rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Rise of the spectacular
    sub title: America in the 1950s
  name:
    name part: Hannigan, John
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: enk
    date issued: 2021
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: print
    extent: x, 183 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.
  abstract: In this prequel to Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998), his acclaimed book about the post-industrial city as a site of theming, branding and simulated spaces, sociologist John Hannigan travels back in time to the 1950s. Unfairly stereotyped as 'the tranquillized decade,' America at mid-century hosted an escalating proliferation and conjunction of 'spectacular' events, spaces and technologies. Spectacularization was collectively defined by five features. It reflected and legitimated a dramatic increase in scale from the local/regional to the national. It was mediated by the increasingly popular medium of television. It exploited middle-class tension between comfortable conformity and desire for safe adventure. It celebrated technological progress, boosterism and military power. It was orchestrated and marketed by a constellation, sometimes a coalition, of entrepreneurs and dream merchants, most prominently Walt Disney. In this wide-ranging odyssey across mid-century America, Hannigan visits leisure parks (Cypress Gardens), parades (Tournament of Roses), mega-events (Squaw Valley Olympics, Century 21 Exposition), architectural styles (desert modernism), innovations (underwater photography, circular film projection) and everyday wonders (chemistry sets). Collectively, these fashioned the 'spectacular gaze,' a prism through which Americans in the 1950s were acculturated to and conscripted into a vision of a progressive, technology-based future. Rise of the Spectacular will appeal to architects, landscape designers, geographers, sociologists, historians and leisure/tourism researchers, as well as non-academic readers who are by a fascinating era in history.
  table of contents: Introduction: Re-imagining the 1950s -- On the road : safe adventures in 1950s America -- "The biggest Rolodex in Hollywood" : Walt Disney at mid-century -- Desert spectacular -- The name of the rose -- It happened in Squaw Valley -- The most photographed place in America -- Marine marvels -- Seattle invents the future -- Chemistry sets, planetariums and science fairs -- Interrogating the spectacular.
  note: John Hannigan.
  note: Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
  subject:
    geographic code: n-us---
  subject:
    geographic: United States
    topic: Civilization
    temporal: 1945-
  subject:
    geographic: United States
    topic: History
    temporal: 1945-1953
  subject:
    geographic: United States
    topic: History
    temporal: 1953-1961
  subject:
    topic: Spectacular, The
  classification: E169.12 .H3625 2021
  classification: 973.92
  identifier: 9780367902797
  identifier: 0367902796
  identifier: 9780367902803
  identifier: 036790280X
  identifier: 9781003023548
  identifier: 9781000409024 (ePub ebook)
  identifier: 9781000409000 (PDF ebook)
  identifier: 2021004628
  record info:
    record content source: DLC
    record creation date: 210313
    record change date: 20210827160002.0
    record identifier: in00004451642