Rise of the Spectacular : America in the 1950s Hardback
by John Hannigan
Hardback
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Description
In this prequel to Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998), his acclaimed book about the post-industrial city as a site of theming, branding and simulated spaces, sociologist John Hannigan travels back in time to the 1950s.
Unfairly stereotyped as ‘the tranquillized decade’, America at mid-century hosted an escalating proliferation and conjunction of ‘spectacular’ events, spaces, and technologies. Spectacularization was collectively defined by five features.
It reflected and legitimated a dramatic increase in scale from the local/regional to the national.
It was mediated by the increasingly popular medium of television.
It exploited middle-class tension between comfortable conformity and desire for safe adventure.
It celebrated technological progress, boosterism and military power.
It was orchestrated and marketed by a constellation, sometimes a coalition, of entrepreneurs and dream merchants, most prominently Walt Disney.
In this wide-ranging odyssey across mid-century America, Hannigan visits leisure parks (Cypress Gardens), parades (Tournament of Roses), mega-events (Squaw Valley Olympics, Century 21 Exposition), architectural styles (desert modernism), innovations (underwater photography, circular film projection) and everyday wonders (chemistry sets).
Collectively, these fashioned the ‘spectacular gaze’, a prism through which Americans in the 1950s were acculturated to and conscripted into a vision of a progressive, technology-based future. Rise of the Spectacular will appeal to architects, landscape designers, geographers, sociologists, historians, and leisure/tourism researchers, as well as non-academic readers who are by a fascinating era in history.
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- Format:Hardback
- Pages:184 pages, 2 Tables, black and white; 12 Halftones, black and white; 12 Illustrations, black and whi
- Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication Date:30/08/2021
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- ISBN:9780367902797
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Information
-
Out of StockMore expected soonContact us for further information
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:184 pages, 2 Tables, black and white; 12 Halftones, black and white; 12 Illustrations, black and whi
- Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication Date:30/08/2021
- Category:
- ISBN:9780367902797