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Podcast: New Books in Performing Arts
Episode: Robert P. Kolker, "Triumph Over Containment: American Film in the 1950s" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
Description: The long 1950s, which extend back to the early postwar period and forward into the early 1960s, were a period of “containment culture” in America, as the media worked to reinforce traditional family values and suspected communist sympathizers were blacklisted from the entertainment industry. Yet some brave filmmakers and actors still challenged the status quo to produce indelible and imaginative work that delivered uncomfortable truths to Cold War audiences.Triumph Over Containment: American Film in the 1950s (Rutgers University Press, 2021) offers an uncompromising look at some of the era’s greatest films and directors, from household names like Al...