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

Henriksen, Margot A.

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0520083105 ISBN 13: 9780520083103

Casa editrice: Univ of California Pr on Demand, 1997

Riassunto

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.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

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

Dalla seconda/terza di copertina:

Dr. Strangelove's America is finely researched and elegantly written. Henriksen delineates far better than anyone else the central and crucial role of the bomb in postwar American culture, particularly in the cultural rebellion of the 1960s and in the changed forms of cultural expression." —Harvard Sitkoff, author of The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1992

"An enormously creative book. . . . Henriksen is doing more than writing about the reaction to the atomic bomb. She really is writing a kind of cultural history of the Atomic Age." —Allan M. Winkler, author of The Atom and American Life

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Univ of California Pr on Demand
• Data di pubblicazione: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0520083105
• ISBN 13: 9780520083103
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 451