Sociology on Film: Postwar Hollywood's Prestige Commodity by Chris Cagle - 2017

Rutgers University Press, 2017. Hardbound. New Book. Hardbound. This volume examines social problem films from the 1930s to the postwar years and why the genre became prominent in Hollywood after World War II. It discusses how social problem films were a catalyst in the industry's shift in approach to “serious” filmmaking; 1940s social problem films as based in the intellectual foundations of American sociology; how Hollywood drew on popular sociology to participate in the mass public sphere; the solidification of the social problem film around the discourse of the social, showing that the film industry began to converge in its conception of the genre as the abstract sense of the social was dominant; and best-selling, nongenre novels that addressed contemporary issues as sources for these films. (2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR)