Description
Book SynopsisIn 1936, director John Ford claimed to be making movies for 'a new kind of public' that wanted more honest pictures. Cassano argues that this new kind of public was forged in the fires of class struggle and economic calamity. Those struggles appeared in Hollywood productions, as the movies themselves tried to explain the causes and consequence of the Great Depression. Using the tools of critical Marxism and cultural theory, Cassano surveys Hollywood's political economic explanations and finds a field of symbolic struggle between the classes.
Trade Review"Cassano develops original insights into New Deal cinema -and also into cultural artifacts in general - by applying to them creative interpretations of C. Wright Mills and a self-critical Marxism. As he opens up the complexities of artifact, audience, and their overdetermined and contradictory relationship, a powerful and critical cultural analysis emerges, one with wide implications for understanding social structures and changes." Richard D. Wolff University of Massachusetts, Amherst (retired), author of Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism "This sophisticated and powerful work shows how stars, directors, studios, writers, and censors responded to the new possibilities of entertaining an audience formed by the labor upsurges of the mid-1930s. In his constant identification of telling detail, his sweeping ability to see the workings of class without losing sight of the impact of race and gender, and his deft use of theory, Cassano more excitingly approximates the wonderful work of the late Michael Rogin than does any other contemporary writer." David Roediger University of Kansas, and author of Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Freedom for All
"Cassano develops original insights into New Deal cinema -and also into cultural artifacts in general - by applying to them creative interpretations of C. Wright Mills and a self-critical Marxism. As he opens up the complexities of artifact, audience, and their overdetermined and contradictory relationship, a powerful and critical cultural analysis emerges, one with wide implications for understanding social structures and changes." —Richard D. Wolff University of Massachusetts, Amherst (retired), author of Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism "This sophisticated and powerful work shows how stars, directors, studios, writers, and censors responded to the new possibilities of entertaining an audience formed by the labor upsurges of the mid-1930s. In his constant identification of telling detail, his sweeping ability to see the workings of class without losing sight of the impact of race and gender, and his deft use of theory, Cassano more excitingly approximates the wonderful work of the late Michael Rogin than does any other contemporary writer." —David Roediger University of Kansas, and author of Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Freedom for All
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: A Sociological Approach to New Deal Cinema The Problem Symbols, Experience, and Overdetermination Interpellative Intention Context The Force of Imagined Things “a new kind of public” Working Class Community The Hollywood Cultural Apparatus Plan of the Work 1. 1935-1936 Black Fury and RiffRaff Radical Paternalism and Labor’s Solidarity Black Fury and the Construction of Whiteness Black Fury’s Paternalism RiffRaff Women’s Exploitation in the Household Women’s Exploitation in the Cannery Anti-Marx Race, Wealth, and Desire Responsible Unionism Cinematic Contradictions 2. 1936 My Man Godfrey Cinematic Corporatism Forgotten Men Two Communities Responsibility and Recognition Mastery and Servitude “The only butler we ever had who understood women” Captain of Finance Mask as Mark 3. 1936 Swing Time Recognition and “Schemes of Life” The Power of Fashion The Political Economy of Desire Swing Time’s Realism Immigrants and The Shadows of Blackness Culture and Barbarism 4. 1937 The Hurricane Popular Front and Labor Affiliations Colonial Order and Pacific Passions “I’m just the same as a white man” Two Communities “Look at them Dance. There’s the island’s answer to your law” De-Colonized Independence and Enslaved Servility “You’re all guilty” Contradictions and Paradoxes 5. Ginger Rogers and the (Hollywood) Proletarian Imaginary, 1939-1941 5TH Avenue Girl (1939) Bachelor Mother (1939) Kitty Foyle (1940) Tom, Dick, and Harry (1941) 6. John Ford, From Radical Critique to the White Garrison State, 1940-1948 Radical Traditionalism in The Grapes of Wrath Symbolic Domination as Traditional Compensation The Language of Patriarchy Allegories of Race Narrating Trauma as Radical Critique Capital, Class and the Charmed Circle of the State Workers’ Control The Paradoxes of Radical Representation Two Voices From Class Conflict (Back) to Corporate Community “all I can see is the flags” “We’ll have no more Grapes of Wrath…” Epilogue: Psycho (1960) and the New Domestic Gaze The Gaze Interpellating Community The Loss of the Collective Spectacle References Films Cited Index
