The Motor Car and Popular Culture in the Twentieth Century

by Thoms,David

• ISBN13: 9781859284612
• ISBN10: 1859284612
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-10-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This is a multidisciplinary analysis of the relationship between the motor car and popular culture in the 20th century, which brings together original essays by academics in the UK, North America and Australia. The contributors write from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, including semiotics, social history, literary and film criticism, and musicology. Three main themes are addressed: the car as a cultural image; its impact on leisure and entertainment; and the cultural significance of the processes of manufacturing and selling cars.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors	vii
Introduction	1	(8)
David Thoms
Len Holden
Tim Claydon
The Car as Image	9	(60)
1 `Oh what a feeling!'- The Literatures of the Car	9	(19)
Nicholas Zurbrugg
2 More than a Marque. The Car as Symbol: Aspects of Culture and Ideology	28	(13)
Len Holden
3 Motor Car Ownership in Twentieth-Century Britain: A Matter of Convenience or a Marque of Status	41	(9)
David Thomas
4 `Savage Servility: Cars in the Psyche'	50	(6)
Sebastian Lockwood
5 Mad Max and Aboriginal Automation: Putting Cars to Use in Contemporary Australian Road Films and Narratives	56	(13)
Ken Gelder
Entertainment and Leisure	69	(126)
6 Poop, Poop!--An Early Case of Joy-Reading by an Upper Class Amphibian	69	(15)
Kathleen Bell
7 Automania: Animated Automobiles 1950-1968	84	(12)
Paul Wells
8 Cars and Girls--The Car, Masculinity and Pop Music	96	(24)
Duncan Heining
9 Spectacles of Speed and Endurance: The Formative Years of Motor Racing in Europe	120	(15)
Daryl Adair
10 Classic and Desirable: The Mystique of the British Sports Car	135	(16)
Steven Morewood
`Four Wheels Good: Two Wheels Bad': The Motor Cycle versus the Light Motor Car 1919-1939	151	(26)
Steve Koerner
12 Taste, Status and Middle-Class Motoring in Interwar Britain	177	(18)
Sean O'Connell
Producing and Selling Cars	195	(110)
13 Shop Floor Culture in the Conventry Motor Industry, c.1896-1920	195	(15)
Brad Beaven
14 Cars, Culture and War	210	(17)
Tom Donnelly
15 Images of Disorder: Car Workers' Militancy and the Representation of Industrial Relations in Britain, 1950-1979	227	(17)
Tim Claydon
16 Imagination and Passivity in Leisure: Conventry Car Workers and their Families from the 1920s to the 1990s	244	(34)
Paul Thompson
17 `Mini Loves Dressing Up': Selling Cars to Women	278	(9)
Jenny Rice
Carol Saunders
18 Transports of Difference and Delight: Advertising and the Motor Car in Twentieth-Century Britain	287	(18)
Tim O'Sullivan
Index	305