Containing America: Cultural Production and Consumption in 50s America

by Nathan Abrams, Julie Hughes

The postwar period in America witnessed a tremendous consumer boom that introduced thousands of new items into the mass market. The contributors to Containing America challenge our conceptions of Cold War culture by examining a range of such products - clothes, food, television, magazines, radio, and other forms of entertainment - in order to shed light on how Cold War discourses actually influenced the practices of ordinary behaviour. Their essays address very different sectors of American society - in terms of race, class, ethnicity, sexuality and gender - thus emphasising the multiplicity, diversity, and differing nature of the voices that emerged in cultural production and consumption during the 1950s. Containing America points out directions for further research and provides a fresh approach for scholars, students, and others interested in the culture of the Cold War of the 1950s.

208 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2005

About the author

Nathan Abrams is Professor in Film at Bangor University in Wales. He is founding co-editor of Jewish Film and New Media: An International Journal, as well as the author of The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema and Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual.