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| author | Peter W. Lee |
| title | From Depression Kids to Cold Warriors: Constructing American Boyhood through Hollywood Films in the Postwar Years, 1946-1951 |
| abstract | This study looks at the impact of the Great Depression and the Second World War on the United Sates in the post-World
War II years, approximately 1946-1951. The study frames this impact through the construction of American boyhood in mainstream Hollywood motion pictures.
The economic and social legacies of the 1930s and 1940s shaped the ways filmmakers created boy characters within filmic narratives. Such narratives included
the (re)formation of the nuclear family, addressing delinquency through gun culture, the "race question," and internationalism. The ways producers and
the public negotiated these themes through cinematic boyhood speak to a larger concern for stability after fifteen years of uncertainty and hardships.
These themes segued into what historians later characterize as the Cold War consensus and containment culture: patriotism, militarism, and conformity
as safeguards against communism. |
| school | The Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, Drew University |
| degree | Ph.D. (2017) |
| advisor | James Carter |
| committee | Angie Kirby-Calder
Skakti Jaising |
| full text | PWLee.pdf |
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