Matthew Delmont‘s The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (University of California Press, 2012) weaves a fascinating narrative in which the content of a popular television show is only one element of its phenomenal impact. Nor is American Bandstand‘s popularity the limit of Delmont’s interest. In The Nicest Kids in Town, American Bandstand marks the confluence of competing, contradictory, and even some complementary forces in 1950s Philadelphia: local civil rights activism, inter-ethnic tensions, defensive localism, housing discrimination, and concerns over youth behavior influenced the content and reception of the program.

Part of the book’s brilliance lies in its use of character to create a sense of the place and time. From smaller characters like Walter Palmer, a black teen who organized against the segregation of Bandstand, to earnest liberal anti-segregationists like Maurice Fagan, whose treatment is more extensive, to the television icon Dick Clark, Delmont makes the people in the book both historical agents and complex human beings.

Though it is most unusual as a piece of scholarship in so fully evoking a time and place filled with real people, The Nicest Kids in Town is equally a model for American Studies research. Delmont’s painstaking thoroughness yields incredible specificity, which is most useful to making major claims about the importance of popular culture and about particular cultural products.

Finally, the book offers a perspective on the major industrial shifts in the television and music industries of the period, revealing how the displacement and/or appropriation of local talent and culture through the giant apparatus of television both expanded TV’s possibilities and complicated (for better and worse) the potential for local change.

In addition to the book itself (which is available both in text and for Kindle) and its website, and the author’s website , check out The Nicest Kids in Town digital project  which includes 100 related images and video clips including American Bandstand memorabilia, newspaper clippings regarding protests of American Bandstand, photographs from high school yearbooks, and video clips from American Bandstand.

[Cross-posted from New Books in Eastern European Studies] We all know socialism failed in Eastern Europe and that failure reflected two great shortcomings: a lack of democracy and an economic system that consistently fell short in providing its ostensible benefactors, the workers, with consumer goods from housing to fashion.   Yet paradoxically the more ingrained these truths become the more obscure the complexities of life under socialism become.  It is all fine and good to point to rational irrationality of the planned economy, and the lack of space for individual entrepreneurship, but that tells us only part of the story.  Until their collapse socialist societies shaped how everyone from architects to vacationers lived their lives, and our ability to understand socialism, as well as how and why it ultimately failed so miserably, depends not just on understanding the great events, but also every day lives.

Over a decade ago David Crowley and Susan Reid invited scholars to explore issues concerned with everyday life in post-war socialism.  The result has been three edited volumes that have been widely acclaimed.  The first Style and Socialism (2000) considered issues of design ranging from the how the Khrushchev Thaw changed ideas about shopping in Poland to the embrace of plastics in the German Democratic Republic.  The second, Socialist Spaces (2002) looked at different aspects of how space was conceived and used during the same period including articles about the negotiation involved in the rebuilding of Sevastopol after World War II, on dachas and apartments, as well as monuments.  With Pleasures in Socialism:Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Block (Northwestern University Press, 2010), they have concluded their trilogy by looking at the topic of luxury and leisure, which affords us a new glimpse at the dilemmas posed by high fashion, the use of tobacco and alcohol, erotica, and fur and automobile ownership among other things.  It was a pleasure to speak to them on those subjects as well as collaborative work process that brought these three books to fruition.

Any pop culture scholar worth her salt will tell you that discussion of Beyonce’s baby bump or Charlie Sheen’s unique sex life is far from apolitical, but, at times, gossip columnists have engaged more transparently in political debate. Hedda Hopper, Hollywood insider and conservative hat enthusiast, was one such columnist. Jennifer Frost‘s book, Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism (New York University Press, 2011), lays out the political issues on which Hopper felt called to weigh in, including American involvement in World War II, wartime civil liberties, anti-Communism and the Hollywood blacklist, and civil rights.

Hopper used her role as a celebrity gossiper to communicate her political ideology: celebrities and their stories were often conduits through which she could express her conservative views. Her support for Hattie McDaniel, for example, was a way for Hopper to comment on her preferred performance of blackness. A strong believer in the sanctity of family, she considered Frank Sinatra a “hypocrite” for warning about the dangers of juvenile delinquency, while being a “delinquent” (womanizer) himself. Given her power as a gossip columnist, stars who ran afoul of Hopper’s politics took considerable risk.

