Buch, Englisch, 196 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 310 g
America in the 1950s
Buch, Englisch, 196 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 310 g
ISBN: 978-0-367-90280-3
Verlag: Routledge
In this prequel to Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998), his acclaimed book about the post-industrial city as a site of theming, branding and simulated spaces, sociologist John Hannigan travels back in time to the 1950s. Unfairly stereotyped as ‘the tranquillized decade’, America at mid-century hosted an escalating proliferation and conjunction of ‘spectacular’ events, spaces, and technologies.
Spectacularization was collectively defined by five features. It reflected and legitimated a dramatic increase in scale from the local/regional to the national. It was mediated by the increasingly popular medium of television. It exploited middle-class tension between comfortable conformity and desire for safe adventure. It celebrated technological progress, boosterism and military power. It was orchestrated and marketed by a constellation, sometimes a coalition, of entrepreneurs and dream merchants, most prominently Walt Disney. In this wide-ranging odyssey across mid-century America, Hannigan visits leisure parks (Cypress Gardens), parades (Tournament of Roses), mega-events (Squaw Valley Olympics, Century 21 Exposition), architectural styles (desert modernism), innovations (underwater photography, circular film projection) and everyday wonders (chemistry sets). Collectively, these fashioned the ‘spectacular gaze’, a prism through which Americans in the 1950s were acculturated to and conscripted into a vision of a progressive, technology-based future.
Rise of the Spectacular will appeal to architects, landscape designers, geographers, sociologists, historians, and leisure/tourism researchers, as well as non-academic readers who are by a fascinating era in history.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
Introduction: Re-imagining the 1950s 1. On the Road: Safe Adventures in 1950s America 2. "The Biggest Rolodex in Hollywood": Walt Disney at Mid-Century PART 1: CALIFORNIA CALLING 3. Desert Spectacular 4. The Name of the Rose 5. It Happened in Squaw Valley PART 2: PHOTOGRAPHING THE SPECTACULAR 6. The Most Photographed Place in America 7. Marine Marvels PART 3: SPUTNIK, SCIENCE AND THE SPECTACULAR 8. Seattle Invents the Future 9. Chemistry Sets, Planetariums and Science Fairs 10. Interrogating the Spectacular
