Monsters Mushroom Clouds And The Cold War

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Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War

Author : M. Keith Booker
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313073627
Total Pages : 206 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War by : M. Keith Booker

Download or read book Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War written by M. Keith Booker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2001-05-30 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1950s are widely regarded as the golden age of American science fiction. This book surveys a wide range of major science fiction novels and films from the long 1950s--the period from 1946 to 1964--when the tensions of the Cold War were at their peak. The American science fiction novels and films of this period clearly reflect Cold War anxieties and tensions through their focus on such themes as alien invasion and nuclear holocaust. In this sense, they resemble the observations of social and cultural critics during the same period. Meanwhile, American science fiction of the long 1950s also engages its historical and political contexts through an interrogation of phenomena, such as alienation and routinization, that can be seen as consequences of the development of American capitalism during this period. This economic trend is part of the rise of the global phenomenon that Marxist theorists have called late capitalism. Thus, American science fiction during this period reflects the rise of late capitalism and participates in the beginnings of postmodernism, described by Frederic Jameson as the cultural logic of late capitalism.

Celluloid Mushroom Clouds

Author : Joyce Evans
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429981422
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis Celluloid Mushroom Clouds by : Joyce Evans

Download or read book Celluloid Mushroom Clouds written by Joyce Evans and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celluloid Mushroom Clouds is a historical account of how the movie industry responded to specific economic and political forces over the postwar years. Joyce Evans investigates the transformation of the imagery associated with atomic technology found in Hollywood film produced and distributed between 1947 and 1964. Incorporating qualitative and quantitative research methods, over 90 films are analyzed in terms of their historical context and the context of film production and distribution.The industry-focused approach presented in the book views cultural production as a material process unfolding under specific economic, political, and cultural conditions and emphasizes the ?pressures and limits? of production that are inscribed in cinematic texts. The study illustrates in concrete detail how the cinematic texts negotiated by audiences are produced in highly concentrated industries and are constructed as a result of often contradictory determinants. These determinants work to shape the texts produced by encouraging, for example, the production of particular genres and by privileging a specific set of images over others. Evans argues that through these images, Hollywood articulated a limited critique of the Cold War ideology, which it also helped to create. She concludes that Hollywood's overall ideological effect has been to restrict the discursive means available for defining social reality.

Critical Social Theory in Public Administration

Author : Richard C. Box
Publisher : M.E. Sharpe
ISBN 13 : 9780765615541
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (155 download)

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Book Synopsis Critical Social Theory in Public Administration by : Richard C. Box

Download or read book Critical Social Theory in Public Administration written by Richard C. Box and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 2005 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Box offers a framework for the application of critical social theory in public administration. His goal is to encourage awareness of social conditions that tend to shape & constrain scholarship, practice, teaching, & social change.

Hollywood and the End of the Cold War

Author : Bryn Upton
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1442237945
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (422 download)

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Book Synopsis Hollywood and the End of the Cold War by : Bryn Upton

Download or read book Hollywood and the End of the Cold War written by Bryn Upton and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-08-26 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the late 1940s until the early 1990s, the Cold War was perhaps the most critical and defining aspect of American culture, influencing television, music, and movies, among other forms of popular entertainment. Films in particular were at the center of the battle for the hearts and minds of the American public. Throughout this period, the Cold War influenced what movies got produced, how such movies were made, and how audiences understood the films they watched. In the post–Cold War era, some genres of film suffered from the shift in our national narratives, while others were quickly reimagined for an audience with different political and social fears. In Hollywood and the End of the Cold War: Signs of Cinematic Change, Bryn Upton compares films from the late Cold War era with movies of similar themes from the post–Cold War era. In this volume, Upton pays particular attention to shifts in narrative that reflect changes in American culture, attitudes, and ideas. In exploring how the absence of the Cold War has changed the way we understand and interpret film, this volume seeks to answer several key questions such as: Has the end of the Cold War altered how we tell our stories? Has it changed how we perceive ourselves? In what ways has our popular culture been affected by the absence of this once dominant presence? With its focus on themes that are central to the concerns of many historians—including civil religion, social fracture, and the culture wars—Hollywood and the End of the Cold War will serve as a useful tool for those seeking to integrate film into the classroom, as well as for film scholars exploring representations of sociopolitical change on screen.

