Editorial Reviews
The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Tom Engelhardt
Celluloid Mushroom Clouds offers powerful evidence of how quickly the Hollywood branch office of the popular culture business tamed the bomb--and the act of bombing--creating a genre that scholars could analyze just as they might juvenile delinquency or beach blanket bingo teen films.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
Evans analyzes the use of atomic imagery found in a variety of Hollywood genres produced between 1947 and 1964 such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Pickup on South Street (1953), and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). The industry-focused approach presented in this book views cultural production as a material process unfolding under specific economic, political and cultural conditions and emphasizes the "pressures and limits" of production that are inscribed in the cinematic texts. The study illustrates in concrete detail how the cinematic texts negotiated by audiences are produced in highly concentrated industries and are constructed as a result of often contradictory determinants. These determinants work to shape the texts produced by encouraging, for example, the production of particular genres and by privileging a specific set of images over others. Evans argues that through these images, Hollywood articulated a limited critique of the Cold War ideology, which it also helped to create. She concludes that Hollywood's overall ideological effect has been to restrict the discursive means available for defining social reality.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Celluloid Mushroom Clouds: Hollywood and the Atomic Bomb (Critical Studies in Communication and in the Cultural Industries)
Celluloid Mushroom Clouds: Hollywood and the Atomic Bomb (Critical Studies in Communication and in the Cultural Industries),Joyce A. Evans,Westview Press,0813391415,Cinema/Film: Book,Film & Video - History & Criticism,Film And Society,Performing Arts,Pop Arts / Pop Culture
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