Monochrome Memories: Nostalgia and Style in Retro America

by Paul Grainge

Overview

Through a series of engaging and interlinked case studies on the news magazine, Hollywood film, brand advertising, and movie colorization, this volume examines the resurgence of the black and white image in the 1990s. At a time when American culture was undergoing both diversification and demystification, the black and white image became the expression of nostalgia as a cultural style and was strategically used in the media to visualize a sense of American memory, heritage, and identity. Challenging the current definition of nostalgia as a mood connected to longing and loss, the author presents it as a cultural mode that commodifies and aestheticizes memory. By examining the politics of stylized nostalgia, this volume provides new insight into the construction, representation, and preservation of American national memory at the turn of the 20th century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275976187
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	09/30/2002
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

PAUL GRAINGE is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Nottingham. His work on memory and contemporary American media has appeared in Cultural Studies, The Journal of American Studies, American Studies , The International Journal of Cultural Studies, and The Journal of American and Comparative Cultures. He is the editor of Memory and Popular Film (2003).

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: Putting It in Black and White
Moods and Modes
Theorizing Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be
Pastness and the Production of Nostalgia
Monochrome Memory
Picturing History: Time's Past and the Present
Advertising the Archive: Nostalgia and the (Post)national Imaginary
Documenting Memory: Remembering the Past in Hollywood Film
Reclaiming Heritage: Colorization and the Culture War
Conclusion: Visual/Global/Nostalgia
Bibliography
Index