A Kinder, Gentler America: Melancholia And The Mythical 1950S,Used

A Kinder, Gentler America: Melancholia And The Mythical 1950S,Used

In Stock
SKU: SONG081664408X
Brand: University of Minnesota Press
$28.37 $40.53
Save $12.16
Quantity
Add to wishlist
Add to compare

Processing time: 1-3 days

US Orders Ships in: 3-5 days

International Orders Ships in: 8-12 days

Return Policy: 15-days return on defective items

Payment Option
Payment Methods

Help

If you have any questions, you are always welcome to contact us. We'll get back to you as soon as possible, withing 24 hours on weekdays.

Customer service

All questions about your order, return and delivery must be sent to our customer service team by e-mail at yourstore@yourdomain.com

Sale & Press

If you are interested in selling our products, need more information about our brand or wish to make a collaboration, please contact us at press@yourdomain.com

In the Norman Rockwell paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, wrote Newt Gingrich, there was a clear sense of what it meant to be an American. Gingrichs words underline what Mary Caputi sees as a desire of the neoconservative movement to set a foundation for modern America that ennobles the past.Analyzing these competing uses of the past, A Kinder, Gentler America reveals how longing for the era of the greatest generation actually exposes a disillusionment with the present. Caputi draws on the theoretical frameworks of Julia Kristeva and Walter Benjamin to look at how the decade has been portrayed in movies such as Pleasantville and Far from Heaven and delves further to investigate our disenchantments lost origins in early modernity through a reading of the poetry of Baudelaire. What emerges is a stark contrast between the depictions of a melancholic present and a cheerful, shiny past. In the rights invocation of the mythical 1950s and the lefts criticism of the same, Caputi recognizes a common unfulfilled desire, and proposes that by understanding this loss both sides can begin to accept that American identity, despite chaos and confusion, lies in the here and now.Mary Caputi is professor of political science at California State University, Long Beach, and is author of Voluptuous Yearnings: A Feminist Theory of the Obscene.

⚠️ WARNING (California Proposition 65):

This product may contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.

For more information, please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.

Recently Viewed