Pub Date : 2023-09-04DOI: 10.1080/14775700.2023.2255429
Lance Lomax
ABSTRACT The often-racist portrayals of Asians in Hollywood productions of the 1950s and 1960s and earlier decades constitutes one facet of a double-bind within which Asian Americans have historically found themselves. Bearing in mind wider cultural, economic, and political discourses surrounding Asian American communities in the postwar period, it is important to closely consider specific cinematic representations of Asians during this period. This article argues that 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) operates as a strange and conflicted film informed by progressive science fiction literature and many of the sentiments that would come to define revisionist westerns. Charles Beaumont's screenplay adaptation of Charles G. Finney's novel The Circus of Dr. Lao (1935) infuses the film with clever and engaging dialogue and mirrors the concepts of reversal often present in Beaumont's work. Furthermore, Beaumont's screenplay offers insightful takes on racial and generic dynamics in a film that might otherwise be dismissed as an egregious example of harmful yellowface practices. Thus, viewing 7 Faces of Dr. Lao as a prototypical revisionist western draws attention to its engagement with concepts of reversal and critique of stereotypes.
{"title":"Town Savior or Scourge? Asian Identity in the Western and Generic Reversal in 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)","authors":"Lance Lomax","doi":"10.1080/14775700.2023.2255429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2023.2255429","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The often-racist portrayals of Asians in Hollywood productions of the 1950s and 1960s and earlier decades constitutes one facet of a double-bind within which Asian Americans have historically found themselves. Bearing in mind wider cultural, economic, and political discourses surrounding Asian American communities in the postwar period, it is important to closely consider specific cinematic representations of Asians during this period. This article argues that 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) operates as a strange and conflicted film informed by progressive science fiction literature and many of the sentiments that would come to define revisionist westerns. Charles Beaumont's screenplay adaptation of Charles G. Finney's novel The Circus of Dr. Lao (1935) infuses the film with clever and engaging dialogue and mirrors the concepts of reversal often present in Beaumont's work. Furthermore, Beaumont's screenplay offers insightful takes on racial and generic dynamics in a film that might otherwise be dismissed as an egregious example of harmful yellowface practices. Thus, viewing 7 Faces of Dr. Lao as a prototypical revisionist western draws attention to its engagement with concepts of reversal and critique of stereotypes.","PeriodicalId":114563,"journal":{"name":"Comparative American Studies An International Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131100829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-17DOI: 10.1080/14775700.2023.2247781
Richard Fallon
The founders of cryptozoology in the 1950s implied that their objects of investigation, animals elsewhere presumed mythical or extinct, were beyond respectable science. Back in the late eight-eenth century, Thomas Jefferson had been by no means idiosyncratic in believing that American fossils represented living animals. The subsequent near-consensus regarding extinction was, more-over, complicated in the mid-nineteenth century by evidence that early humans lived alongside mammoths, and by views that myths about monsters were based on human encounters with prehistoric creatures. Such creatures were soon incorporated into a genre of short horror stories. The origin of this familiar genre has rarely been considered in detail. Firstly, I explain, in a transatlantic context, why the ‘living fossil short story’ emerged when it did. Next, I argue that these stories displayed simultaneous urges, firstly, to disturb the natural order by putting the monstrous inhabitants of deep time in contact with contemporary humans, and secondly, to interrogate the directionality of nature by asking whether manly, modern St Georges can return these animals to extinction. I focus on two key examples written by American authors: Charles Jacobs Peterson’s ‘The Last Dragon’ (1871) and Wardon Allan Curtis’s ‘The Monster of Lake LaMetrie’ (1899).
