Chicanx utopias : pop culture and the politics of the possible / Luis Alvarez.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Alvarez, Luis, 1972- author.

Series:

Historia USA

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mexican Americans in popular culture--Political aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Mexican Americans in popular culture.

Mexican Americans in popular culture--Political aspects--United States--History--21st century.

Mexican Americans and mass media--Political aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Mexican Americans and mass media.

Mexican Americans and mass media--Political aspects--United States--History--21st century.

Mexican Americans--Social life and customs--Political aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Mexican Americans.

Mexican Americans--Political activity--United States.

Chicano movement.

Utopias--United States.

Utopias.

Utopias in mass media.

Mexican Americans--Political activity.

United States.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

220 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), portraits ; 23 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Pop culture and the politics of the possible

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2022.

Summary:

Amid the rise of neoliberalism, globalization, and movements for civil rights and global justice in the post-World War II era, Chicanxs in film, music, television, and art weaponized culture to combat often oppressive economic and political conditions. They envisioned utopias that, even if never fully realized, reimagined the world and linked seemingly disparate people and places. In the latter half of the twentieth century, Chicanx popular culture forged a politics of the possible and gave rise to utopian dreams that sprang from everyday experiences. In Chicanx Utopias, Luis Alvarez offers a broad study of these utopian visions from the 1950s to the 2000s. Probing the film Salt of the Earth, brown-eyed soul music, sitcoms, poster art, and borderlands reggae music, he examines how Chicanx pop culture, capable of both liberation and exploitation, fostered interracial and transnational identities, engaged social movements, and produced varied utopian visions with divergent possibilities and limits. Grounded in the theoretical frameworks of Walter Benjamin, Stuart Hall, and the Zapatista movement, this book reveals how Chicanxs articulated pop cultural utopias to make sense of, challenge, and improve the worlds they inhabited--Publisher's description.

Contents:

Salt of the Earth

Brown-eyed soul

Chico and Kotter

No Human Being is Illegal

Border reggae

Coda: Ngātahi.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [167]-207) and index (pages [208]-220).

ISBN:

9781477324479

147732447X

9781477324486

1477324488

OCLC:

1245578590