Realism for the masses
Subtitle: aesthetics, popular front pluralism, and U.S. culture, 1935-1947
By: Chris Vials.
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Jackson
Language: eng
Number of pages: 232
ISBN-13: 9781604731231
Subjects: Popular culture -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Liberalism -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Cultural pluralism -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Cultural industries -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Aesthetics, American -- History -- 20th century; Realism -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century; American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; United States -- Civilization -- 1918-1945; United States -- Intellectual life -- 20th century
Description: Realism for the Masses is an exploration of how the concept of realism entered mass culture, and from there, how it tried to remake "America." The literary and artistic creations of American realism are generally associated with the late nineteenth century. But this book argues that the aesthetic actually saturated American culture in the 1930s and 1940s and that the left social movements of the period were in no small part responsible. The book examines the prose of Carlos Bulosan and H. T. Tsiang; the photo essays of Margaret Bourke-White in Life magazine; the bestsellers of Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Mitchell; the boxing narratives of Clifford Odets, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren; and the Hollywood boxing film, radio soap operas, and the domestic dramas of Lillian Hellman and Shirley Graham, and more. These writers and artists infused realist aesthetics into American mass culture to an unprecedented degree and also built on a tradition of realism in order to inject influential definitions of "the people" into American popular entertainment. Central to this book is the relationship between these mass cultural realisms and emergent notions of pluralism. Significantly, Vials identifies three nascent pluralisms of the 1930s and 1940s: the New Deal pluralism of "We're the People" in The Grapes of Wrath; the racially inclusive pluralism of Vice President Henry Wallace's "The People's Century"; and the proto-Cold War pluralism of Henry Luce's "The American Century." --Book jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: The people's form finds its audience : popular front realism and the culture industries; title: Taking down the Great White Hope : the popular front boxing narrative; title: Radio soaps, Broadway lights : Lillian Hellman, Shirley Graham, and the interpellation of female audiences; title: Realism with a little sex in it : Erskine Caldwell's challenge to Gone with the wind; title: Asian yeoman and ugly Americans : Carlos Bulosan, H.T. Tsiang, and the U.S. literary market; title: The popular front in the American century : Life magazine, Margaret Bourke-White, and partisan objectivity.