Transactions, Transgressions, Tranformations

by Fehrenbach, Heide; Poiger, Uta G.

• ISBN13: 9781571811080
• ISBN10: 1571811087
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-01-01
• Publisher: Berghahn Books

Summary

American culture has been one of the most controversial exports of the United States: greeted with enthusiasm by some, with hostility by others. Yet, few societies escape its influence. However, not all changes should be interpreted simply as "Americanization." The shaping of the postwar world has been much more complex than this term implies as is shown in this volume that explores the links between Americanization and modernity in Western Europe and Japan. In considering the impact of products and images ranging from movies and music to fashion and architecture, a multi-disciplinary group of contributors asks how American culture has been employed internationally in the articulation of postwar identities -- be they national or subnational, socially sanctioned or socially transgressive. Their essays on France, Italy, Germany and Japan move beyond the simple paradigms of colonization and democratic modernization, yet retain a sensitivity to the asymmetries in the postwar power relationships between these countries and the United States. An extensive introductio

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Notes on Contributors	x
Introduction: Americanization Reconsidered	xiii
Heide Fehrenbach
Uta G. Poiger
I. Twentieth-Century Modernities
America in the German Imagination	3	(23)
Mary Nolan
Comparative Anti-Americanism in Western Europe	26	(19)
David W. Ellwood
Surface above All? American Influence on Japanese Urban Space	45	(36)
Botond Bognar
II. Drawing Cultural Boundaries, Forging the National
Persistent Myths of Americanization: German Reconstruction and the Renationalization of Postwar Cinema, 1945--1965	81	(28)
Heide Fehrenbach
No More Song and Dance: French Radio Broadcast Quotas, Chansons, and Cultural Exceptions	109	(18)
James Petterson
III. Transnational Stylings: American Music and the Politics of Identity
American Music, Cold War Liberalism, and German Identities	127	(21)
Uta G. Poiger
Jukebox Boys: Postwar Italian Music and the Culture of Covering	148	(18)
Franco Minganti
The Social Production of Difference: Imitation and Authenticity in Japanese Rap Music	166	(21)
Ian Condry
IV. De-essentializing ``America'' and the ``Native''
Learning from America: Postwar Urban Recovery in West Germany	187	(21)
Peter Krieger
The French Cinema and Hollywood: A Case Study of Americanization	208	(16)
Richard F. Kuisel
Waiting for Godzilla: Chaotic Negotiations between Post-Orientalism and Hyper-Occidentalism	224	(13)
Takayuki Tatsumi
Select Bibliography	237	(10)
Index	247