The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century"The cultural front," James T. Farrell once wrote, was made up of "commercial writers, high-priced Hollywood scenarists, a motley assortment of mystery-plot mechanics, humorists, newspaper columnists, stripteasers, band leaders, glamour girls, actors, press agents, Broadway producers, aging wives with thwarted literary ambitions, and other such ornaments of American culture." The cultural front, that extraordinary upsurge of cultural activity and theory in America, was born in the Great Depression as communists sought to organize cultural workers against Fascism and crisis-ridden capitalism. Spawned by the Popular Front of the Communist Party, the cultural front grew to encompass virtually every aspect of high and popular art in the US during the 1930s and beyond. Thoroughly infused with a radically popular and oppositional mentality, the cultural front informed one of the most culturally exciting and rich periods in American history -- a veritable "Second American Renaissance," in the words of Michael Denning. In The Cultural Front, Denning lifts the lid on a period which cracks open the great debate in contemporary cultural studies of "high" versus "low" culture -- a period in which artists and intellectuals rubbed shoulders with activists and workers, all striving in various ways to create a genuinely democratic popular culture. From Disney animators to proletarian novelists, and encompassing the likes of Orson Welles, Duke Ellington, John Dos Passos, C.L.R James and Billie Holiday, Denning charts a scene which not only fused art and popular protest but also left a deep imprint on American culture and society today. |
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LibraryThing Review
Avis d'utilisateur - DarthDeverell - LibraryThingMichael Denning’s The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century synthesizes much of the historiography of the Popular Front into a larger narrative, drawing upon ... Consulter l'avis complet
The cultural front: the laboring of American culture in the twentieth century
Avis d'utilisateur - Not Available - Book VerdictThe American Thirties was a period of fertile political coalitions that drew largely from grass-roots labor and Civil Rights activism to give New Deal liberalism its left-wing content and orientation ... Consulter l'avis complet
Table des matières
I | xiii |
II | 1 |
III | 3 |
IV | 51 |
V | 53 |
VI | 115 |
VII | 161 |
VIII | 163 |
X | 230 |
XI | 259 |
XII | 283 |
XIII | 323 |
XIV | 362 |
XV | 403 |
XVI | 423 |
XVII | 463 |
Autres éditions - Tout afficher
The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century Michael Denning Aucun aperçu disponible - 2010 |
Expressions et termes fréquents
aesthetic American culture American Writers anti-fascist argued artists audience avant-garde became Billie Holiday Blitzstein blues Bulosan cabaret Cafe Society Citizen Kane Communist Party Cradle Will Rock critics cultural apparatus cultural front culture industries depression Disney Duke Ellington Ellington ethnic fascism Federal fiction figures film Front social movement ghetto pastorals Grapes of Wrath Guthrie Harlem historians Hollywood intellectuals jazz John Reed Club Josh White Kenneth Burke labor League left-wing literary magazines Malcolm Cowley Marc Blitzstein Marxist mass Mercury migrant modern modernist musicians narrative Negro novel organized Orson Passos Passos's Pins and Needles plebeian political Popular Front Popular Front culture Popular Front social post-war production proletarian literature published racial radical radio recording Richard Wright singers singing socialist songs story strike struggle Studies symbolic Theatre tradition United University Press Welles's White William women workers working-class wrote York young