Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

RETHINKING REBELLION IN THE 1950S

RETHINKING REBELLION IN THE 1950S GLQ: A JOURNAL OF LeSBIAN AND GAy StUDIeS Sarah E. Chinn Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity Leerom Medovoi Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. ix + 387 pp. Here is the conventional wisdom about the United States in the 1950s: because of economic expansion, the Cold War, and the increasing corporatization, suburbanization and commodification of white America, the United States became increasingly conformist, politically conservative, and intolerant of dissent. In reaction, rebels like James Dean, Elvis Presley, and the Beat Generation offered a different kind of vibrant young masculinity that called upon various marginal identities (working class, African American, artistic) to loosen the stranglehold of the “organization man.” Of course, that narrative has been reworked, debunked, restructured, deconstructed, and recast so many times that the conventional wisdom can hardly be called conventional anymore. In fact, on picking up Leerom Medovoi’s Rebels, I was not expecting much in the way of new analysis. I was, however, mistaken. Medovoi’s thesis is both simple and elegant: that the rebel, particularly “the bad boy,” was a necessary part of 1950s popular culture as a corollary and corrective to the man in the gray flannel suit. In its new http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies Duke University Press

RETHINKING REBELLION IN THE 1950S

Loading next page...
 
/lp/duke-university-press/rethinking-rebellion-in-the-1950s-53o8IscEJ0

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
© 2007 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1064-2684
eISSN
1064-2684
DOI
10.1215/10642684-2007-014
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

GLQ: A JOURNAL OF LeSBIAN AND GAy StUDIeS Sarah E. Chinn Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity Leerom Medovoi Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. ix + 387 pp. Here is the conventional wisdom about the United States in the 1950s: because of economic expansion, the Cold War, and the increasing corporatization, suburbanization and commodification of white America, the United States became increasingly conformist, politically conservative, and intolerant of dissent. In reaction, rebels like James Dean, Elvis Presley, and the Beat Generation offered a different kind of vibrant young masculinity that called upon various marginal identities (working class, African American, artistic) to loosen the stranglehold of the “organization man.” Of course, that narrative has been reworked, debunked, restructured, deconstructed, and recast so many times that the conventional wisdom can hardly be called conventional anymore. In fact, on picking up Leerom Medovoi’s Rebels, I was not expecting much in the way of new analysis. I was, however, mistaken. Medovoi’s thesis is both simple and elegant: that the rebel, particularly “the bad boy,” was a necessary part of 1950s popular culture as a corollary and corrective to the man in the gray flannel suit. In its new

Journal

GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay StudiesDuke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2007

There are no references for this article.