Read more
Sex, Drugs, & Rock 'n' Roll analyzes the cultural, political, and social revolution that took place in the U.S. (and in time the world) after World War II, crystalizing between 1955 and 1970. During this era, the concept of the American teenager first came into being, significantly altering the relationship between young people and adults.
As the entertainment industries came to realize that a youth market existed, providers of music and movies began to create products specifically for them. While Big Beat music and exploitation films may have initially been targeted for a marginalized audience, during the following decade and a half, such offerings gradually become mainstream, even as the first generation of American teenagers came of age. As a result the so-called youth culture overtook and consumed the primary American culture, as records and films once considered revolutionary transformed into a nostalgia movement, and much of what had been thought of as radical came to be perceived as conservative in a drastically altered social context.
In this book Douglas Brode offers the first full analysis of how an American youth culture evolved.
List of contents
Contents: Toward a New American Cinema: Three Films That Altered Everything - Shake, Rattle and Rock: The Big Beat on the Big Screen - Bad Boys, Dangerous Dolls: The Juvenile Delinquent on Film - I Lost It at the Drive In Movie: An All-American Outdoor Grindhouse - The Tramp Is a Lady: Mamie Van Doren and the Meaning of Life - Surf/Sex/Sand/Spies: The Battles of Bikini Beach - The Last American Virgin: Sandra Dee and the Sexual Revolution - Formulating a Feminine Mystique: The Emergent American Woman on Film - "The British are Coming!": When Bob Dylan Met the Beatles - Go Ask Alice: The Drug Culture on Film - Revolution for the Sell of It: The Beat Generation and the Hippie Movement - Lonesome Highways: Of Car Culture and Motorcycle Mania.
About the author
Douglas Brode (PhD, Syracuse University) is a film and media historian and multi-award winning journalist who teaches at the University of Texas, San Antonio. He is the author of more than 40 books including,
Shakespeare in the Movies: From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love (2000) and
Multiculturalism and the Mouse: Race and Sex in Disney Entertainment (2009).
Summary
Sex, Drugs, & Rock 'n' Roll analyzes the cultural, political, and social revolution that took place in the U.S. (and in time the world) after World War II, crystalizing between 1955 and 1970. During this era, the concept of the American teenager first came into being, significantly altering the relationship between young people and adults.
