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Regional focus/area studies

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Manhattan Melodrama's "Art of the Weak": telling history from the other side in the 1930s talking gangster film

Article Abstract:

The gangster genre in the early 20th century films, such as 'Manhattan Melodrama,' visualizes an inherent contradiction in the legitimate and vernacular perspectives of American life and history. Its narrative focuses on the historical and political marginalization of America's ethnic urban lower class. It compels audiences to opt between the oppressed rebel and the oppressive authority, while constantly undermining the legitimate social culture. The choices acquired great significance in the historical context of the Depression and served to propagate, rather than resolve, a crisis.

Author: Munby, Jonathan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Name: Journal of American Studies
Subject: Regional focus/area studies
ISSN: 0021-8758
Year: 1996
Social aspects, Ethnic relations, Criticism and interpretation, Gangster films, Gangster movies, Manhattan Melodrama (Motion picture)

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"An Octoroon in the Kindling": American vernacular and blackface minstrelsy in 1930s Hollywood

Article Abstract:

'Babes in Arms', 'The Jolson Story', and 'Swanee River' were among the last motion pictures which portrayed blackface minstrelsy. The use of blackface declined throughout the 1930s, being replaced in the early 1940s with the concert-saloon depicted in many Westerns. However, despite continued efforts to reduce the influence of the tradition, blackface is locked into America's theatrical and musical past, and portrayal of American vernacular tradition will always include blackface.

Author: Stanfield, Peter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Name: Journal of American Studies
Subject: Regional focus/area studies
ISSN: 0021-8758
Year: 1997
History, Music, Motion pictures, Movies, Music, American, American music, Blackface entertainers

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Titans/planners, Bohemians/revolutionaries: Male empowerment in the 1930s

Article Abstract:

The development of tropes in both New Deal and radical discourses in the 1930s is examined in order to illustrate the pervasiveness of patterns of male assertion through new homosocial structures. It is analyzed that a possible attempt to reclaim the 1930s narratives will risk another effort at boastful masculine rather than the recovery of feminine values.

Author: Abbott, Philip
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Name: Journal of American Studies
Subject: Regional focus/area studies
ISSN: 0021-8758
Year: 2006
Analysis, Masculinity, Assertiveness (Psychology), 1930 AD, Tropes (Philosophy)

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Subjects list: Portrayals
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