{"title":"Discovering the Living Fossil Short Story in the Late Nineteenth Century","authors":"Richard Fallon","doi":"10.1080/14775700.2023.2247781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2023.2247781","url":null,"abstract":"The founders of cryptozoology in the 1950s implied that their objects of investigation, animals elsewhere presumed mythical or extinct, were beyond respectable science. Back in the late eight-eenth century, Thomas Jefferson had been by no means idiosyncratic in believing that American fossils represented living animals. The subsequent near-consensus regarding extinction was, more-over, complicated in the mid-nineteenth century by evidence that early humans lived alongside mammoths, and by views that myths about monsters were based on human encounters with prehistoric creatures. Such creatures were soon incorporated into a genre of short horror stories. The origin of this familiar genre has rarely been considered in detail. Firstly, I explain, in a transatlantic context, why the ‘living fossil short story’ emerged when it did. Next, I argue that these stories displayed simultaneous urges, firstly, to disturb the natural order by putting the monstrous inhabitants of deep time in contact with contemporary humans, and secondly, to interrogate the directionality of nature by asking whether manly, modern St Georges can return these animals to extinction. I focus on two key examples written by American authors: Charles Jacobs Peterson’s ‘The Last Dragon’ (1871) and Wardon Allan Curtis’s ‘The Monster of Lake LaMetrie’ (1899).","PeriodicalId":114563,"journal":{"name":"Comparative American Studies An International Journal","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129363395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1080/14775700.2023.2229214
Thomas Ruys Smith
{"title":"A Christmas Carol In Nineteenth-Century America, 1844-1870","authors":"Thomas Ruys Smith","doi":"10.1080/14775700.2023.2229214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2023.2229214","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":114563,"journal":{"name":"Comparative American Studies An International Journal","volume":"13 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129837078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-27DOI: 10.1080/14775700.2023.2229213
Rebecca J. Fraser
{"title":"‘Every Child Rises Early on Christmas Morning to See the Johnkannaus’ [Harriet Jacobs]: The Competing Meanings of Christmas for the Enslaved in North Carolina","authors":"Rebecca J. Fraser","doi":"10.1080/14775700.2023.2229213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2023.2229213","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":114563,"journal":{"name":"Comparative American Studies An International Journal","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128843325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-19DOI: 10.1080/14775700.2023.2214075
Stefan Roel Reyes
ABSTRACT This article examines how Texan Revolutionaries portrayed the Texas Revolution as a struggle for modernity. In particular, numerous Anglo-Texans created a narrative in which they cast Santa Anna at the helm of a counter-enlightenment restoring Ancien Régime values. The Revolutionaries drew upon the discourse of the Mexican politician and Texas co-founder Lorenzo de Zavala. This article contests the portrayal of the Texas Revolution as a White and Anglo movement. This manuscript contributes to the historiography by examining Zavala’s influence on the language of the Texas Revolution. Together, Zavala and the Texas Revolutionaries accused Santa Anna of fighting for monarchy and aristocracy. Furthermore, Texan revolutionaries argued the imminent restoration of Catholicism threatened their cherished liberties and freedoms. This was all the while Anglo-Texans portrayed their secession as a struggle for reason, virtue, and happiness. This analysis primarily utilizes the Mirabeau Lamar Papers to discern the sentiments and expressions of numerous individuals involved in the Texas Revolution. The following study contributes to the lacuna in the history of ideas in the Texas Republic. Furthermore, this article links Texas to the broader historiography of Atlantic Revolutions.
{"title":"“A Commission from Heaven”: The Legacy of Lorenzo de Zavala’s Enlightenment Discourse on Texas","authors":"Stefan Roel Reyes","doi":"10.1080/14775700.2023.2214075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2023.2214075","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines how Texan Revolutionaries portrayed the Texas Revolution as a struggle for modernity. In particular, numerous Anglo-Texans created a narrative in which they cast Santa Anna at the helm of a counter-enlightenment restoring Ancien Régime values. The Revolutionaries drew upon the discourse of the Mexican politician and Texas co-founder Lorenzo de Zavala. This article contests the portrayal of the Texas Revolution as a White and Anglo movement. This manuscript contributes to the historiography by examining Zavala’s influence on the language of the Texas Revolution. Together, Zavala and the Texas Revolutionaries accused Santa Anna of fighting for monarchy and aristocracy. Furthermore, Texan revolutionaries argued the imminent restoration of Catholicism threatened their cherished liberties and freedoms. This was all the while Anglo-Texans portrayed their secession as a struggle for reason, virtue, and happiness. This analysis primarily utilizes the Mirabeau Lamar Papers to discern the sentiments and expressions of numerous individuals involved in the Texas Revolution. The following study contributes to the lacuna in the history of ideas in the Texas Republic. Furthermore, this article links Texas to the broader historiography of Atlantic Revolutions.","PeriodicalId":114563,"journal":{"name":"Comparative American Studies An International Journal","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133373169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14775700.2023.2225302
