Unhomed

Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-0-520-39036-2
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 296 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 229 mm x 153 mm, Gewicht: 414 g

In this rich cultural history, Pamela Roberston Wojcik examines America's ambivalent and shifting attitude toward homelessness. She considers film cycles from five distinct historical moments that show characters who are unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than fixed—characters who fail, resist, or opt out of the mandate for a home of one's own. From the tramp films of the silent era to the 2021 Oscar-winning Nomadland, Wojcik reveals a tension in the American imaginary between viewing homelessness as deviant and threatening or emblematic of freedom and independence. Blending social history with insights drawn from a complex array of films, both canonical and fringe, Wojcik effectively "unhomes" dominant narratives that cast aspirations for success and social mobility as the focus of American cinema, reminding us that genres of precarity have been central to American cinema (and the American story) all along.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wojcik, Pamela Robertson

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Humangeographie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziale Ungleichheit, Armut, Rassismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Wohnen & Obdachlosigkeit
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction. All Over the Map: Figurations of Mobility and Placelessness

1 • Ubiquitous: The Tramp’s Mobile Masculinity

2 • Uncivilized: World War II Mobilization and Homecoming as Social Problem

3 • Adrift: The Ambivalent Freedom of the Female Hitchhiker

4 • Trash: The Homeless as Urban Waste

Epilogue. Stuck: Precarity and Perpetual Motion as Slow Death

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Pamela Robertson Wojcik is Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre and Concurrent in Gender Studies and American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of several works of film and cultural studies, including Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction and The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975.