America’s Lost Innocence and Cinema
Abstract
In my paper America’s Lost Innocence I intend to focus on American cinema of the ’50s, part of ’60s, and contemporary throwbacks to those decades. The ’50s have been called “the last decade of American innocenceâ€, “the happiest decade in America’s history – when things were going on – that everybody misses†(by Jean Baudrillard). That era symbolically ceased on 22 November 1963; however, many scholars and publicists undermine the belief in its very existence. Michael Wood calls the ’50s a time of “self-deceptionâ€; therefore, the question raised is – has America ever been innocent? By concentrating on the message conveyed by mostly genre (e.g. drama, melodrama, musical, romantic comedy) and mainstream movies made in the ’50s and early ’60s (e.g. A Place In the Sun, Cat on the Hot, Tin Roof, Home From the Hill), I intend to analyze the portrait of American society of that time, it’s rules and expectations towards individuals and system as a whole. In the second part of my paper I will focus on contemporary throwbacks to those times depicted mostly in movies made in the 21st century, although not exclusively (e.g. Far From Heaven, The Hours, Revolutionary Road, the TV series Mad Men [2007–], Pleasantville). Using those and other movies as examples, I intend to prove the thesis that the phenomenon of retro and contemporary retromania are not always and not by definition conservative, and can serve as a means to a critical approach towards society.References
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[19] M. Wood, America in the Movies, Columbia University Press, New York 1989
[2] J. Baudrillard, America, translated by C. Turner, Verso, London-New York 1988.
[3] M. Hammond, L. R. Williams, ed., Contemporary American Cinema, Open University Press, London-Boston 2006.
[4] A. Dowdy, The Films of the Fifties: The American State of Mind, William Morrow and Co., New York 1973.
[5] L. M. E. Goodlad, L. Kaganovsky, R. A. Rushing, Introduction, Mad Man in Its History, Mad Men, Mad World: Sex, Politics, Style, and the 1960s, ed. L. M. E. Goodlad, L. Kaganovsky, R. A. Rushing, Duke University Press, Durham 2013, mobi for Kindle edition.
[6] J. Rosenbaum, J. Hoberman, Midnight Movies, Da Capo Press, New York 1991.
[7] F. Jameson, Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke University Press, Durham 1991.
[8] F. Jameson, Postmodernism and Consumer Society, 1982, http://art.ucsc.edu/sites/default/files/Jameson_Postmodernism_and_Consumer_Society.pdf (26.09.2014).
[9] P. Lev, The Fifties. Transforming the Screen, 1950–1959, University of California Press, Berkley-Los Angeles-London 2003.
[10] Levine, The Shock of the Banal, Mad Man in Its History, Mad Men, Mad World: Sex, Politics, Style, and the 1960s, ed. L. M. E. Goodlad, L. Kaganovsky, R. A. Rushing, Duke University Press, Durham 2013, mobi for Kindle edition.
[11] J. Lewis, Movies and Growing Up… Absurd, [in:] American Cinema of the 1950s. Themes and Variations, ed. M. Pomerance, Ruthers University Press, New Brunshwick-New Jersey-London 2005.
[12] Polan, Mad Man in Its History, Mad Men, Mad World: Sex, Politics, Style, and the 1960s, ed. L. M. E. Goodlad, L. Kaganovsky, R. A. Rushing, Duke University Press, Durham 2013, mobi for Kindle edition.
[13] S. Prince, Introduction: Movies and the 1980s; American Cinema of the 1980s. Themes and Variations, ed. idem, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey 2007.
[14] S. Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, Faber and Faber, New York 2011.
[15] M. Rosenheck, Swing Skirts and Swinging Singles, Mad Men, Mad World: Sex, Politics, Style, and the 1960s., ed. L. M. E. Goodlad, L. Kaganovsky, R. A. Rushing, Duke University Press, Durham 2013, mobi for Kindle edition.
[16] T. Schatz, Hollywood Genres. Formulas, Filmmaking and the Studio System, McGraw-Hill Inc. New York 1981.
[17] L. Shriver, Betty Draper’s Feminine Mystique, The Ultimate Guide to Mad Men, W. Dean ed., Guardianbooks, London, 2010.
[18] Dianne Harris, Mad Space, Mad Man in Its History, Mad Men, Mad World: Sex, Politics, Style, and the 1960s, ed. L. M. E. Goodlad, L. Kaganovsky, R. A. Rushing, Duke University Press, Durham 2013, mobi for Kindle edition.
[19] M. Wood, America in the Movies, Columbia University Press, New York 1989
Published
2015-10-01
How to Cite
WÅ‚ODEK, Patrycja.
America’s Lost Innocence and Cinema.
Култура/Culture, [S.l.], v. 5, n. 12, p. 147-156, oct. 2015.
ISSN 1857-7725.
Available at: <https://www.journals.cultcenter.net/index.php/culture/article/view/191>. Date accessed: 12 feb. 2026.
Section
English Articles
Keywords
American cinema, genre, The ’50s, American society, retro, nostalgia, contemporary throwbacks, retromania
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