Fragments of a Golden Age

Fragments of a Golden Age

The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940

  • Auteur: Joseph, Gilbert M.; Rubenstein, Anne; Zolov, Eric; Rosenberg, Emily S.
  • Éditeur: Duke University Press
  • Collection: American Encounters/Global Interactions
  • ISBN: 9780822327073
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822383123
  • Lieu de publication:  Durham , United States
  • Année de publication électronique: 2001
  • Mois : Juin
  • Pages: 528
  • DDC: 972.08/2
  • Langue: Anglais
During the twentieth century the Mexican government invested in the creation and promotion of a national culture more aggressively than any other state in the western hemisphere. Fragments of a Golden Age provides a comprehensive cultural history of the vibrant Mexico that emerged after 1940. Agreeing that the politics of culture and its production, dissemination, and reception constitute one of the keys to understanding this period of Mexican history, the volume’s contributors—historians, popular writers, anthropologists, artists, and cultural critics—weigh in on a wealth of topics from music, tourism, television, and sports to theatre, unions, art, and magazines.
Each essay in its own way addresses the fragmentation of a cultural consensus that prevailed during the “golden age” of post–revolutionary prosperity, a time when the state was still successfully bolstering its power with narratives of modernization and shared community. Combining detailed case studies—both urban and rural—with larger discussions of political, economic, and cultural phenomena, the contributors take on such topics as the golden age of Mexican cinema, the death of Pedro Infante as a political spectacle, the 1951 “caravan of hunger,” professional wrestling, rock music, and soap operas.
Fragments of a Golden Age will fill a particular gap for students of modern Mexico, Latin American studies, cultural studies, political economy, and twentieth century history, as well as to others concerned with rethinking the cultural dimensions of nationalism, imperialism, and modernization.

Contributors. Steven J. Bachelor, Quetzil E. Castañeda, Seth Fein, Alison Greene, Omar Hernández, Jis & Trino, Gilbert M. Joseph, Heather Levi, Rubén Martínez, Emile McAnany, John Mraz, Jeffrey M. Pilcher, Elena Poniatowska, Anne Rubenstein, Alex Saragoza, Arthur Schmidt, Mary Kay Vaughan, Eric Zolov

  • Contents
  • List of Illustrations
  • Foreword by Elena Poniatowska
  • Acknowledgments
  • I. RECLAIMING THE HISTORY OF POSTREVOLUTIONARY MEXICO
    • Gilbert M. Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov / Assembling the Fragments:Writing a Cultural History of Mexico Since 1940
    • Arthur Schmidt / Making It Real Compared to What? Reconceptualizing Mexican History Since 1940
  • II. AT PLAY AMONG THE FRAGMENTS
    • Jeffrey M. Pilcher / Mexico’s Pepsi Challenge: Traditional Cooking, Mass Consumption, and National Identity
    • Alex Saragoza / The Selling of Mexico: Tourism and the State, 1929–1952
    • John Mraz / Today, Tomorrow and Always: The Golden Age of Illustrated Magazines in Mexico, 1937–1960
    • Seth Fein / Myths of Cultural Imperialism and Nationalism in Golden Age Mexican Cinema
    • Anne Rubenstein / Bodies, Cities, Cinema: Pedro Infante’s Death as Political Spectacle
    • Eric Zolov / Discovering a Land ‘‘Mysterious and Obvious’’: The Renarrativizing of Postrevolutionary Mexico
    • Steven J. Bachelor / Toiling for the ‘‘New Invaders’’: Autoworkers, Transnational Corporations, and Working-Class Culture in Mexico City, 1955–1968
    • Jis y Trino / El Santos and the Return of the Killer Aztecs!
    • Heather Levi / Masked Media: The Adventures of Lucha Libre on the Small Screen
    • Rubén Martínez / Corazón del Rocanrol
    • Omar Hernández and Emile McAnany / Cultural Industries in the Free Trade Age: A Look at Mexican Television
    • Alison Greene / Cablevision(nation) in Rural Yucatán: Performing Modernity and Mexicanidad in the Early 1990s
    • Quetzil E. Castañeda / The Aura of Ruins
  • III. FINAL REFLECTIONS
    • Mary Kay Vaughan / Transnational Processes and the Rise and Fall of the Mexican Cultural State: Notes from the Past
  • Contributors
  • Index

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