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Hillbilly : a cultural history of an American icon
In this pioneering work of cultural history, historian Anthony Harkins argues that the hillbilly-in his various guises of \"briar hopper,\" \"brush ape,\" \"ridge runner,\" and \"white trash\"-has been viewed by mainstream Americans simultaneously as a violent degenerate who threatens the modern order and as a keeper of traditional values of family, home, and physical production, and thus symbolic of a nostalgic past free of the problems of contemporary life. \"Hillbilly\" signifies both rugged individualism and stubborn backwardness, strong family and kin networks but also inbreeding and bloody feuds. Spanning film, literature, and the entire expanse of American popular culture, from D. W. Griffith to hillbilly music to the Internet, Harkins illustrates how the image of the hillbilly has consistently served as both a marker of social derision and regional pride. He traces the corresponding changes in representations of the hillbilly from late-nineteenth century America, through the great Depression, the mass migrations of Southern Appalachians in the 1940s and 1950s, the War on Poverty in the mid 1960s, and to the present day. and to the present day. Harkins also argues that images of hillbillies have played a critical role in the construction of whiteness and modernity in twentieth century America. Richly illustrated with dozens of photographs, drawings, and film and television stills, this unique book stands as a testament to the enduring place of the hillbilly in the American imagination.
eBook
White Negroes : when cornrows were in vogue ... and other thoughts on cultural appropriation
\"This book provides a cultural, political, and social survey through the most American of pastimes that continues to thrive today. With narrative, accessible criticism, research, and popular cultural touchstones we can all recognize, I'd like to introduce readers to the black presence that holds up daily life as they know it. It is a crucial account of the people, stories, and culture that create the hilarious, crazy wonder that is life in the 21st century. It is also a wake up call. White Negroes wants to peel open still beating heart of interracial antagonism in this country and expose a form of theft that feels natural only because we are used to it. But we don't have to be. This book documents how this very old tradition shapes our society in the present in the hopes that we can imagine something better. White Negroes will transform what readers think they know about race and culture in the new millennium and open the door to a new present and future unburdened by crimes of the past\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio
The behind-the-scenes story of how admen and sponsors helped shape broadcasting into a popular commercial entertainment medium. During the \"golden age\" of radio, from roughly the late 1920s until the late 1940s, advertising agencies were arguably the most important sources of radio entertainment. Most nationally broadcast programs on network radio were created, produced, written, and/or managed by advertising agencies: for example, J. Walter Thompson produced \"Kraft Music Hall\" for Kraft; Benton & Bowles oversaw \"Show Boat\" for Maxwell House Coffee; and Young & Rubicam managed \"Town Hall Tonight\" with comedian Fred Allen for Bristol-Myers. Yet this fact has disappeared from popular memory and receives little attention from media scholars and historians. By repositioning the advertising industry as a central agent in the development of broadcasting, author Cynthia B. Meyers challenges conventional views about the role of advertising in culture, the integration of media industries, and the role of commercialism in broadcasting history. Based largely on archival materials, A Word from Our Sponsor mines agency records from the J. Walter Thompson papers at Duke University, which include staff meeting transcriptions, memos, and account histories; agency records of BBDO, Benton & Bowles, Young & Rubicam, and N. W. Ayer; contemporaneous trade publications; and the voluminous correspondence between NBC and agency executives in the NBC Records at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Mediating between audiences' desire for entertainment and advertisers' desire for sales, admen combined \"showmanship\" with \"salesmanship\" to produce a uniquely American form of commercial culture. In recounting the history of this form, Meyers enriches and corrects our understanding not only of broadcasting history but also of advertising history, business history, and American cultural history from the 1920s to the 1940s.
eBook
Special Affects
The emergence of these media enables new modes of perception that create 'special' sensations of wonder, astonishment, marvel and the fantastic. Such affections subsequently become mined by consumer industries for profit, thereby explaining the connection between media and consumerism that today seems inherent to the culture industry. Such modes and their affections are also translated into ideology, as American culture seeks to make sense of the sociocultural changes accompanying these new media, particularly as specific versions of American Dream narratives. Special Affects is the first extended exploration of the connection between media and consumerism, and the first book to extensively apply Deleuzian film theory to animation. Its exploration of the connection between the animated form and consumerism, and its re-examination of twentieth-century animation from the perspective of affect, makes this an engaging and essential read for film-philosophy scholars and students.
eBook
Frantic Panoramas
Late nineteenth-century America saw an explosion in mass culture-from sensationalist tabloid newspapers to amusement parks to Wild West shows. Historians and critics have traditionally observed the advent of mass culture as undermining literature's central role in the public sphere. Literary writers of the time either reacted with a public show of disdain or retreated to conduct their own private experiments in style and form. InFrantic Panoramas, Nancy Bentley questions these narratives of opposition.
For literary writers, Bentley explains, the confrontation with mass culture was less a retreat than a transformation, an ordeal through which habits of contemplative appreciation could be refashioned into new forms of critical thought. By grappling with the energies that marked mass culture, authors came to recognize kinds of human experience that were only then becoming visible as public. William Dean Howells shaped the plots of his novels around tabloid events like rail and trolley accidents and the public chaos of apartment house fires. Although Henry James was distressed at the way dime fiction had changed the very definition of literature, his meditations on mass culture led him to reimagine the novel as a collective \"workshop\" in which authors and readers jointly discovered new meaning. Bentley offers close readings of these and other writers such as Edith Wharton, James Weldon Johnson, Pauline Hopkins, and Gertrude Bonnin to demonstrate how leading artists took inspiration from commercial culture to create new and distinct literary forms.
Drawing on original archival research and a historically grounded theory of realism,Frantic Panoramasis an innovative and comprehensive study of how the emergence of mass culture affected literary culture in America.
eBook
Supernatural entertainments : Victorian spiritualism and the rise of modern media culture
In Supernatural Entertainments, Simone Natale vividly depicts spiritualism's rise as a religious and cultural phenomenon and explores its strong connection to the growth of the media entertainment industry in the nineteenth century. He frames the spiritualist movement as part of a new commodity culture that changed how public entertainments were produced and consumed.
Starting with the story of the Fox sisters, considered the first spiritualist mediums in history, Natale follows the trajectory of spiritualism in Great Britain and the United States from its foundation in 1848 to the beginning of the twentieth century. He demonstrates that spiritualist mediums and leaders adopted many of the promotional strategies and spectacular techniques that were being developed for the broader entertainment industry. Spiritualist mediums were indistinguishable from other professional performers, as they had managers and agents, advertised in the press, and used spectacularism to draw audiences.
Addressing the overlap between spiritualism's explosion and nineteenth-century show business, Natale provides an archaeology of how the supernatural became a powerful force in the media and popular culture of today.
eBook