The American Film in the Crisis of Confidence - by John P McCombe (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book explores Hollywood film within the context of America's late-seventies "malaise." The author demonstrates how Hollywood films reflect cultural anxieties surrounding energy, fiscal austerity, the "broken" American family, and decreasing visibility of people of color in popular culture.

Book Synopsis

American Film in the Crisis of Confidence: Hollywood Malaise, 1976-1983 examines how Hollywood films depict and respond to what U.S. President Jimmy Carter deemed a national "crisis of confidence" in the late 1970s, and what Carter's political opponents referred to as "the Malaise." Over the course of five thematic chapters-as well as an introduction and conclusion-John McCombe explores how a wide range of films from various genres reflect cultural anxieties central to Carter's "crisis of confidence," including those surrounding depleted energy resources, calls for fiscal austerity, the "broken" American family, and the decreasing visibility of people of color in popular culture. Scholars of film studies, cultural studies, American studies, and history will find this book of particular interest.

Review Quotes

"Film lovers will applaud John McCombe's lively and insightful re-imagining of the late 1970s and early 1980s American cinema. This book offers original and provocative takes on films we thought we knew well and films we need to rewatch." --Linda Mizejewski, Distinguished Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Ohio State University, USA

"In between Watergate and the election of President Reagan, himself a newsmaker as America's first divorced president, President Jimmy Carter spoke to America's morality and growing materialism at a moment of domestic and global turmoil. In the wake of his death, much has been made of President Carter's post-presidential life, while less attention has been paid to the domestic and global diplomacy of his presidency. John P. McCombe's American Film in the Crisis of Confidence examines films that detail generational anxieties about energy and cars, racial unease, and foreign threat. McCombe's study offers us a window into how past anxieties from when the U.S.S.R was a Communist block and the U.S. was car king of the world have shaped America's citizens and the world of today." --Johnson Cheu, Assistant Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, Michigan State University, USA, and Editor of Diversity in Disney Films (2013)

About the Author

John McCombe is professor and chair of the English Department at the University of Dayton.