon, and Sayonara

7. Expedient Exaggeration and the Scale of Cold War Farce in North by Northwest

8. Defiant Desegregation with No (Liberal) Way Out

9. "I Want to Be in America": Urban Integration, Pan-American Friendship, and West Side Story

Notes

Filmography

Works Cited

Index

About the Author

Notes:

Includes filmography.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 04. Sep 2019)

ISBN:

0-8135-6551-0

OCLC:

1001287883