{"product_id":"bluecollar-hollywood-liberalism-democracy-and-working-people-in-american-film-9780801871498","title":"Blue-Collar Hollywood: Liberalism  Democracy  and Working People in American Film","description":"\u003cp\u003eSelected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2003 From Tom Joad to Norma Rae to Spike Lees 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 diversionsometimes entertaining  sometimes provocativefrom 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 countrys political elites. Based on close and imaginative viewings of dozens of films from every genreamong them Public Enemy  Black Fury  Baby Face  The Grapes of Wrath  Its a Wonderful Life  I Married a Communist  A Streetcar Named Desire  Peyton Place  Taxi Driver  Raging Bull  Coal Miners Daughter  and Boyz N the Hoodthis 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45960483831861,"sku":"ByrdShop_0801871492","price":41.98,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780801871498.jpg?v=1788288632","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/bluecollar-hollywood-liberalism-democracy-and-working-people-in-american-film-9780801871498","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}