Description
Book Synopsis In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared an unconditional war on poverty in the form of sweeping federal programs to assist millions of Americans. Two decades later, President Reagan drastically cut such programs, claiming that welfare encouraged dependency and famously quipping, Some years ago, the federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won. These opposing policy positions and the ideologies informing them have been well studied. Here, the focus turns to the influence of popular art and entertainment on beliefs about poverty''s causes and potential cures.
These new essays interrogate the representation of poverty in film, television, music, photography, painting, illustration and other art forms from the late 19th century to the present. They map when, how, and why producers of popular culture represent--or ignore--poverty, and what assumptions their works make and encourage.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Poverty, Policy, Beliefs and Popular Culture, Wylie Lenz
- Henry Ossawa Tanner and African American Realist Paintings of Poverty in the 1890s, Lyrica Taylor
- Not Picturing Poverty: The New Woman and Nineteenth-Century Periodical Illustration, Anna M. Dempsey
Early Film and Child Welfare Issues: Charlie Chaplin's The Kid, Kathleen A. Tobin
- Agnes Smedley's Daughter of Earth and Representations of the Social, Michael Mayne
- Speaking the Language of the New Deal: Efficiency, Poverty and Economic Security in the 1930s Campaign Against Venereal Disease, Erin Wuebker
- "The Language of Pictures": Images of Poverty in New Deal America, Courtney L. Kisat
- A Hillbilly, a Bum and an Old Woman Meet a Screwball Redhead: Lampooning the Poor in I Love Lucy, Mark Bernhardt
- Poverty, Opportunity and Art Legacies in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Katelynd L. Gibbons
- Precarious Mobility: Vagrancy in American Pop Culture Wibke Schniedermann
- Making a (Third) Space for Learning: Analyzing Urban Education in HBO's The Wire, Chad William Timm
- "In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World": Poverty and Potentiality in Beasts of the Southern Wild, Lauren Riccelli Zwicky
- A Place to See: Poverty in American Theater, 1935–2015, Mary K. Ryan
- "What You Are About to See Will Make You Question What Matters Most": Poverty Porn, The Briefcase and the Deserving Poor, Owen Cantrell
- "Welcome to The First 48": Identity, Delinquency and Reality Television, Jessica H. Zbeida
- About the Contributors
- Index