Danielle Cameron
This special issue of Comparative American Studies, titled Age(ing) in America, began life at a symposium, hosted by the University of East Anglia in September 2021. The Age in America symposium, akin to this special issue, sought to illuminate the ways in which constructions of age function as vectors of power and inequality across American culture, and their presence in American literature, film, television and music. As we headed into the second academic year to be affected by the COVID pandemic, contributors from the UK and across the world communed online to share work that examined cultural constructions of age and their intersections with race, gender and sexuality. This special issue brings together innovative, interdisciplinary articles from several of the symposium’s contributors. Varied in focus across a range of media, genres and time periods, these articles demonstrate age to be an urgent, rich subject of analysis for our field of American studies. Critical examination of age and ageing reveals these features of lived experience to be elusive to define and represent, politically charged and in constant dialogue with shifting expectations of youth, adulthood and old age. Indeed, despite sometimes positioned as synonymous, age and ageing constitute two entangled yet distinct concepts whose cultural connotations are camouflaged in language of biological inevitability and essentialism. The difference in name between the original symposium and this special issue speaks to this interrelatedness and difference, and highlights the contributors’ engagement with either or both of these subjects. ‘Age’ speaks to distinct points across an individual’s life, expressed through age categories such as ‘child’ or ‘adult’ and the number of years celebrated at a latest birthday. ‘Ageing’, meanwhile, is the process of moving through these distinct points. As Elizabeth Barry and Margery Vibe Skagen highlight, ageing is ‘a moving target: a process of continuous biological and biographical change rather than a discrete object of attention’ (Barry and Skagen 2020, 1). While still recognising the biological impacts of time passing on the human body, critical study of age and ageing delineates the cultural meanings constructed around and attached to age stages and growing old(er) in specific geographical and temporal contexts. Since the late twentieth century, critical interest in problematising age and ageing has become evident in a number of disciplines and fields. As evidenced early on by Simone de Beauvoir’s phenomenological, deconstructionist Coming of Age (1970, with the English translation published in 1996), some of the most significant, consistent examinations of
《比较美国研究》特刊《美国的年龄》于2021年9月在东安格利亚大学主办的一次研讨会上创刊。《美国时代》研讨会与本期特刊类似，旨在阐明年龄结构作为美国文化中权力和不平等的载体的作用方式，以及它们在美国文学、电影、电视和音乐中的存在。当我们进入受COVID大流行影响的第二个学年时，来自英国和世界各地的贡献者在网上交流，分享了研究年龄文化结构及其与种族、性别和性取向的交集的工作。本期特刊汇集了多位研讨会撰稿人的创新、跨学科文章。这些文章的关注点在不同的媒体、流派和时间段上有所不同，表明年龄是我们美国研究领域一个紧迫而丰富的分析主题。对年龄和老龄化的批判性研究表明，生活经验的这些特征难以定义和代表，具有政治色彩，并与青年、成年和老年的不断变化的期望不断对话。事实上，尽管有时被定位为同义词，但年龄和衰老构成了两个纠缠在一起但截然不同的概念，其文化内涵被生物学必然性和本质主义的语言所掩盖。原来的专题讨论会和这期特刊在名称上的不同说明了这种相互联系和差异，并突出了贡献者对这两个主题中的一个或两个的参与。“年龄”表示一个人一生中的不同阶段，通过年龄类别来表达，比如“儿童”或“成人”，以及最近一次过生日的年数。与此同时，“衰老”是通过这些不同点移动的过程。正如Elizabeth Barry和Margery Vibe Skagen所强调的，衰老是“一个移动的目标:一个持续的生物和传记变化的过程，而不是一个分散的关注对象”(Barry和Skagen 2020, 1)。虽然仍然认识到时间对人体的生物影响，但对年龄和衰老的批判性研究描绘了围绕年龄阶段和特定地理和时间背景下的文化意义。自二十世纪后期以来，在许多学科和领域，对年龄和老龄化问题的关键兴趣已经变得明显。正如西蒙娜·德·波伏娃(Simone de Beauvoir)早期的现象学、解构主义的《成年来临》(Coming of Age, 1970年，英文版于1996年出版)所证明的那样，一些最重要、最一致的研究
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14775700.2023.2169560
Laura Mulcahy
ABSTRACT This article interrogates the idea of female puberty being presented as a traumatic experience in Stephen King’s Carrie (1974) and It (1986). As a point of contrast, there is a brief examination of how King portrays the coming-of-age tale in ‘The Body’ (Different Seasons, 1982) for his young male protagonists – even when death or the supernatural is concerned, coming of age is depicted as an exciting adventure. There is an examination of how King portrays female coming-of-age as traumatic, as girls’ bodies transformed into sites of monstrosity. Referring to the works of Barbara Creed and Sherry B. Ortner, there is a focus on how Carrie White’s inability to hide her menarche leads to her status as the monstrous feminine. This article examines the correlation between menarche and incestuous sexual abuse in relation to It, with reference to King’s Gerald’s Game (1992), and how young girls will blame their developing bodies for their fathers’ predatory behaviour within the novels. There is a focus on how the male characters of It can repress their traumatic memories, but the one female main character is unable to do so due to the insidious nature of her trauma and its inherent connection to her body. This article argues for a more comprehensive understanding of King’s gendered approach to coming-of-age narratives.
本文对斯蒂芬·金的《魔女嘉莉》(1974)和《It》(1986)中女性青春期作为一种创伤经历的观点进行了质疑。作为对比，这里有一个简短的考察，金是如何在《肉体》(不同季节，1982)中为他的年轻男主角描绘成长故事的——即使涉及到死亡或超自然现象，成长也被描绘成一场令人兴奋的冒险。书中考察了金如何将女性的成长描绘成创伤性的，因为女孩的身体变成了怪物的场所。参考芭芭拉·克里德(Barbara Creed)和雪莉·b·奥特纳(Sherry B. Ortner)的作品，这部电影关注的是嘉莉·怀特(Carrie White)无法隐藏初潮，导致她成为可怕的女性。本文以金的《杰拉尔德的游戏》(1992)为参考，探讨了初月经与乱伦性侵犯之间的关系，以及年轻女孩如何将小说中父亲的掠夺性行为归咎于她们发育中的身体。影片关注的是男性角色如何压抑他们的创伤记忆，但其中一位女性主角却无法做到这一点，因为她的创伤及其与身体的内在联系是阴险的。本文主张更全面地理解金对成年叙事的性别化方法。
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14775700.2023.2169559
Maggie Selby
ABSTRACT American author-physician Chris Adrian’s short story ‘A Better Angel’ (2006) explores US healthcare’s problematic relationship to ageing and death and how this is shaped by its ‘cultural infatuation with youth’. The story follows the immature and feckless Dr Carl as he becomes a reluctant companion to his dying father. Paediatrician Carl is a junkie who has cheated his way through medical school, despite the constant presence of a hypercritical guardian angel. Though he is a doctor, Carl abhors the adult world and its association with ageing, frailty, and vulnerability, declaring he hates ‘adult hospitals, and adult medicine and adult patients’. Terrified of the ‘emotional contagion’ that interdependent relationships demand, medicine ironically becomes the perfect haven for a man who despises responsibility and obligation. I argue that the depiction of childhood, parent–child relationships and the elderly in Adrian’s story makes visible how youth and ageing are one of the binaries upon which the discourse of American medicine depends. An ‘Impaired Physician’, Carl deploys the compartmentalised culture of modern medicine to maintain a barrier between himself and what he considers to be the ugly side of human existence that entails dependence, decline and the inevitability of death, reflecting Alan Bleakley’s claim that ‘modern medicine is like a spoiled child who becomes unable to develop adult caring and warm relationships or emotionally satisfying collaboration’.
