Best-Sellers and Their Film Adaptations in Postwar America: From Here to Eternity, Sayonara, Giant, Auntie Mame, Peyton Place / Edition 1

by Jane Hendler

Overview

Best-Sellers and Their Film Adaptations in Postwar America looks at some of the most popular novels of the 1950s and examines how their representations of gender identity and conflict dispute and re-imagine the dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity in postwar culture. Working with the claim that gender identity emerged as a primary signifier of national identity within Cold War ideology, Jane Hendler provides a detailed, illuminating analysis of how five best-sellers and their film adaptations address a range of intersecting historical issues, including communist containment, corporate culture, family life, and race relations, all of which were integrally linked to gender and key issues of American identity. Each chapter offers compelling, layered readings of the multiple social discourses that fed into the production and reception of these texts that will interest readers in film, gender, and cultural studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820452104
Publisher:	Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
Publication date:	12/13/2001
Series:	Modern American Literature: New Approaches , #28
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 9.06(h) x (d)

About the Author

The Author: Jane Hendler is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Illinois State University.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
1	The Fifties Best-Seller: Texts, Contexts, and Gender Identity in the Postwar Era	1
2	Masculinity and Male Power in James Jones's From Here to Eternity	29
3	"Madame Butterfly with a Social Conscience": Gender, Race, and National Identity in James Michener's Sayonara	69
4	"Slipping from under Me Like a Loose Saddle": The Degeneration of Dynasty in Edna Ferber's Giant	115
5	Contesting the Feminine Mystique: Gender Performance and Female Identity in Patrick Dennis's Auntie Mame	153
6	"Damned and Banned": Female Sexuality in Grace Metalious's Peyton Place	185
7	Conclusion	225
	Notes	233
	Works Cited	251
	Index	269