The Palgrave Handbook of Cold War Literature

Author : Andrew Hammond
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030389731
Total Pages : 826 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (33 download)

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Book Synopsis The Palgrave Handbook of Cold War Literature by : Andrew Hammond

Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Cold War Literature written by Andrew Hammond and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-04 with total page 826 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive guide to global literary engagement with the Cold War. Eschewing the common focus on national cultures, the collection defines Cold War literature as an international current focused on the military and ideological conflicts of the age and characterised by styles and approaches that transcended national borders. Drawing on specialists from across the world, the volume analyses the period’s fiction, poetry, drama and autobiographical writings in three sections: dominant concerns (socialism, decolonisation, nuclearism, propaganda, censorship, espionage), common genres (postmodernism, socialism realism, dystopianism, migrant poetry, science fiction, testimonial writing) and regional cultures (Asia, Africa, Oceania, Europe and the Americas). In doing so, the volume forms a landmark contribution to Cold War literary studies which will appeal to all those working on literature of the 1945-1989 period, including specialists in comparative literature, postcolonial literature, contemporary literature and regional literature.

Literary Cold War, 1945 to Vietnam

Author : Adam Piette
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 0748635289
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (486 download)

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Book Synopsis Literary Cold War, 1945 to Vietnam by : Adam Piette

Download or read book Literary Cold War, 1945 to Vietnam written by Adam Piette and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a ground-breaking study of the psychological and cultural impact of the Cold War on the imaginations of citizens in the UK and US. The Literary Cold War examines writers working at the hazy borders between aesthetic project and political allegory, with specific attention being paid to Vladimir Nabokov and Graham Greene as Cold War writers. The book looks at the special relationship as a form of paranoid plotline governing key Anglo-American texts from Storm Jameson to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, as well as examining the figure of the non-aligned neutral observer caught up in the sacrificial triangles structuring cold war fantasy. The book aims to consolidate and define a new emergent field in literary studies, the literary Cold War, following the lead of prominent historians of the period.

The US-Mexico Border in American Cold War Film

Author : Stephanie Fuller
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137535601
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (375 download)

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Book Synopsis The US-Mexico Border in American Cold War Film by : Stephanie Fuller

Download or read book The US-Mexico Border in American Cold War Film written by Stephanie Fuller and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an analysis of Cold War Era films including Border Incident , Where Danger Lives , and Touch of Evil , Stephanie Fuller illustrates how cinema across genres developed an understanding of what the U.S.-Mexico border meant within the American cultural imaginary and the ways in which it worked to produce the border.

Cold War Literature

Author : Andrew Hammond
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134272553
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (342 download)

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Book Synopsis Cold War Literature by : Andrew Hammond

Download or read book Cold War Literature written by Andrew Hammond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-11-22 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cold War was the longest conflict in a century defined by the scale and brutality of its conflicts. In the battle between the democratic West and the communist East there was barely a year in which the West was not organising, fighting or financing some foreign war. It was an engagement that resulted – in Korea, Guatemala, Nicaragua and elsewhere – in some twenty million dead. This collection of essays analyses the literary response to the coups, insurgencies and invasions that took place around the globe, and explores the various thematic and stylistic trends that Cold War hostilities engendered in world writing. Drawing together scholars of various cultural backgrounds, the volume focuses upon such themes as representation, nationalism, political resistance, globalisation and ideological scepticism. Eschewing the typical focus in Cold War scholarship on Western authors and genres, there is an emphasis on the literary voices that emerged from what are often considered the ‘peripheral’ regions of Cold War geo-politics. Ranging in focus from American postmodernism to Vietnamese poetry, from Cuban autobiography to Maoist theatre, and from African fiction to Soviet propaganda, this book will be of real interest to all those working in twentieth-century literary studies, cultural studies, history and politics.

