Blue-Collar Hollywood

Blue-Collar Hollywood PDF Author: John Bodnar
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801885372
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2003 From Tom Joad to Norma Rae to Spike Lee's Mookie in Do the Right Thing, Hollywood has regularly dramatized the lives and struggles of working people in America. Ranging from idealistic to hopeless, from sympathetic to condescending, these portrayals confronted audiences with the vital economic, social, and political issues of their times while providing a diversion—sometimes entertaining, sometimes provocative—from the realities of their own lives. In Blue-Collar Hollywood, John Bodnar examines the ways in which popular American films made between the 1930s and the 1980s depicted working-class characters, comparing these cinematic representations with the aspirations of ordinary Americans and the promises made to them by the country's political elites. Based on close and imaginative viewings of dozens of films from every genre—among them Public Enemy, Black Fury, Baby Face, The Grapes of Wrath, It's a Wonderful Life, I Married a Communist, A Streetcar Named Desire, Peyton Place, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Coal Miner's Daughter, and Boyz N the Hood—this book explores such topics as the role of censorship, attitudes toward labor unions and worker militancy, racism, the place of women in the workforce and society, communism and the Hollywood blacklist, and faith in liberal democracy. Whether made during the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, or the Vietnam era, the majority of films about ordinary working Americans, Bodnar finds, avoided endorsing specific political programs, radical economic reform, or overtly reactionary positions. Instead, these movies were infused with the same current of liberalism and popular notion of democracy that flow through the American imagination.

Blue-Collar Hollywood

Blue-Collar Hollywood PDF Author: John Bodnar
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801885372
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2003 From Tom Joad to Norma Rae to Spike Lee's Mookie in Do the Right Thing, Hollywood has regularly dramatized the lives and struggles of working people in America. Ranging from idealistic to hopeless, from sympathetic to condescending, these portrayals confronted audiences with the vital economic, social, and political issues of their times while providing a diversion—sometimes entertaining, sometimes provocative—from the realities of their own lives. In Blue-Collar Hollywood, John Bodnar examines the ways in which popular American films made between the 1930s and the 1980s depicted working-class characters, comparing these cinematic representations with the aspirations of ordinary Americans and the promises made to them by the country's political elites. Based on close and imaginative viewings of dozens of films from every genre—among them Public Enemy, Black Fury, Baby Face, The Grapes of Wrath, It's a Wonderful Life, I Married a Communist, A Streetcar Named Desire, Peyton Place, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Coal Miner's Daughter, and Boyz N the Hood—this book explores such topics as the role of censorship, attitudes toward labor unions and worker militancy, racism, the place of women in the workforce and society, communism and the Hollywood blacklist, and faith in liberal democracy. Whether made during the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, or the Vietnam era, the majority of films about ordinary working Americans, Bodnar finds, avoided endorsing specific political programs, radical economic reform, or overtly reactionary positions. Instead, these movies were infused with the same current of liberalism and popular notion of democracy that flow through the American imagination.

Blue-Collar Hollywood

Blue-Collar Hollywood PDF Author: John Bodnar
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 080188537X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2003 From Tom Joad to Norma Rae to Spike Lee's Mookie in Do the Right Thing, Hollywood has regularly dramatized the lives and struggles of working people in America. Ranging from idealistic to hopeless, from sympathetic to condescending, these portrayals confronted audiences with the vital economic, social, and political issues of their times while providing a diversion—sometimes entertaining, sometimes provocative—from the realities of their own lives. In Blue-Collar Hollywood, John Bodnar examines the ways in which popular American films made between the 1930s and the 1980s depicted working-class characters, comparing these cinematic representations with the aspirations of ordinary Americans and the promises made to them by the country's political elites. Based on close and imaginative viewings of dozens of films from every genre—among them Public Enemy, Black Fury, Baby Face, The Grapes of Wrath, It's a Wonderful Life, I Married a Communist, A Streetcar Named Desire, Peyton Place, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Coal Miner's Daughter, and Boyz N the Hood—this book explores such topics as the role of censorship, attitudes toward labor unions and worker militancy, racism, the place of women in the workforce and society, communism and the Hollywood blacklist, and faith in liberal democracy. Whether made during the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, or the Vietnam era, the majority of films about ordinary working Americans, Bodnar finds, avoided endorsing specific political programs, radical economic reform, or overtly reactionary positions. Instead, these movies were infused with the same current of liberalism and popular notion of democracy that flow through the American imagination.

