Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight
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Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight

Eric Avila

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  2. English
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eBook - PDF

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight

Eric Avila

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About This Book

Los Angeles pulsed with economic vitality and demographic growth in the decades following World War II. This vividly detailed cultural history of L.A. from 1940 to 1970 traces the rise of a new suburban consciousness adopted by a generation of migrants who abandoned older American cities for Southern California's booming urban region. Eric Avila explores expressions of this new "white identity" in popular culture with provocative discussions of Hollywood and film noir, Dodger Stadium, Disneyland, and L.A.'s renowned freeways. These institutions not only mirrored this new culture of suburban whiteness and helped shape it, but also, as Avila argues, reveal the profound relationship between the increasingly fragmented urban landscape of Los Angeles and the rise of a new political outlook that rejected the tenets of New Deal liberalism and anticipated the emergence of the New Right. Avila examines disparate manifestations of popular culture in architecture, art, music, and more to illustrate the unfolding urban dynamics of postwar Los Angeles. He also synthesizes important currents of new research in urban history, cultural studies, and critical race theory, weaving a textured narrative about the interplay of space, cultural representation, and identity amid the westward shift of capital and culture in postwar America.

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Information

Publisher
University of California Press
Year
2004
ISBN
9780520939714
Edition
1
Topic
Scienze sociali
Subtopic
Sociologia urbana
1949 
Housing 
Act 
to 
build 
eleven 
apartment 
buildings 
“so 
spaced 
and 
ori-
ented 
as 
to 
take 
full 
advantage 
of 
views,
sun 
and 
breeze.”
90
The 
mid-1950s 
defeat 
of 
public 
housing,
however,
freed 
the 
Los 
Angeles
Community 
Redevelopment 
Agency 
(CRA) 
to 
pursue 
a 
redevelopment 
pro-
gram 
that 
did 
not 
contain 
a 
housing 
component,
one 
that 
more 
closely 
re-
flected 
the 
corporate-civic 
vision 
of 
GLAPI 
and 
the 
Downtown 
Business-
men’s 
Association. A 
sense 
of 
betrayal 
descended 
on 
the 
soon-to-be-displaced
residents 
of 
Bunker 
Hill,
who 
waged 
a 
campaign 
against 
the 
CRA 
through
letter 
writing,
lawsuits,
and 
public 
protests.
Much 
of 
their 
outrage 
focused 
on
the 
apparent 
contradiction 
in 
the 
logic 
of 
the 
city’s 
probusiness 
forces,
which
decried 
government-subsidized 
housing 
as 
“socialistic,”
yet 
welcomed 
the
use 
of 
public 
monies 
for 
slum 
clearance 
and 
urban 
renewal.
Without 
the
support 
of 
organized 
labor,
which 
by 
the 
1950s 
had 
abandoned 
New 
Deal
issues 
such 
as 
public 
housing 
and 
had 
embraced 
the 
prodevelopment 
agenda
of 
the 
city’s 
corporate 
interests,
the 
community 
activists 
of 
Bunker 
Hill
found 
little 
support 
for 
their 
cause.
91
The 
Nation’s 
“White 
Spot”
/
59
Figure 
1.
Noir 
Los 
Angeles,
circa 
1940:
“blight”
on 
Bunker 
Hill.
(Courtesy 
of
the 
Los 
Angeles 
Public 
Library.)

Table of contents