From Dead Ends to Cold Warriors

Constructing American Boyhood in Postwar Hollywood Films

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by Peter W.Y. Lee

Type: Studies
Subject: Sociology
Keywords: sociology, United States, children, 1950s
Publishing date: 2021
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 258 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-9788134-7-2

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Book Presentation:
After World War II, studies examining youth culture on the silver screen start with James Dean. But the angst that Dean symbolized—anxieties over parents, the “Establishment,” and the expectations of future citizen-soldiers—long predated Rebels without a Cause. Historians have largely overlooked how the Great Depression and World War II impacted and shaped the Cold War, and youth contributed to the national ideologies of family and freedom. From Dead Ends to Cold Warriors explores this gap by connecting facets of boyhood as represented in American film from the 1930s to the postwar years. From the Andy Hardy series to pictures such as The Search, Intruder in the Dust, and The Gunfighter, boy characters addressed larger concerns over the dysfunctional family unit, militarism, the “race question,” and the international scene as the Korean War began. Navigating the political, social, and economic milieus inside and outside of Hollywood, Peter W.Y. Lee demonstrates that continuities from the 1930s influenced the unique postwar moment, coalescing into anticommunism and the Cold War.

About the Author:
PETER W.Y. LEE is an independent historian specializing in American history and youth culture. He has published widely on comic books, film, and television. His most recent edited volume is Peanuts and American Culture: Essays on Charles M. Schulz’s Iconic Comic Strip.

Press Reviews:
"A specter was haunting mid-twentieth century Hollywood – the specter of the rebellious boy. Peter W.Y. Lee ably shows how US filmmakers of the period created a cast of culturally potent boy characters to arbitrate conflicts of age, gender, race, class, and political ideology at the dawning of the American Century. From Dead Ends to Cold Warriors is required reading for historians of youth, film, and the early Cold War."
— Mischa Honeck

"A specter was haunting mid-twentieth century Hollywood – the specter of the rebellious boy. Peter W.Y. Lee ably shows how US filmmakers of the period created a cast of culturally potent boy characters to arbitrate conflicts of age, gender, race, class, and political ideology at the dawning of the American Century. From Dead Ends to Cold Warriors is required reading for historians of youth, film, and the early Cold War."
— Mischa Honeck

See the publisher website: Rutgers University Press

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