An eclectic and insightful collection of essays predicated on the hypothesis that popular cultural documents provide unique insights into the concerns, anxieties and desires of their times. 1950s popular culture is analysed by leading scholars and critics such as Christopher Frayling, Mark Jancovich, Kim Newman and David J. Skal.

'This collection by a range of leading scholars probes beneath the surface of 1950s American culture to examine the undercurrents of anxiety which the material prosperity of that decade was concealing. The resulting analysis of popular genres, particularly fiction and film, sheds fascinating new light on a period which is far more complex than we had imagined.' - David Seed, University of Liverpool, UK

Autorentext
KEVIN CORSTORPHINE Lecturer in English at the University of Hull, UK DARA DOWNEY IRCHSS Post-doctoral research fellow at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland CHRISTOPHER FRAYLING Rector and Professor of Cultural History at the Royal College of Art in London from 1996-2009, as well as a former Chairman of the Arts Council England, UK MARK JANCOVICH Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK DEREK JOHNSTON Ph.D. Graduate from the University of East Anglia, UK WAYNE KINSEY Consultant Histopathologist in Norwich and Lecturer at the University of East Anglia School of Medicine, UK KIM NEWMAN Novelist, critic and broadcaster LORNA PIATTI-FARNELL Lecturer in Cultural and Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology, Australia DAVID J. SKAL Author and Documentary Filmmaker

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Dedication List of Illustrations Note on Contributors Introduction 'A-Bombs, B-Pictures and C-Cups'; D.J.Skal 'It's in the trees! It's coming!' Night of the Demon and the Decline and Fall of the British Empire; D.Jones Mutants and Monsters; K.Newman 'Don't Dare See It Alone!' The Fifties Hammer Invasion; W.Kinsey Genre, Special Effects and Authorship in the Critical Reception of Science Fiction Film and Television during the 1950s; M.Jancovich & D.Johnston Hammer's Dracula ; C.Frayling Fast Cars and Bullet Bras: The Image of the Female Juvenile Delinquent in 1950s America; E.McCarthy 'A Search for the Father-Image': Masculine Anxiety in Robert Bloch's 1950s Fiction; K.Corstorphine 'Reading her Difficult Riddle': Shirley Jackson and late 1950s' Anthropology; D.Downey 'At My Cooking I Feel It Looking': Food, Domestic Fantasies and Consumer Anxiety in Sylvia Plath's Writing; L.Piatti-Farnell 'All that Zombies Allow' Re-Imagining the Fifties in Far From Heaven and Fido ; B.M.Murphy Bibliography Filmography Index