The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture

Author : Paul A. Cantor
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813140838
Total Pages : 430 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (131 download)

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Book Synopsis The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture by : Paul A. Cantor

Download or read book The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture written by Paul A. Cantor and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2012-11-30 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Analyzes how ideas about economics and political philosophy find their way into everything from Star Trek to Malcolm in the Middle.” —Wall Street Journal Popular culture often champions freedom as the fundamentally American way of life and celebrates the virtues of independence and self-reliance. But film and television have also explored the tension between freedom and other core values, such as order and political stability. What may look like healthy, productive, and creative freedom from one point of view may look like chaos, anarchy, and a source of destructive conflict from another. Film and television continually pose the question: Can Americans deal with their problems on their own, or must they rely on political elites to manage their lives? In this groundbreaking work, Paul A. Cantor—whose previous book, Gilligan Unbound, was named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by the Los Angeles Times—explores the ways in which television shows such as Star Trek, The X-Files, South Park, and Deadwood and films such as The Aviator and Mars Attacks! have portrayed both top-down and bottom-up models of order. Drawing on the works of John Locke, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, and other proponents of freedom, Cantor contrasts the classical liberal vision of America?particularly its emphasis on the virtues of spontaneous order?with the Marxist understanding of the “culture industry” and the Hobbesian model of absolute state control. The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture concludes with a discussion of the impact of 9/11 on film and television, and the new anxieties emerging in contemporary alien-invasion narratives: the fear of a global technocracy that seeks to destroy the nuclear family, religious faith, local government, and other traditional bulwarks against the absolute state.

The Cold War in Science Fiction: Soviet and American Science Fiction Films in the 1950s

Author : Natalia Voinova
Publisher : Anchor Academic Publishing (aap_verlag)
ISBN 13 : 3954895587
Total Pages : 42 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (548 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cold War in Science Fiction: Soviet and American Science Fiction Films in the 1950s by : Natalia Voinova

Download or read book The Cold War in Science Fiction: Soviet and American Science Fiction Films in the 1950s written by Natalia Voinova and published by Anchor Academic Publishing (aap_verlag). This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study will compare the USSR and the United States according to their cinematic use of science fiction in the late 1950s and 1960s in order to coincide with the period of de-Stalinisation and thaw in the USSR, and late McCarthyism in the United States. The genre provides an opportunity to express the two powers' scientific stand-off through fiction, and serves as a vehicle for the dissemination of ideas and propaganda. Post-1956 marks the time when the period of de-Stalinisation officially began and science fiction saw a carefully crafted rebirth for it served as a tool that could reflect the socialist ideal and quasi-religious faith in science that was promoted by the party. Science fiction uniquely demands for an imaginative view of the future, and therefore, corresponds with the Marxist- Leninist future-oriented ideology. For this period, the themes for American science fiction are hyperbolised monsters and invasion, and reflect the fear of the otherness of the Soviet Union, and its threat on domestic ideals. These themes are reflected in movies as 'Angry Red Planet', and 'Them!'. On the other hand, Soviet science fiction movies focus on the heroic Soviet man who frequently receives calls for help from outer space, and overcomes great trials to save those not living in utopia. This storyline is represented in 'Towards a Dream', and 'The Sky is calling'. The author gives special attention to the Soviet movie 'The Sky is calling' and the subsequent redubbed American version 'Battle beyond the Sun'. Further, she addresses alterations or plot, and subtle propaganda messages in the Soviet movies 'Planet of Storms', and the Hollywood remake 'Journey to the Prehistoric Planet'.

Cold War Literature

Author : Andrew Hammond
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134272545
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (342 download)

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Book Synopsis Cold War Literature by : Andrew Hammond

Download or read book Cold War Literature written by Andrew Hammond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-11-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cold War was the longest conflict in a century defined by the scale and brutality of its conflicts. In the battle between the democratic West and the communist East there was barely a year in which the West was not organising, fighting or financing some foreign war. It was an engagement that resulted – in Korea, Guatemala, Nicaragua and elsewhere – in some twenty million dead. This collection of essays analyses the literary response to the coups, insurgencies and invasions that took place around the globe, and explores the various thematic and stylistic trends that Cold War hostilities engendered in world writing. Drawing together scholars of various cultural backgrounds, the volume focuses upon such themes as representation, nationalism, political resistance, globalisation and ideological scepticism. Eschewing the typical focus in Cold War scholarship on Western authors and genres, there is an emphasis on the literary voices that emerged from what are often considered the ‘peripheral’ regions of Cold War geo-politics. Ranging in focus from American postmodernism to Vietnamese poetry, from Cuban autobiography to Maoist theatre, and from African fiction to Soviet propaganda, this book will be of real interest to all those working in twentieth-century literary studies, cultural studies, history and politics.

