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Projections of Passing: Postwar Anxieties and Hollywood Films, 1947-1960 by N. Megan Kelley (2021)

The debatable term of “passing,” initially used to describe a basically 19th and 20th century strategy of African-Americans to pass for white (and avoid Jim Crow laws, absurd segregationist rules and social exclusion), in the mid- 1950s took on other forms and meanings. Actually, then it depicted new ways of passing/acting out or incorporating somebody […]

Teenage Thunder – A Front Row Look at the 1950s Teenpics by Mark Thomas McGee (2020)

The teenager, not present in the immediate post-war years, in the early 1950s suddenly became a financial force and a very visible part of American culture. That also meant clueless parents, disgusted older generations and horrified school teachers, as teenage delinquency and violence ostensibly exploded in the mid-fifties. It did not take long before movie […]