{"title":"‘I Hated Adult Hospitals, and Adult Medicine and Adult Patients’: Chris Adrian’s ‘A Better Angel’ and American Medicine’s Anxious Relationship to Ageing","authors":"Maggie Selby","doi":"10.1080/14775700.2023.2169559","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2023.2169559","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT American author-physician Chris Adrian’s short story ‘A Better Angel’ (2006) explores US healthcare’s problematic relationship to ageing and death and how this is shaped by its ‘cultural infatuation with youth’. The story follows the immature and feckless Dr Carl as he becomes a reluctant companion to his dying father. Paediatrician Carl is a junkie who has cheated his way through medical school, despite the constant presence of a hypercritical guardian angel. Though he is a doctor, Carl abhors the adult world and its association with ageing, frailty, and vulnerability, declaring he hates ‘adult hospitals, and adult medicine and adult patients’. Terrified of the ‘emotional contagion’ that interdependent relationships demand, medicine ironically becomes the perfect haven for a man who despises responsibility and obligation. I argue that the depiction of childhood, parent–child relationships and the elderly in Adrian’s story makes visible how youth and ageing are one of the binaries upon which the discourse of American medicine depends. An ‘Impaired Physician’, Carl deploys the compartmentalised culture of modern medicine to maintain a barrier between himself and what he considers to be the ugly side of human existence that entails dependence, decline and the inevitability of death, reflecting Alan Bleakley’s claim that ‘modern medicine is like a spoiled child who becomes unable to develop adult caring and warm relationships or emotionally satisfying collaboration’.","PeriodicalId":114563,"journal":{"name":"Comparative American Studies An International Journal","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128136617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14775700.2023.2169565
M.K. Appleton
ABSTRACT In neoliberal societies, our personal lives are increasingly subject to market logics. Feminism has become less a social force for critiquing sexism and violence against women and girls; rather, a consumer force in which feminist vocabulary is commodified, and the ability to extract profit from one’s own bodily femininity is situated as a signifier of empowerment. In this context, women’s feelings are also being commodified. Women are exhorted to perform upbeat feelings, such as confidence and resilience to help them survive in an increasingly precarious and unequal society. The transformation of negative feelings into positive ones has become a crucial way in which women can accrue social and affective value. In this article, I explore the economics of confidence in the short story ‘Los Angeles’ by Emma Cline, by interrogating the relationship between the protagonist’s feeling performances and her fluctuating value. I trace transactions of confidence throughout the story, paying attention to how confidence changes hands, how it confers value and what happens when performances of confidence are not converted into the rewards promised by neoliberal postfeminist value systems. Confidence becomes a sticking point for other feelings, such as disappointment and shame, which highlights the fact that certain neoliberal and postfeminist promises of the ‘good life’ are being slowly drained of their affective potential in contemporary American culture.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14775700.2023.2206010
Simon H. Buck
ABSTRACT From the 1930s to 1950s, dozens of country musicians ‘aged-up’ by drawing on wrinkles, wearing gray wigs, and behaving like ‘old-timers’. Taking as its case study the Kentuckian musician and radio entertainer Louis Marshall ‘Grandpa’ Jones, this article unpacks the phenomenon of age masquerade in mid-twentieth-century country music. Although best remembered as a cast member of the early 1970s CBS series Hee Haw, Jones first started his career as ‘Grandpa’ in the 1930s, when he was still in his twenties. This article asks what Grandpa Jones, and the wider age masquerade phenomenon, reveal about the nation’s hopes and fears in the years between the Great Depression and the beginning of the Cold War. In the process, this article argues that Jones and other fake elders operating in early country music draw attention to the diverse theatrical, technological, commercial, and demographic influences on country music’s development; challenge our ideas about the importance of ‘authenticity’ to the genre; and, more broadly, demonstrate how country music history can provide new perspectives on some of the period’s old-age politics and gender, class, and race dynamics.
{"title":"‘Don’t Be Disrespectful, Young ‘Un!’: Grandpa Jones and Age Masquerade in Country Music","authors":"Simon H. Buck","doi":"10.1080/14775700.2023.2206010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2023.2206010","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT From the 1930s to 1950s, dozens of country musicians ‘aged-up’ by drawing on wrinkles, wearing gray wigs, and behaving like ‘old-timers’. Taking as its case study the Kentuckian musician and radio entertainer Louis Marshall ‘Grandpa’ Jones, this article unpacks the phenomenon of age masquerade in mid-twentieth-century country music. Although best remembered as a cast member of the early 1970s CBS series Hee Haw, Jones first started his career as ‘Grandpa’ in the 1930s, when he was still in his twenties. This article asks what Grandpa Jones, and the wider age masquerade phenomenon, reveal about the nation’s hopes and fears in the years between the Great Depression and the beginning of the Cold War. In the process, this article argues that Jones and other fake elders operating in early country music draw attention to the diverse theatrical, technological, commercial, and demographic influences on country music’s development; challenge our ideas about the importance of ‘authenticity’ to the genre; and, more broadly, demonstrate how country music history can provide new perspectives on some of the period’s old-age politics and gender, class, and race dynamics.","PeriodicalId":114563,"journal":{"name":"Comparative American Studies An International Journal","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129120558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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