Monsters in the Machine

Author : Steffen Hantke
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496805666
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Monsters in the Machine by : Steffen Hantke

Download or read book Monsters in the Machine written by Steffen Hantke and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2016-06-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1950s and early 1960s, the American film industry produced a distinct cycle of films situated on the boundary between horror and science fiction. Using the familiar imagery of science fiction--from alien invasions to biological mutation and space travel--the vast majority of these films subscribed to the effects and aesthetics of horror film, anticipating the dystopian turn of many science fiction films to come. Departing from projections of American technological awe and optimism, these films often evinced paranoia, unease, fear, shock, and disgust. Not only did these movies address technophobia and its psychological, social, and cultural corollaries; they also returned persistently to the military as a source of character, setting, and conflict. Commensurate with a state of perpetual mobilization, the US military comes across as an inescapable presence in American life. Regardless of their genre, Steffen Hantke argues that these films have long been understood as allegories of the Cold War. They register anxieties about two major issues of the time: atomic technologies, especially the testing and use of nuclear weapons, as well as communist aggression and/or subversion. Setting out to question, expand, and correct this critical argument, Hantke follows shifts and adjustments prompted by recent scholarly work into the technological, political, and social history of America in the 1950s. Based on this revised historical understanding, science fiction films appear in a new light as they reflect on the troubled memories of World War II, the emergence of the military-industrial complex, the postwar rewriting of the American landscape, and the relative insignificance of catastrophic nuclear war compared to America's involvement in postcolonial conflicts around the globe.

Turncoats, Traitors, and Fellow Travelers

Author : Arthur Redding
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496801717
Total Pages : 380 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Turncoats, Traitors, and Fellow Travelers by : Arthur Redding

Download or read book Turncoats, Traitors, and Fellow Travelers written by Arthur Redding and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2009-10-08 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cold War was unique in the way films, books, television shows, colleges and universities, and practices of everyday life were enlisted to create American political consensus. This coercion fostered a seemingly hegemonic, nationally unified perspective devoted to spreading a capitalist, socially conservative notion of freedom throughout the world to fight Communism. In Turncoats, Traitors, and Fellow Travelers: Culture and Politics of the Early Cold War, Arthur Redding traces the historical contours of this manufactured consent by considering the ways in which authors, playwrights, and directors participated in, responded to, and resisted the construction of Cold War discourses. The book argues that a fugitive resistance to the status quo emerged as writers and activists variously fled into exile, went underground, or grudgingly accommodated themselves to the new spirit of the times. To this end, Redding examines work by a wide swath of creators, including essayists (W. E. B. Du Bois and F. O. Matthiessen), novelists (Ralph Ellison, Patricia Highsmith, Jane Bowles, and Paul Bowles), playwrights (Arthur Miller), poets (Sylvia Plath), and filmmakers (Elia Kazan and John Ford). The book explores how writers and artists created works that went against mainstream notions of liberty and offered alternatives to the false dichotomy between capitalist freedom and totalitarian tyranny. These complex responses and the era they reflect had and continue to have profound effects on American and international cultural and intellectual life, as can be seen in the connections Redding makes between past and present.

