Anxiety and Amnesia in the New Deal’s Social Imaginary: Reading Cassano’s A New Kind of Public

Abstract

The authors examine Graham Cassano’s A New Kind Of Public and its effectiveness in providing a means of analyzing the rise and fall of Popular Front ideology in the 1930s and 1940s. Through the lens of Hollywood film, Cassano examines the changing values brought on by the New Deal and also their demise in the wake of World War II. The authors admire this work—particularly Cassano’s willingness to use multiple theoretical perspectives to create a mosaic of analysis. However, this approach contains an embedded limitation. By engaging in a tight examination of representative films, the full force of Cassano’s conclusions is somewhat muted.

Key Words:

• Cinema
• Ideology
• New Deal
• Popular Front
• Garrison State