A Kinder, Gentler America

A Kinder, Gentler America

Melancholia and the Mythical 1950s

Mary Caputi

Table of Contents

$19.50 Paper
ISBN: 0-8166-4408-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4408-7

$58.50 Cloth
ISBN: 0-8166-4407-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4407-0

Examines the 1950s nostalgia that has influenced American politics since the Reagan era.

“In the Norman Rockwell paintings of the 1940s and 1950s,” wrote Newt Gingrich, “there was a clear sense of what it meant to be an American.” Gingrich’s words underline what Mary Caputi sees as a desire of the neoconservative movement to set a foundation for modern America that ennobles the past.

Analyzing these competing uses of the past, A Kinder, Gentler America reveals how longing for the era of “the greatest generation” actually exposes a disillusionment with the present. Caputi draws on the theoretical frameworks of Julia Kristeva and Walter Benjamin to look at how the decade has been portrayed in movies such as Pleasantville and Far from Heaven and delves further to investigate our disenchantment’s lost origins in early modernity through a reading of the poetry of Baudelaire. What emerges is a stark contrast between the depictions of a melancholic present and a cheerful, shiny past. In the right’s invocation of the mythical 1950s and the left’s criticism of the same, Caputi recognizes a common unfulfilled desire, and proposes that by understanding this loss both sides can begin to accept that American identity, despite chaos and confusion, lies in the here and now.

"Caputi’s account of the pathologies lurking in our popular imagination of the fifties is compelling. This book raises many worthwhile questions." —Perspectives on Politics

Mary Caputi is professor of political science at California State University, Long Beach, and is author of Voluptuous Yearnings: A Feminist Theory of the Obscene.

232 pages | 9 halftones | 5 7⁄8 x 9 | November 2005

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

1. "The Fifties," an American Metaphor
2. A Vertiginous Languor: Modernity and Melancholia
3. Overripe America
4. Making Love with Absence: Neoconservatism and the Fifties
5. X-Ray Vision and the Powers of Performance: Letting Go of the Fifties
6. The Left Reviews "the Fifties"

Conclusion: America, a Phoenix Reborn (Again)
Notes
Index



A Kinder, Gentler America *Melancholia and the Mythical 1950s* Mary Caputi Table of Contents		$19.50 Paper ISBN: 0-8166-4408-X ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4408-7 $58.50 Cloth ISBN: 0-8166-4407-1 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4407-0
Examines the 1950s nostalgia that has influenced American politics since the Reagan era. “In the Norman Rockwell paintings of the 1940s and 1950s,” wrote Newt Gingrich, “there was a clear sense of what it meant to be an American.” Gingrich’s words underline what Mary Caputi sees as a desire of the neoconservative movement to set a foundation for modern America that ennobles the past. Analyzing these competing uses of the past, A Kinder, Gentler America reveals how longing for the era of “the greatest generation” actually exposes a disillusionment with the present. Caputi draws on the theoretical frameworks of Julia Kristeva and Walter Benjamin to look at how the decade has been portrayed in movies such as Pleasantville and Far from Heaven and delves further to investigate our disenchantment’s lost origins in early modernity through a reading of the poetry of Baudelaire. What emerges is a stark contrast between the depictions of a melancholic present and a cheerful, shiny past. In the right’s invocation of the mythical 1950s and the left’s criticism of the same, Caputi recognizes a common unfulfilled desire, and proposes that by understanding this loss both sides can begin to accept that American identity, despite chaos and confusion, lies in the here and now. "Caputi’s account of the pathologies lurking in our popular imagination of the fifties is compelling. This book raises many worthwhile questions." —Perspectives on Politics Mary Caputi is professor of political science at California State University, Long Beach, and is author of Voluptuous Yearnings: A Feminist Theory of the Obscene. 232 pages \| 9 halftones \| 5 7⁄8 x 9 \| November 2005 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 1. "The Fifties," an American Metaphor 2. A Vertiginous Languor: Modernity and Melancholia 3. Overripe America 4. Making Love with Absence: Neoconservatism and the Fifties 5. X-Ray Vision and the Powers of Performance: Letting Go of the Fifties 6. The Left Reviews "the Fifties" Conclusion: America, a Phoenix Reborn (Again) Notes Index