Transactions, Transgressions, Transformation : : American Culture in Western Europe and Japan / / ed. by Heide Fehrenbach, Uta G. Poiger.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package Pre-2000
• MitwirkendeR: Bognar, Botond,; Condry, Ian,; Ellwood, David W.,; Fehrenbach, Heide,; Krieger, Peter,; Kuisel, Richard F.,; Minganti, Franco,; Nolan, Mary,; Petterson, James,; Poiger, Uta G.,; Tatsumi, Takayuki,
• HerausgeberIn: Fehrenbach, Heide,; Poiger, Uta G.,
• Place / Publishing House: New York ;, Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [1999]; ©1999
• Year of Publication: 1999
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (272 p.)

American culture has been one of the most controversial exports of the United States: greeted with enthusiasm by some, with hostility by others. Yet, few societies escape its influence. However, not all changes should be interpreted simply as "Americanization." The shaping of the postwar world has been much more complex than this term implies as is shown in this volume that explores the links between Americanization and modernity in Western Europe and Japan. In considering the impact of products and images ranging from movies and music to fashion and architecture, a multi-disciplinary group of contributors asks how American culture has been employed internationally in the articulation of postwar identities - be they national or subnational,socially sanctioned or socially transgressive. Their essays on France, Italy, Germany and Japan move beyond the simple paradigms of colonization and democratic modernization, yet retain a sensitivity to the asymmetries in the postwar power relationships between these countries and the United States. An extensive introduction historically locates changing interpretations of American influences abroad and suggests the problems and promises of "Americanization" as an analytical tool. Its comparative focus and interdisciplinary scope will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars of cold war and post-cold war history.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS -- INTRODUCTION Americanization Reconsidered -- Part I TWENTIETH-CENTURY MODERNITIES -- 1. America in the German Imagination -- 2. Comparative Anti-Americanism in Western Europe -- 3. Surface above All? American Influence on Japanese Urban Space -- Part II DRAWING CULTURAL BOUNDARIES, FORGING THE NATIONAL -- 4. Persistent Myths of Americanization: German Reconstruction and the Renationalization of Postwar Cinema, 1945–1965 -- 5. No More Song and Dance: French Radio Broadcast Quotas, Chansons, and Cultural Exceptions -- Part III TRANSNATIONAL STYLINGS: AMERICAN MUSIC AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY -- 6. American Music, Cold War Liberalism, and German Identities -- 7. Jukebox Boys: Postwar Italian Music and the Culture of Covering -- 8. The Social Production of Difference: Imitation and and Authenticity in Japanese Rap Music -- Part IV DE-ESSENTIALIZING “AMERICA” AND THE “NATIVE” -- 9. Learning from America: Postwar Urban Recovery in West Germany -- 10. The French Cinema and Hollywood: A Case Study of Americanization -- 11. Waiting for Godzilla: Chaotic Negotiations between Post-Orientalism and Hyper-Occidentalism -- SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX