Happy Days
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★★★★★
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1970s
70s
A01=Benjamin L. Alpers
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
american studies
Author_Benjamin L. Alpers
automatic-update
bicentennial
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBAH
Category=HBG
Category=HBJK
Category=HBLW
Category=NHAH
Category=NHB
Category=NHK
COP=United States
culture
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
Language_English
nostalgia
oil embargo
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
softlaunch
us history
vietnam war
Watergate
Product details
- ISBN 9781978830547
- Weight: 68g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 12 Jan 2024
- Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days
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After the techno-futurism of the 1950s and the utopian 1960s vision of a “great society,” the 1970s saw Americans turning to the past as a source for both nostalgic escapism and serious reflection on the nation’s history. While some popular works like Grease presented the relatively recent past as a more innocent time, far away from the nation’s post-Vietnam, post-Watergate malaise, others like Roots used America’s bicentennial as an occasion for deep soul-searching.
Happy Days investigates how 1970s popular culture was obsessed with America’s past but often offered radically different interpretations of the same historical events and icons. Even the figure of the greaser, once an icon of juvenile delinquency, was made family-friendly by Henry Winkler’s Fonzie at the same time that he was being appropriated in more threatening ways by punk and gay subcultures. The cultural historian Benjamin Alpers discovers similar levels of ambivalence toward the past in 1970s neo-noir films, representations of America’s founding, and neo-slave narratives by Alex Haley and Octavia Butler. By exploring how Americans used the 1970s to construct divergent representations of their shared history, he identifies it as a pivotal moment in the nation’s ideological fracturing.
Happy Days investigates how 1970s popular culture was obsessed with America’s past but often offered radically different interpretations of the same historical events and icons. Even the figure of the greaser, once an icon of juvenile delinquency, was made family-friendly by Henry Winkler’s Fonzie at the same time that he was being appropriated in more threatening ways by punk and gay subcultures. The cultural historian Benjamin Alpers discovers similar levels of ambivalence toward the past in 1970s neo-noir films, representations of America’s founding, and neo-slave narratives by Alex Haley and Octavia Butler. By exploring how Americans used the 1970s to construct divergent representations of their shared history, he identifies it as a pivotal moment in the nation’s ideological fracturing.
BENJAMIN L. ALPERS is a Reach for Excellence Associate Professor of History in the Honors College at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s–1950s.
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