scholarly journals Transatlantic Translations of the Button-down Shirt

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Weiner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ivy League ◽  
Class System ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
National Imaginary ◽  
Youth Subcultures ◽  
Class Youth

This article looks at how the button-down shirt has been translated in the American and British contexts. Employing Barthes’ notion of ‘fashion narrative,’ I describe how in the United States, the button-down shirt is closely associated with the Ivy Look, a style that had emerged from the elite Ivy League universities but became mass fashion by the mid-1960s. While the garment remained youthful, continuing to draw on the collegiate fashion narrative, it also spoke to an American national imaginary of affluence, abundance and class mobility. Both the garment and its paratextual meanings circulated through the global fashion system, emerging in a very different context in 1960s Britain. Speaking to British imaginings of America, it remained youthful but was transformed by the particularities of the British class system, becoming closely associated with two of Britain’s working-class youth subcultures: the mods and the skinheads. Emblematic of the subterranean passion for clothing that characterised the culture of young working-class men in Britain during the latter half of the twentieth century, the button-down shirt became a subcultural icon. In turn, the historicisation and commodification of these subcultures has ensured the button-down shirt’s place in the British national imaginary. Comparing publicity materials produced by American and British clothiers, I examine how the garment’s fashion narratives, both British and American, continue to circulate.

His-Panic / My Panic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isar P. Godreau
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Affiliation

This chapter explores the Hispanophobia of U.S. colonial officials and of those working-class Puerto Ricans who supported annexation to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. For both of these groups, Spain represented a backward, antidemocratic influence and—albeit for different reasons—a suspect source of whiteness. San Antón residents expressed disdain for Spaniards in various ways in formal and informal conversations, regardless of their political affiliation. These stories do not portray Spaniards as a civilizing source of national identity but rather as a barbaric people engaged in gruesome practices. However, opinions about Spaniards were less negative in narratives of older residents who were more specifically grounded in San Antón and who personalized stories through telling about their own families.

Black Rio

Contracultura ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Dunn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Predominantly Black ◽  
Soul Music ◽  
Cultural Movements ◽  
Black Activist ◽  
Class Youth

Chapter Four examines the specifically black urban counterculture associated with the so-called Black Rio movement. Black Rio was a cultural phenomenon that brought together predominantly black, working-class youth from Rio’s north zone for dance parties, called bailes soul featuring recorded music from the United States. The author discusses in particular the work of Dom Filó, a black activist and baile soul promoter. At the same time, local Brazilian artists, like Tim Maia and Gerson King, forged a distinctly Brazilian soul music sung in Portuguese. Largely dismissed by critics as a passing fad, the Black Rio movement can be understood as a cultural response to dominant racial discourse, which celebrated Brazil as a racially democratic mestiço nation largely free from racism. Though not overtly or stridently political, the Black Rio movement created conditions for Afro-Brazilian youth to affirm a distinct ethnic identity. This chapter places these black cultural movements in the context of countercultural discourse, seeking to explore points of dialogue and discord with other social movements.

“I Slant My Gags to the Lawrence Welk Gum Chewers”

Funny Girls ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Michelle Ann Abate
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Ethnicity And Race ◽  
Central Characters ◽  
The Way

Chapter Two explores Ernie Bushmiller'sNancy.In what embodies an overlooked facet of the strip, many of its signature traits, central characters, and core qualities can be traced back to one the most popular modes of entertainment in the United States during the early twentieth century: vaudeville.From the gag humor employed throughout the comic and Nancy's penchant for linguistic misunderstandings to Sluggo's use of working-class dialect and the comedic exchanges that take place between him and Nancy, the strip is an amalgamation of vaudevillian elements. An understanding of the way in which vaudeville permeates Nancy helps to account for the tremendous appeal of the strip along with its longstanding low cultural esteem. At the same time, the elements of vaudeville that can be located within Nancy add a new facet to discussions of class, ethnicity, and race within the comic.

Middle-Class Victorian Street Arabs: Modern Re-creations of the Baker Street Irregulars

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Cheetham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Street Children ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Upward Shift

In three of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories there are brief appearances of the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of ‘street Arabs’ who help Holmes with his investigations. These children have been re-imagined in modern children's literature in at least twenty-seven texts in a variety of media and with writers from both Britain and the United States. All these modern stories show a marked upward shift in the class of the Irregulars away from the lower working class of Conan-Doyle's originals. The shift occurs through attributing middle-class origins to the leaders of the Irregulars, through raising the class of the Irregulars in general, and through giving the children life environments more comfortable, safe, and financially secure than would have been possible for late-Victorian street children. Because of the variety in texts and writers, it is argued that this shift is not a result of the conscious political or ideological positions of individual writers, but rather reflects common unconscious narrative choices. The class-shift is examined in relation to the various pressures of conventions in children's literature, concepts of audience, and common concepts of class in society.

The Insidious Momentum of American Mass Incarceration

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklin E. Zimring
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Single Generation ◽  
American Life ◽  
Peak Rate ◽  
Or Practice

The phenomenal growth of penal confinement in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century is still a public policy mystery. Why did it happen when it happened? What explains the unprecedented magnitude of prison and jail expansion? Why are the current levels of penal confinement so very close to the all-time peak rate reached in 2007? What is the likely course of levels of penal confinement in the next generation of American life? Are there changes in government or policy that can avoid the prospect of mass incarceration as a chronic element of governance in the United States? This study is organized around four major concerns: What happened in the 33 years after 1973? Why did these extraordinary changes happen in that single generation? What is likely to happen to levels of penal confinement in the next three decades? What changes in law or practice might reduce this likely penal future?

Orientalized Aztecs: Observations on the Americanization of Theatrical Dance

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-50
Author(s):  
K. Mitchell Snow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Policy ◽  
Ballets Russes

The opening decades of the twentieth century saw a passing fashion for “Aztec” dancing in the vaudeville theaters of the United States. Russian classical dancers Kosloff and Fokine tapped the orientalist currents of the Ballets Russes, adopting the Aztec as superficial signs of the American. Conversely, works by Shawn and film director Cecil B. DeMille, which served as points of reference for the Russians, represented a continuation of equally orientalist attitudes toward Mexico's past, forged during the realization of the United States’ policy of Manifest Destiny. The emergence of a cadre of trained dancers from Mexico, trained by students of Kosloff and Shawn, would bring a distinctively different perspective on the presentation of their heritage to the dance stage, one that was no longer based in the imagination of an expansionist America.

A Century of America on Chinese Screens

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiwei Xiao
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Print Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
American People ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Films ◽  
New Millennium

AbstractNo serious study has been published on how Chinese filmmakers have portrayed the United States and the American people over the last century. The number of such films is not large. That fact stands in sharp contrast not only to the number of "China pictures" produced in the United States, which is not surprising, but also in contrast to the major role played by Chinese print media. This essay surveys the history of Chinese cinematic images of America from the early twentieth century to the new millennium and notes the shifts from mostly positive portrayal in the pre-1949 Chinese films, to universal condemnation during the Mao years and to a more nuanced, complex, and multi-colored presentation of the last few decades.

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