Roger Rawlings
Dr. Roger Rawlings is the author of Ripping England! Postwar British Satire in the Age of Austerity (SUNY Press, 2017-18), an examination of the media and societal landscape in Britain between the years 1945 and 1960, and the Film Studies staple textbook, A Simple Guide to Reading Films, (Kendall-Hunt Publishers, August 2024). Dr. Rawlings did his graduate studies at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and at New York University. He co-wrote and directed the feature film Neurotica (2004), and Executive Produced and co-storied the feature Losers Take All (2014), and has produced award-winning films in Ireland and New York, including Headwrecker which won the Irish Film and Television Academy award for best short for 2002. He has worked for Comedy Central, the American Museum of the Moving Image, on multiple independent films, and as Director of Programming at YIPTV.com. His forthcoming book is an examination of the films (and other creative output) of the artists of Generation X. He teaches film studies at Palm Beach State College.
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Film, Art, And Culture In Post WWII Hollywood
The American film industry boomed during and immediately after World War II, with more than ninety million people going to the movies each week, sometimes even twice a week or more. 1943 to 1959 have been called the “Best Years” by historians, journalists, and academics because so many of the plentiful gifts the U.S. government showered on GIs and various industries that helped win the war (military/defense, transportation/auto, agriculture/provisions, banking/credit, etc.) rippled out to all levels of society, facilitating even the lowliest of classes in gaining higher standards of living than they had ever known before.
But the same years are also called the Age of Anxiety, the Age of Doubt, the Postwar Blues, or a Period of Triumphalist Despair. The mostly B-film noirs were the truest reflections of these postwar worries, but other genres such as new musicals, satires, sci-fi/horror, and ‘swords and sandals’ Biblical epics were also a new part of Hollywood’s studio productions, reflecting this cultural bi-furcation.
This talk will discuss some of the changes and challenges Postwar American culture forced Hollywood to grapple with in those “Best of Years.”