Frost uses letters from Hopper’s readers to explore the strange intimacies and (sometimes politicized) affiliations readers felt with Hopper and, by extension, with the celebrities whose lives she revealed. In this way, Frost offers a private side to the public nature of gossip, and this she threads through the book, even noting Hopper’s protection of her own privacy.

Hopper is a particularly fascinating case, but Frost clearly sees the Hopper phenomenon as part of a larger strain of American political culture in the celebrity era. The boundaries between celebrity news and politics are as permeable as ever, and the difference between CNN and Perez Hilton is disturbingly unclear. Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood points out that the roots of this strange convergence are deeper than we often acknowledge.

In my work with pre-Hispanic and colonial Mexican pictorial texts, I often wish I could talk with the people who authored them.  In the academic setting, sometimes we forget that these documents represent conversations about what was happening in the lives of many people at the time they were created and that some aspects of these materials that we have found in archives or ancient cities are still part of the cultural heritage and daily lives of the descendants of the creators. Ethelia Ruíz Medrano helps us realize that the study of popular culture also can mean the sharing of knowledge.  Ruíz Medrano’s research in the tiny town of Santa María Cuquila has led to a new way of thinking about our pasts and how they connect with our presents.

Ruíz Medrano’s book Mexico’s Indigenous Communities: Their Lands and Histories, 1500-2010 is a best-selling work on popular culture from the University of Colorado Press. Indigenous Communities traces a new context for our Amerindian heritage.  Ruíz Medrano examines local administrative power and the resolution of community issues as functions of life today in much the same way as they were 500 years ago.  At the same time, these communities are also rooted in the twenty first century.  Many community members have relatives and friends in the United States.  They keep in touch with cell phones and text messages while also seeking answers in their pictorial documents and oral and cultural accounts. Ruíz Medrano has become their student and her book offers a fascinating study of past and present, and of a community of teachers for this scholar-student.

The study of non-heteronormative sexualities in the academy continues to be remarkably dynamic. Despite the usual attempts to harden the frame around this scholarship, it remains consistently exciting and surprising. Robert J. Corber is one of the reasons why. His books In the Name of National Security: Hitchcock, Homophobia, and the Political Construction of Gender in Postwar America (Duke University Press, 1996) and Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity (Duke University Press, 1997) are recognized as important contributions to the field. In his new book Cold War Femme: Lesbianism, National Identity, and Hollywood Cinema (Duke University Press, 2011),  Corber expands earlier arguments about the places of homophobia in the Cold War to include anxieties about the feminine lesbian. Corber emphasizes the ways in which Hollywood representations aligned with shifting understandings of the lesbian in American political culture, while acknowledging the extent to which the Production Code limited and complicated a full realization of that shift onscreen. In films ranging from Nicholas Ray’s to Hitchcock’s, the collision of new and old models of lesbianism enabled ambivalent and often bizarre portrayals of female desire. At once a companion to and an implicit critique of his earlier work, Corber opens a new and provocative discussion of some of Hollywood’s most famous films and stars.

Growing up in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Indy-car racing offered my friends and me some very exciting heroes. As children, we played “Indy 500” on our bikes in the cul-de-sac. As we became teenagers, the Indy-car drivers who descended on our city in April and May became some of our most tangible idols. Not surprisingly, this proximity to Indy racing also fueled a fascination with the cartoon series “Speed Racer.”

“Speed Racer” always managed to pull out the victory after he learned his lesson. What I didn’t really understand (in addition to why their lip movements never quite matched what they said) was that this program was a Japanese production and that this was one of the first American glimpses of what has become the international phenomenon that we call “anime.” I also did not know that this particular series grew out of a graphic tradition known to us now as “manga.” Even more interesting, manga specifically designed for boys, often based on robots, warriors, or battling creatures, is different from manga designed for girls, featuring themes of school and amorous relationships. Further, many fans of the genre engage in producing and sharing their own work.

While my friends and I never engaged in drawing our own “Speed Racer” stories, we did discuss plots and think up new twists and turns for him to navigate. Some of us wanted to replace his girlfriend, Trixie; others preferred Speed’s mysterious big brother, Racer X, who was conveniently unattached. Other story lines put us in the driver’s seat competing against Speed!

