The dissertation seeks to identify and analyze the cultural work performed by the Hollywood youth narrative during the 1980s and early nineties, a period that James Davison Hunter has characterized as a domestic culture war. This era of intense ideological confrontation between philosophical agendas loosely defined as liberal and conservative, increasing social change, and social polarization and gender/sexual orientation backlash began with Ronald Reagans landslide victory in 1980 and continued for twelve years through the presidency of George Bush, Sr.
The dissertation examines the Hollywood youth narrative in the context of the family values debate and explicates its role in negotiating and resolving social conflict in a period of intense social change. The dissertation theorizes the historic and cultural function of the Hollywood youth narrative in translating complex social problems into generational and familial conflicts that can be easily, if superficially, resolved through conventional Hollywood genre narrative structures. In the specific instance of the family values debate, the dissertation analyzes how important low-budget Hollywood youth narratives both supported and challenged the traditional translation of social conflict into easily resolved generational conflict to reveal the complex social and economic factors behind the crisis in the American family.
The Fifties played a critical role in debates regarding family life during the Reagan and Bush era. The dissertation explicates and contrasts the definitions of the Fifties and the use of 1950s Hollywood film and television materials in the Hollywood youth narrative and Family Values Campaign and demonstrates how young filmmakers used the icons, images and narrative structures of important 1950s Hollywood films to both support and challenge the socially conservative vision of American family life promoted by the Family Values Campaign and its New Right supporters. Through an analysis of Tim Hunters Rivers Edge and Micheal Lehmanns Heathers, the dissertation demonstrates how two Hollywood youth narratives of the period reveal the fundamental contradictions between the New Rights idealized versions of American family values and the values of laissez faire capitalism, the often devastating impact of Reaganomics on the family as a site of social reproduction, and the troubled relationship between youth and consumer culture.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-08082005-110134 |
| Date | 04 October 2005 |
| Creators | Connors, Clare Therese |
| Contributors | Dr. Lucy Fischer, Dr. Carol Stabile, Dr. Troy Boone, Dr. Marcia Landy |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08082005-110134/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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