Migrant Media

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Southern History ◽  
Black And White ◽  
History Of ◽  
Studio System ◽  
Southern Migrants ◽  
Ubiquitous Presence ◽  
Hollywood Studio System

Chapter 2 provides a history of southern migration and its impact on American culture at large. Most pointedly, black and white southern migrants to Los Angeles contributed in fundamental ways to the development of the Hollywood studio system, and the “southernization” of many of its institutions. Southern filmmakers included D. W. Griffith and many of his acolytes and younger peers. Other southerners occupied positions throughout the industry, and the enormous output of films registered southern history and culture in many ways: in the appearances of southern actors, in the presence of jazz, in films of every genre, and perhaps more than anything else in the ubiquitous presence of segregation, which the system as a whole had adopted for its own purposes.

Hollywood Regionalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-42
Author(s):  
Alexandra Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Big Five ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Film Producer ◽  
Studio System ◽  
Hollywood Studio System

In her sixty years on earth, Gene Stratton-Porter was many things: a women's club organizer, nature photographer, naturalist, conservationist, best-selling novelist, and a burgeoning film producer who died just as her film studio began to realize her mission of adapting her novels into movies that could further her education and conservation efforts. By 1960, eight of her books had been turned into twenty-one films—silent and sound, black and white and color, from Poverty Row studios to members of the Big Five. This article examines how Stratton-Porter and others translated her regionalism and conservationism to film across a span of forty-three years that saw major revolutions in Hollywood filmmaking. The Hollywood studio system, I argue, appropriated her successful brand of regionalism and her audience of women's club members, while also augmenting her problematically genteel mode of activism.

Southern Border Formation Narratives: Controlling the Flow of People

2018 ◽  
pp. 27-54
Author(s):  
Mary Weaks-Baxter
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Hispanic Americans ◽  
Southern History ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Black And White ◽  
History Of ◽  
Southern Border ◽  
Cabeza De Vaca ◽  
Looking Back

Looking back into Southern history, this chapter examines ways Border Formation Narratives disrupted cultural continuity for enslaved Africans, walled out “uncivilized” cultures, extended slavery into contested territories, and created the South’s borders. Examining hegemonic devices and struggles against them, this chapter analyzes early writings by Equiano, Wheatley, and Cabeza de Vaca, and an image of Pocahontas and then focuses on 19th Century border building that identified the Mason-Dixon as marker of Southern nationhood and pushed Native Americans and Hispanic Americans out of the Southern frame to solidify the region as based on polarities of black and white. The chapter examines Ruiz de Burton’s reflections on border circumstances of Mexican-Americans, Hentz’s fictional transformation of a Northern-born woman into a Southerner, and the revisionist history of the composition of the song “Dixie.” There is also discussion of attempts by Haley and Walker, and artist Tom Feelings to reclaim control of communal narratives.

Book Reviews

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-205
Author(s):  
Hilary Radner ◽  
Graham H. Roberts ◽  
Vanessa Jones ◽  
Graham H. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Communication Style ◽  
University Of Chicago ◽  
Black And White ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Chicago Press ◽  
History Of Los Angeles

Fashion Film: Art and Advertising in the Digital A ge, Nicholas Rees-Roberts (2018) London: Bloomsbury, xv+220 pp., ISBN 978-0-85785-666-1, hb/k, £63.00; pb/k, £20.69Street Fashion Moscow, Elena Siemens (2017) Bristol and Chicago: Intellect and The University of Chicago Press, 160 pp., 192, colour illustrations, ISBN 978-1-41578-320-1, h/bk, £64.50L.A. Chic: A Locational History of Los Angeles Fashion, Susan Ingram and Markus Reisenleitner (2018) Bristol and Intellect and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 234 pp., 81 black and white illustrations, ISBN 978-1-78320-934-7, pb/k, £34Transglobal Fashion Narratives: Clothing Communication, Style Statements and Brand Storytelling, Anne Peirson-Smith and Joseph H. Hancock II (eds) (2018) Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, vi + 363 pp., 50 b&w illustrations, 3 tables, ISBN 978-1-78320-844-9, h/bk, £83.00

Review: Urban Latino Cultures: La Vida Latina en LA by Gustavo Leclerc, Raúl Villa, and Michael J. Dear (eds.)

1999 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-128
Author(s):  
Catherine S. Ramirez
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
History Of ◽  
Crime Wave ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The City ◽  
History Of Los Angeles

Throughout the twentieth century (and now the twenty-first), the specter of a Latina/o past, present, and future has haunted the myth of Los Angeles as a sunny, bucolic paradise. At the same time it has loomed behind narratives of the city as a dystopic, urban nightmare. In the 1940s Carey McWilliams pointed to the fabrication of a “Spanish fantasy heritage” that made Los Angeles the bygone home of fair señoritas, genteel caballeros and benevolent mission padres. Meanwhile, the dominant Angeleno press invented a “zoot” (read Mexican-American) crime wave. Unlike the aristocratic, European Californias/os of lore, the Mexican/American “gangsters” of the 1940s were described as racial mongrels. What's more, the newspapers explicitly identified them as the sons and daughters of immigrants-thus eliding any link they may have had to the Californias/os of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or to the history of Los Angeles in general.

Cultura Panamericana

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Macías
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Sense Of Place ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Expressive Culture ◽  
Culture Industries ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
Pan American

I am writing this analytical appreciation of cultura panamericana, or pan-American culture, to propose a wider recognition of how its historical linkages and contemporary manifestations confront colonialism, honor indigenous roots, and reflect multiple, mixed-race identities. Although often mediated by transnational pop-culture industries, expressive cultural forms such as art and music articulate resonant themes that connect US Latinos and Latinas to Latin Americans, pointing the way toward a hemispheric imaginary. In US murals, for example, whether in the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen or the Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park, pan-American expressive culture offers alternative representations by embracing indigeneity, and it creates a sense of place by tropicalizing urban spaces.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document