Boy’s Love Manga, like our own teenaged fantasies, derives from fans’ responses to commercial examples of manga created specifically for female audiences. This fantasy genre has become an international, fan-driven form of expression where readers create their own fantasy fiction and share it at conventions and on the internet. In Germany, this form of artistic exchange represents a substantial portion of the entire comic market. What is even more fascinating is that, although much of this work is created by women for other women, Boy’s Love Manga texts portray male-male romantic encounters.

Co-editor Mark McHarry and one of the contributors, Paul Malone, talked with me about the collection of essays Boys’ Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre (McFarland, 2010). This collection of essays represents one of the first critical explorations of this wildly popular, wide-reaching, and incredibly profitable phenomenon.

Playboy is having (another) moment.  Since its fiftieth birthday in 2003, the brand’s relevance has risen after a period of decline.  The Girls Next Door, a reality television show about the goings-on at Hugh Hefner’s Los Angeles mansion, was a breakout hit starting in 2005, and it eventually spawned two spin-offs and a lot of merchandise.  Though The Girls Next Door and the second coming of Playboy clubs suggest that the brand has a place in the twenty-first century, reflections on its place in the twentieth are even more numerous.  Hefner’s impact has been reconsidered in several documentaries, the most recent of which is Brigitte Berman’s acclaimed Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel (2009).  More recently, NBC picked up The Playboy Club for Fall 2011, which is set in the Chicago club in the 1960s.  Ads for the show proclaim the brand’s importance: “A provocative drama about a time and place in which a visionary created an empire, and an icon changed American culture.”

Scholars too are reconsidering Hefner and Playboy’s contribution to American literature, art, politics, and, of course, sexuality, in the twentieth century.  On the heels of Elizabeth Fratterigo’s Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America and Steven Watts’s Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream, historian Carrie Pitzulo’s new Bachelors and Bunnies: The Sexual Politics of Playboy (University of Chicago Press, 2011) explores the pages of the magazine from its inception in 1953 to the end of its heyday in the 1970s.  Pitzulo offers fresh and provocative readings of the notorious Playmates, but also discusses aspects of the magazine that have garnered less attention, including the popular Playboy Advisor column of the 1960s–70s.  Bachelors and Bunnies is an exciting new feminist entry into the ever-broadening scholarship on Playboy.

[Crossposted from New Books in Sports] When we think of sports and the Cold War, what typically comes to mind are steroid-fueled East German swimmers, or the Soviets’ controversial basketball win at the Munich games, or Mike Eruzione’s game-winning goal in 1980 (or Paul Henderson’s goal in 1972, if you’re so inclined). What we don’t think of is football, meaning American football, because it’s so, well, American.

But that is the point of Kurt Kemper‘s book College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era (University of Illinois Press, 2009). The early Cold War was a time not only of international tension but also of domestic anxiety, with debates raging as to what were American—and un-American—activities and characteristics. Football came to be seen during this time as the quintessential national sport, one that manifested the American virtues of toughness, teamwork, and discipline. But this use of football as a defining feature of American character was controversial, and professors, administrators, alumni, and students, on university campuses across the country, debated the benefits of the sport.

Kemper’s book views these debates through an interesting case study: the selection of two teams for the 1962 Rose Bowl game. Looking at four contenders for the bowl invitation, Kemper offers a convincing, and unexpected, view of how college football was a catalyst for many contentious issues of the late-1950s and early-1960s, with debates raging about the game’s connection to higher education, commercialism, and racial integration. If you’re a college football fan, you won’t find detailed accounts of great teams and epic games in this book—but you will be surprised at the inner workings of the game fifty years ago. And if you’re looking for a revealing picture of sports and American cultural history, this book has much to offer.

[Crossposted from New Books in History] You’ve probably heard of hipsters. Heck, you may even be a hipster. If you don’t know what a hipster is, you might spend some time on this sometimes entertaining website. Where do hipsters come from? Lets work backwards. Before hipsters (1990s), there were slackers (1980s): middle-class, college-going, white kids into Alternative rock. They were hipsters in all but name. Before slackers, there were punks and pseudo-mods (1970s): middle-class, college-going, white kids into Punk and New Wave rock respectively. Neither of them was really “hip” because they liked to take speed and be “intense.” Before punks and pseudo-mods, there were hippies (1960s): middle-class, college-going, white kids into rock and folk. They weren’t “hip” because they smoked a lot of dope and were embarrassingly earnest. Before hippies, there were beats (1950s): middle class, college-going, white kids into outré poetry and literature. They weren’t “hip” because they took narcotics and liked to be “cool.” Before beats, there were proto-hipsters (1940s): middle-class, college-going, white kids who liked hot jazz and black people. They were more like modern wiggers than hipsters. (If you don’t know what a wigger is, here you go.) And before proto-hipsters, there was the mother of all middle-class, college-going, white American subcultures—the bohemians. They were a lot like hipsters.

These hipsters-before-hipsters are the subject of Joanna Levin‘s fascinating new book  Bohemia in America, 1858-1920 (Stanford UP, 2010). In it, she deftly traces the mid-nineteenth-century migration of bohemianism from the Parisian Latin Quarter to American shores and its spread to middle class, white culture thereafter. Bohemianism offered Americans who, as Tocqueville noted, were all about equality (read: conformity) a chance to be different in a safe way. The bohemians practiced a kind of satire-of-the-deed: they used themselves–the way they dressed, talked, loved, worked–to poke fun at everything “bourgeois.” They were performance artists, and they wanted attention. Just like hipsters.

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[Crossposted from New Books in History] In preparation for this interview I watched the documentary (that’s what the producers call it, anyway) “Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup.” Of course it’s absolutely loony. In fact, it’s so loony that I began to wonder if the director, Dylan Avery, wasn’t having us on. It’s hard to tell whether “Loose Change” is a you’ve-gotta-hear-this conspiracy theory or a tongue-firmly-in-cheek parody of a conspiracy theory. Maybe I’m just jaded, but it seems to me–particularly after reading David Aaronovitch’s excellent book Voodoo Histories: The Role of Conspiracy Theory in the Shaping of Modern History (Penguin, 2010)–that we’ve heard all this before: Satan’s children did it, the Freemasons did it, the Illuminati did it, the Jews did it, the the Commies did it, the Mafia did it, the John Birch Society did it, the Trilateral Commission did it, the Bilderberg Group did it, the Club of Rome did it, Skull and Bones did it, PNAC did it, and everyone else has done “it” whatever “it” happens to be. Every time one of these insidious plots “comes to light” it turns out to be a sickly-sweet cocktail of paranoia, anger, and don’t-let-the-facts-get-in-the-way-of-your-argument speculation. You’d think we’d have learned by now not to believe that “dark, hidden forces” are behind everything because, well, they demonstrably aren’t. But people want to believe these things, particularly when they seem to explain why something disturbing–say, the collapse of Germany in WWI, the high costs of rapid industrialization in the USSR in the 1930s, or America’s evident lack of preparation for 9/11–wasn’t “our” fault, but rather someone else’s. I would like to think that David’s wonderful book will put an end to loopy conspiracy theories so that we can get on with the important business of fixing things that matter. It probably won’t, but nonetheless Voodoo History is certainly a fine step in that direction and I applaud David for writing it (and you for reading it).

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[Crossposted from New Books in History] If you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s in suburbia, you probably lived in a smallish ranch house that looked like this. That house probably had an “ultra modern” kitchen that probably looked like this. I grew up in such a house and it had such a kitchen. In fact, I think my mom, sister, and self were models for this ad. (Or may be not. My mom never baked, had a job, and generally dressed in what she called “slacks.” Very modern indeed.) Anyway, we didn’t know it, but our house, kitchen, and “life style” were fighting the Cold War. You can read all about it in Greg Castillo’s fascinating new book Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design (Minnesota UP, 2009). The leaders of both the Capitalist and Communist worlds claimed to be able to afford their citizens a superior way of life and in the post-war world “superior way of life” meant more, better stuff. So these same leaders enlisted industrial designers in their struggle for supremacy. The West had ranch houses, avocado kitchens, and pink telephones; the East had neo-Classical apartment blocks, reading-corners, and built-in radios (pre-tuned, of course, to official stations). In the end, I suppose, the West “won,” but as Greg points out it did so with a kind of domestic architecture and interior design that has now become so bloated that it is, economically at least, unsustainable. The average ranch house was about 1000 square feet; today the average new home in the U.S. is around 2500 square feet. Al Gore’s house is 10,000 square feet (not counting the guest and pool houses). Inconvenient, but true.

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