Seeing MAD

Author : Judith Yaross Lee
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
ISBN 13 : 082627448X
Total Pages : 621 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (262 download)

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Book Synopsis Seeing MAD by : Judith Yaross Lee

Download or read book Seeing MAD written by Judith Yaross Lee and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2020-11-16 with total page 621 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Seeing Mad” is an illustrated volume of scholarly essays about the popular and influential humor magazine Mad, with topics ranging across its 65-year history—up to last summer’s downsizing announcement that Mad will publish less new material and will be sold only in comic book shops. Mad magazine stands near the heart of post-WWII American humor, but at the periphery in scholarly recognition from American cultural historians, including humor specialists. This book fills that gap, with perceptive, informed, engaging, but also funny essays by a variety of scholars. The chapters, written by experts on humor, comics, and popular culture, cover the genesis of Mad; its editors and prominent contributors; its regular features and departments and standout examples of their contents; perspectives on its cultural and political significance; and its enduring legacy in American culture.

A Companion to Science Fiction

Author : David Seed
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1405144580
Total Pages : 612 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis A Companion to Science Fiction by : David Seed

Download or read book A Companion to Science Fiction written by David Seed and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to Science Fiction assembles essays by aninternational range of scholars which discuss the contexts, themesand methods used by science fiction writers. This Companion conveys the scale and variety of sciencefiction. Shows how science fiction has been used as a means of debatingcultural issues. Essays by an international range of scholars discuss thecontexts, themes and methods used by science fiction writers. Addresses general topics, such as the history and origins ofthe genre, its engagement with science and gender, and nationalvariations of science fiction around the English-speakingworld. Maps out connections between science fiction, television, thecinema, virtual reality technology, and other aspects of theculture. Includes a section focusing on major figures, such as H.G.Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ursula Le Guin. Offers close readings of particular novels, from MaryShelley’s Frankenstein to Margaret Atwood’sThe Handmaid’s Tale.

Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain

Author : Matthew Jones
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1501322532
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain by : Matthew Jones

Download or read book Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain written by Matthew Jones and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the last sixty years discussion of 1950s science fiction cinema has been dominated by claims that the genre reflected US paranoia about Soviet brainwashing and the nuclear bomb. However, classic films, such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and It Came from Outer Space (1953), and less familiar productions, such as It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), were regularly exported to countries across the world. The histories of their encounters with foreign audiences have not yet been told. Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain begins this task by recounting the story of 1950s British cinema-goers and the aliens and monsters they watched on the silver screen. Drawing on extensive archival research, Matthew Jones makes an exciting and important intervention by locating American science fiction films alongside their domestic counterparts in their British contexts of release and reception. He offers a radical reassessment of the genre, demonstrating for the first time that in Britain, which was a significant market for and producer of science fiction, these films gave voice to different fears than they did in America. While Americans experienced an economic boom, low immigration and the conferring of statehood on Alaska and Hawaii, Britons worried about economic uncertainty, mass immigration and the dissolution of the Empire. Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain uses these and other differences between the British and American experiences of the 1950s to tell a new history of the decade's science fiction cinema, exploring for the first time the ways in which the genre came to mean something unique to Britons.

The Post-Utopian Imagination

Author : M. Keith Booker
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313076359
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis The Post-Utopian Imagination by : M. Keith Booker

Download or read book The Post-Utopian Imagination written by M. Keith Booker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-01-30 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In America, the long 1950s were marked by an intense skepticism toward utopian alternatives to the existing capitalist order. This skepticism was closely related to the climate of the Cold War, in which the demonization of socialism contributed to a dismissal of all alternatives to capitalism. This book studies how American novels and films of the long 1950s reflect the loss of the utopian imagination and mirror the growing concern that capitalism brought routinization, alienation, and other dehumanizing consequences. The volume relates the decline of the utopian vision to the rise of late capitalism, with its expanding globalization and consumerism, and to the beginnings of postmodernism. In addition to well-known literary novels, such as Nabokov's Lolita, Booker explores a large body of leftist fiction, popular novels, and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney. The book argues that while the canonical novels of the period employ a utopian aesthetic, that aesthetic tends to be very weak and is not reinforced by content. The leftist novels, on the other hand, employ a realist aesthetic but are utopian in their exploration of alternatives to capitalism. The study concludes that the utopian energies in cultural productions of the long 1950s are very weak, and that these works tend to dismiss utopian thinking as na^Dive or even sinister. The weak utopianism in these works tends to be reflected in characteristics associated with postmodernism.