Demographic Angst

Cultural Narratives and American Films of the 1950s

By Alan Nadel

Rutgers University Press

Prolific literature, both popular and scholarly, depicts America in the period of the High Cold War as being obsessed with normality, implicitly figuring the postwar period as a return to the way of life that had been put on hold, first by the Great Depression and then by Pearl Harbor.

Demographic Angst argues that mandated normativity—as a political agenda and a social ethic—precluded explicit expression of the anxiety produced by America’s radically reconfigured postwar population. Alan Nadel explores influential non-fiction books, magazine articles, and public documents in conjunction with films such as Singin’ in the Rain, On the Waterfront, Sunset Boulevard, and Sayonara, to examine how these films worked through fresh anxieties that emerged during the 1950s.

Demographic Angst convincingly places movies at the center of complex cultural tensions and shifts within post-World War II America. Nadel's discussion of this topic is unprecedented. Timothy Corrigan, co-author of The Film Experience: An Introduction

Demographic Angst offers an encyclopedic account of questions central to modern American culture and society. There is no doubt that the lessons of this book are now more urgent than ever before. Kate Baldwin, author of Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red

The fun and interest of this book, despite its account of a grim post WWII American angst, comes in the unusual combination of films at play: from Singin in the Rain to The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, from Lina Lamont to Norma Desmond to Margo Channing, Nadel’s insightful study reveals the bizarre disquiet of an age in which men could only preserve their innocence by putting women in their place.' Linda Williams, author of On The Wire

Revisiting the early Cold War period, Demographic Angst offers illuminating historical perspectives on a dozen classic films. Well researched and always engaging, this is a perfect meeting of American studies and film studies. Steven Cohan, author of The Sound of Musicals

Explores newly emergent cultural anxieties as worked through in such films as Singin' in the Rain, On the Waterfront, and Sunset Boulevard. Chronicle

Engaging and thought-provoking. Philadelphia Inquirer

Nadel’s meticulously worked out argument puts Maher’s casual polemic on a solid foundation. As much as the book promises to enjoy longevity as an intelligent, well-informed, and insightful study of America in the Fifties, taking its place among landmarks studies like May’s Homeward Bound, critical understanding of Fifties-style identity politics as Nadel presents it in Demographic Angst might also inform the debate of contemporary politics—a politics which, incidentally, is similarly rife with ‘demographic angst’ as that in the Fifties. Cercles

ALAN NADEL is the William T. Bryan Chair of American Literature and Culture at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He is the author or editor of several books, including Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age.

Preface
1. The Character of Post–World War II America
2. Singin’ in the (HUAC) Rain: Job Security, Stardom, and the Abjection of Lena Lamont
3. It’s All about Eve
4. “What Starts Like a Scary Tale . . .”: The Right to Work On the Waterfront
5. “Life Could Not Better Be”: Disorganized Labor, the Little Man, and The Court Jester
6. Citizens of the Free World Unite: International Tourism and Postwar Identity in Roman Holiday, The Teahouse of the August Moon, and Sayonara
7. Expedient Exaggeration and the Scale of Cold War Farce in North by Northwest
8. Defiant Desegregation with No (Liberal) Way Out
9. “I Want to Be in America”: Urban Integration, Pan-American Friendship, and West Side Story
Acknowledgments
Filmography
Notes
Works Cited
Index

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