Rise of the Spectacular
In this prequel to Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998), his acclaimed book about the postindustrial city as a site of theming, branding, and simulated spaces, sociologist John Hannigan travels back in time to the 1950s. Unfairly stereotyped as the tranquillized decade, America at mid-century hosted an escalating proliferation and conjunction of spectacular events, spaces, and technologies.
Spectacularization was collectively defined by five features. It reflected and legitimated a dramatic increase in scale from the local/regional to the national. It was mediated by the increasingly popular medium of television. It exploited middle-class tension between comfortable conformity and desire for safe adventure. It celebrated technological progress, boosterism, and military power. It was orchestrated and marketed by a constellation, sometimes a coalition, of entrepreneurs and dream merchants, most prominently Walt Disney. In this wide-ranging odyssey across mid-century America, Hannigan visits leisure parks (Cypress Gardens), parades (Tournament of Roses), mega-events (Squaw Valley Olympics, Century 21 Exposition), architectural styles (desert modernism), innovations (underwater photography, circular film projection), and everyday wonders (chemistry sets). Collectively, these fashioned the spectacular gaze, a prism through which Americans in the 1950s were acculturated to and conscripted into a vision of a progressive, technology-based future.
Rise of the Spectacular will appeal to architects, landscape designers, geographers, sociologists, historians, and leisure/tourism researchers, as well as nonacademic readers, who are interested in learning more about this fascinating era in history.
John Hannigan is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto where he teaches courses in urban sociology, cultural policies, and environment and society. He is the author of four books: Environmental Sociology (1995, 2006, 2014), Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern City (1998), Disasters Without Borders: The International Politics of Natural Disaster (2012), and The Geopolitics of Deep Oceans (2016). Dr Hannigan is a frequent contributor to media discussions of culture and urban development, having appeared among others in/on National Public Radio (US), The Independent (UK), and the Globe & Mail (Canada).
John Hannigans fascinating survey of 1950s America provides a much-needed historical perspective on the rise of the spectacular, showing how entrepreneurs and imagineers combined to craft new leisure experiences for the masses. This book provides a skillful portrait of the transition of the spectacle from the modern into the postmodern era and an essential reference point for scholars of experience production and consumption.
Greg Richards, Tilburg University, author of Small Cities with Big Dreams: Creative Placemaking and Branding Strategies
John Hannigans Rise of the Spectacular takes mid-century spectacles of travel, recreation, science and technology seriously, examining how they offered a sunny, optimistic US futurism, but simultaneously reinforced economic, gender, and racial power structures. These American futures past, from Disneyland to Palm Springs, Seattle to Cypress Gardens, can tell us much about how US consumer and popular culture perceived and represented science, technology, and nature, and imagined a spectacular future, promising, problematic, and now irrecoverable, that shapes us still.
Lawrence Culver, Utah State University, author of The Frontier of Leisure: Southern California and the Shaping of Modern America
Rise of the Spectacular
America in the 1950s
John Hannigan
First published 2022
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2022 John Hannigan
The right of John Hannigan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hannigan, John, author.
Title: Rise of the spectacular: America in the 1950s / John Hannigan.
Description: London; New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021004628 (print) | LCCN 2021004629 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367902797 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367902803 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003023548 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: United StatesCivilization1945 | United StatesHistory19451953. |
United StatesHistory19531961. | Spectacular, The.
Classification: LCC E169.12 .H3625 2021 (print) |
LCC E169.12 (ebook) | DDC 973.92dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021004628
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021004629
ISBN: 978-0-367-90279-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-90280-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-02354-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
To Ruth, as always
Contents
PART 1
California calling
PART 2
Photographing the spectacular
PART 3
Sputnik, science and the spectacular
Rise of the Spectacular began life as a book idea, conceived at the Chelsea Flower Show in London in 2018, about how spectacular floral landscapes, exhibitions, festivals, and designs reflect and shape our fantasies about nature and ourselves. One potential chapter here dealt with branding, strategic tourism, and local growth coalitions in post-World War II America. Eventually, this morphed into the present volume, a prequel to my widely known book Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (Routledge, 1998).
In spring, 2019, my wife Ruth and I went on a working holiday to California. Our travels took us the length of the state, from Squaw Valley and Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, to Palm Springs in the Colorado Deserts Coachella Valley. From this trip came Ruths spectacular photographs in this book, notably in the section entitled California Calling. Indeed, Ruth was an integral part of this book from the beginning to end, helping to shape it in many ways, including acting as photo editor. Her continuing advice, love, and support was priceless.