Dr. Strangelove's America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age

כריכה קדמית
University of California Press, 1997 - 451 עמודים
Did America really learn to "stop worrying and love the bomb," as the title of Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove, would have us believe? Does that darkly satirical comedy have anything in common with Martin Luther King Jr.'s impassioned "I Have a Dream" speech or with Elvis Presley's throbbing "I'm All Shook Up"? In Margot Henriksen's vivid depiction of the decades after World War II, all three are expressions of a cultural revolution directly related to the atomic bomb. Although many scientists and other Americans protested the pursuit of nuclear superiority after World War II ended, they were drowned out by Cold War rhetoric that encouraged a "culture of consensus." Nonetheless, Henriksen says, a "culture of dissent" arose, and she traces this rebellion through all forms of popular culture.

At first, artists expressed their anger, anxiety, and despair in familiar terms that addressed nuclear reality only indirectly. But Henriksen focuses primarily on new modes of expression that emerged, discussing the disturbing themes of film noir (with extended attention to Alfred Hitchcock) and science fiction films, Beat poetry, rock 'n' roll, and Pop Art. Black humor became a primary weapon in the cultural revolution while literature, movies, and music gave free rein to every possible expression of the generation gap. Cultural upheavals from "flower power" to the civil rights movement accentuated the failure of old values.

Filled with fascinating examples of cultural responses to the Atomic Age, Henriksen's book is a must-read for anyone interested in the United States at mid-twentieth century.
 

תוכן

Knowing Sin
1
Vertigo The Unhinged Moral
38
Psycho The Emergence
81
The Snake Pit America as an Asylum
112
Wild Ones Youths in Revolt
148
Is God Dead? An American
183
Laughter and a New Myth of Life
240
Judgment Day
303
Godless Violence and Transcendent Hope
345
Notes
389
Index
437
זכויות יוצרים

מהדורות אחרות - הצג הכל

מונחים וביטויים נפוצים

מידע על המחבר (1997)

Margot A. Henriksen is Associate Professor of History at the University of Hawaii.

מידע ביבליוגרפי