Description

In this account of mass media images, David Ruth looks at Al Capone and other "invented" gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s. The subject of innumerable newspaper and magazine articles, novels and Hollywood movies, the gangster was a compelling figure for Americans preoccupied with crime and the social turmoil it symbolized. Ruth shows that the media gangster was less a reflection of reality than a projection created from Americans' values, concerns and ideas about what would sell. We see efficient criminal executives demonstrating the multifarious uses of organization; dapper, big-spending gangsters highlighting the promises and perils of the emerging consumer society; and gunmen and molls guiding an uncertain public through the shifting terrain of modern gender roles. In this study, Ruth reveals how the public enemy provides a far-ranging critique of modern culture.

Inventing the Public Enemy: The Gangster in American Culture, 1918-1934

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Paperback / softback by David E. Ruth

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In this account of mass media images, David Ruth looks at Al Capone and other "invented" gangsters of the 1920s... Read more

    Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
    Publication Date: 15/04/1996
    ISBN13: 9780226732183, 978-0226732183
    ISBN10: 0226732185

    Number of Pages: 200

    Description

    In this account of mass media images, David Ruth looks at Al Capone and other "invented" gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s. The subject of innumerable newspaper and magazine articles, novels and Hollywood movies, the gangster was a compelling figure for Americans preoccupied with crime and the social turmoil it symbolized. Ruth shows that the media gangster was less a reflection of reality than a projection created from Americans' values, concerns and ideas about what would sell. We see efficient criminal executives demonstrating the multifarious uses of organization; dapper, big-spending gangsters highlighting the promises and perils of the emerging consumer society; and gunmen and molls guiding an uncertain public through the shifting terrain of modern gender roles. In this study, Ruth reveals how the public enemy provides a far-ranging critique of modern culture.

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