Best-Sellers and Their Film Adaptations in Postwar America

by Jane Hendler, Dr Yoshinobu Hakutani

Best-Sellers and Their Film Adaptations in Postwar America looks at some of the most popular novels of the 1950s and examines how their representations of gender identity and conflict dispute and re-imagine the dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity in postwar culture. Working with the claim that gender identity emerged as a primary signifier of national identity within Cold War ideology, Jane Hendler provides a detailed, illuminating analysis of how five best-sellers and their film adaptations address a range of intersecting historical issues, including communist containment, corporate culture, family life, and race relations, all of which were integrally linked to gender and key issues of American identity. Each chapter offers compelling, layered readings of the multiple social discourses that fed into the production and reception of these texts that will interest readers in film, gender, and cultural studies.