Binding: Paperback
Description: In this prequel to Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998) his acclaimed book about the post - industrial city as a site of theming branding and simulated spaces sociologist John Hannigan travels back in time to the 1950s. Unfairly stereotyped as the tranquillized decade America at mid - century hosted an escalating proliferation and conjunction of spectacular events spaces and technologies. Spectacularization was collectively defined by five features. It reflected and legitimated a dramatic increase in scale from the local/regional to the national. It was mediated by the increasingly popular medium of television. It exploited middle - class tension between comfortable conformity and desire for safe adventure. It celebrated technological progress boosterism and military power. It was orchestrated and marketed by a constellation sometimes a coalition of entrepreneurs and dream merchants most prominently Walt Disney. In this wide - ranging odyssey across mid - century America Hannigan visits leisure parks (Cypress Gardens) parades (Tournament of Roses) mega - events (Squaw Valley Olympics Century 21 Exposition) architectural styles (desert modernism) innovations (underwater photography circular film projection) and everyday wonders (chemistry sets). Collectively these fashioned the spectacular gaze a prism through which Americans in the 1950s were acculturated to and conscripted into a vision of a progressive technology - based future. Rise of the Spectacular will appeal to architects landscape designers geographers sociologists historians and leisure/tourism researchers as well as non - academic readers who are by a fascinating era in history.
Title: Rise Of The Spectacular America In The 1950s
Author(s): Hannigan John
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Barcode: 9780367902803
Pages: 184 Pages, 2 Tables, Black And White; 12 Halftones, Black And White; 12 Illustrations, Black And Whi
Publication Date: 8/30/2021
Category: Sports & Outdoor Recreation