Tales of a Blue Collar Actor

Tales of a Blue Collar Actor PDF Author: Jordan Rhodes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780999077627
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
In The Life of a Blue-Collar Actor, we follow Jordan Rhode's incredible television and Hollywood career that spans over 55 years. And he is still going strong! Jordan has appeared on some of the most legendary TV shows in starring roles working alongside some of the best-known actors of our day. In television he is best known for his roles on The Streets of San Francisco, Quincy, Barnaby Files, The Rockford Files, Marcus Welby, MD and Matlock. He starred in some of the most legendary movies-of-the-week, The Blue and the Grey starring Gregory Peck and Stacy Keach, Once and Eagle starring Sam Elliot, and Testimony of Two Men, plus the cult classic, The Nightstalker starring Darren McGavin to mention a few. Most recently he is known for Marooned, All the Kings Men, The Indian Runner and House of Good and Evil as "Evil". In this memoir, Jordan recounts his adventures and close friendships with Sean Penn, Robert Wagner and Chuck Connors as well as working with the biggest name in film and TV including, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Charles Bronson, Michael Douglas, Gene Hackman, Jodie Foster, Dennis Hopper, Barbara Rush, James Garner, Stephanie Powers, Jill St. John, Nick Nolte, Leslie Nielsen, Karl Malden, Viggo Mortensen, David Morse, Patricia Arquette, and Linda Cristal to name a few. In 2008 Jordan wrote Produced and starred in the acclaimed stage show PAPA, The Man, The Myth, The Ledged a one-man show which begins and ends on the morning of July 2, 1961, the last day of Hemmingway's life. Told in flashback, PAPA presents the triumphs and tragedies of Hemmingway's fascinating life. Jordan toured the show to many cities around the United States to great critical acclaim. PAPA will get a Broadway revival in 2021.

The Life of a Blue Collar Actor

The Life of a Blue Collar Actor PDF Author: Jordan Rhodes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781667819709
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
The Life of a Blue Collar Actor details the life of a young man that became a working actor from a tobacco farm in North Carolina ,and literally went from Tobacco Road to Buckingham Palace by way of the New York Theatre and Hollywood Films.

Blue-Collar Actor

Blue-Collar Actor PDF Author: Andy Guze
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578576046
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Tips, tales, and recollections to help you get in the acting game.

White Masculinity in Crisis in Hollywood’s Fin de Millennium Cinema

White Masculinity in Crisis in Hollywood’s Fin de Millennium Cinema PDF Author: Pete Deakin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498585205
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
White Masculinity in Crisis in Hollywood’s Fin de Millennium Cinema claims that Hollywood cinema had a significant relationship with the millennial crisis of masculinity. From Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) and American Psycho (Harron, 2000), to Office Space (Judge, 1999), The Matrix (Wachowski’s, 1999) and American Beauty (Mendes, 1999), Pete Deakin attests that alongside the emergent “crisis” came a definitive body of some twenty-five Hollywood “crisis” titles; each film with a representational concern for the apparent “masculine malaise”. Asking whether Hollywood helped create, propel or sooth the very notion of the crisis-of-masculinity at this time, Deakin engages with some important cultural questions: how discursive—or even authentic—was it, and more vitally, whose actual crisis was this? To this end, scholars of film studies, media studies, gender studies, history, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.

Richard Pryor in Hollywood

Richard Pryor in Hollywood PDF Author: Anthony Balducci
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476632790
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Hollywood studios were once eager to bring stand-up comedy king Richard Pryor's dynamic humor to the big screen--so much so that studio executives gave him full access to available resources and creative control to develop his own projects. Unfortunately Pryor's screen talents were far less acclaimed than his stage ones, and flops such as The Toy and Superman III greatly diminished his reputation. The author examines how this downfall unfolded through comprehensive analyses of each of Pryor's movies.

Blue-Collar Pop Culture

Blue-Collar Pop Culture PDF Author: M. Keith Booker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 639

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Book Description
From television, film, and music to sports, comics, and everyday life, this book provides a comprehensive view of working-class culture in America. The terms "blue collar" and "working class" remain incredibly vague in the United States, especially in pop culture, where they are used to express and connote different things at different times. Interestingly, most Americans are, in reality, members of the working class, even if they do not necessarily think of themselves that way. Perhaps the popularity of many cultural phenomena focused on the working class can be explained in this way: we are endlessly fascinated by ourselves. Blue-Collar Pop Culture: From NASCAR to Jersey Shore provides a sophisticated, accessible, and entertaining examination of the intersection between American popular culture and working-class life in America. Covering topics as diverse as the attacks of September 11th, union loyalties, religion, trailer parks, professional wrestling, and Elvis Presley, the essays in this two-volume work will appeal to general readers and be valuable to scholars and students studying American popular culture.

The American Worker on Film

The American Worker on Film PDF Author: Doyle Greene
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786457767
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
An examination of the cinematic and cultural discourse surrounding work, the worker, organized labor, and the working class in 20th century America, this book analyzes a number of films within the historical context of labor and politics. Looking at both comedies (Modern Times, Gung Ho, Office Space) and dramas (The Grapes of Wrath, On the Waterfront, F.I.S.T., Blue Collar, Norma Rae, and Matewan), it reveals how these films are not merely products of their times, but also producers of ideological stances concerning the status of capitalism, class struggle, and democracy in America. Common themes among the films include the myth of the noble worker, the shifting status of the American Dream, and the acceptability of reform versus the unacceptability of revolution in affecting economic, political, and social change in America.

Stayin’ Alive

Stayin’ Alive PDF Author: Jefferson Cowie
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 159558532X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
Winner of the 2011 Merle Curti award, an epic account that recasts the 1970s as the key turning point in modern U.S. history, from the renowned historian A wide-ranging cultural and political history that will forever redefine a misunderstood decade, Stayin’ Alive is prizewinning historian Jefferson Cowie’s remarkable account of how working-class America hit the rocks in the political and economic upheavals of the 1970s. In this edgy and incisive book—part political intrigue, part labor history, with large doses of American music, film and television lore—Cowie, with “an ear for the power and poetry of vernacular speech” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), reveals America’s fascinating path from rising incomes and optimism of the New Deal to the widening economic inequalities and dampened expectations of the present.