The Surface of Things: Reading a Cinema of Decline

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dc.contributor.advisorGiovacchini, Saverioen_US
dc.contributor.authorLeininger, Derek Michaelen_US
dc.contributor.departmentHistoryen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2019-02-08T06:32:38Z
dc.date.available2019-02-08T06:32:38Z
dc.date.issued2018en_US
dc.description.abstractA declensionist imagination dominated intellectual and cultural discourse in American society through the late twentieth century. The 1970s and 1980s were punctuated by real declines of multiple sorts, but the alarmed debates about juvenile delinquency, rural blight, urban decay, and violent crime often obscured coterminous trends and the more meaningful critiques of the historical forces prompting the changes felt as decline. By looking at American films from the 1970s and 1980s focused on thematic decline of varied sorts, this project explores the postmodern social experience of the late-twentieth century and the cultural roots of overcriminalization in the United States. Reading between the filmic lines (or what film theorist Siegfried Kracauer called the surface expressions of cinema) provides clues into unpacking the often contradictory political, social, and cultural configurations taking shape at the end of the twentieth century.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/vjm9-gpjd
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21748
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledAmerican historyen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledFilm studiesen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledModern historyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledCinemaen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledDeclineen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledFilmen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledOvercriminalizationen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledTwentieth Centuryen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledUnited Statesen_US
dc.titleThe Surface of Things: Reading a Cinema of Declineen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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