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Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight

Film Noir, Disneyland, and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary

University of California, Los Angeles

This article takes popular cultural expressions as a window onto the transformation of the American city after World War II. First, it considers the film genre known as film noir as evidence of a larger perception of social disorder that ensued within the context of the centralized, modern city, which peaked at the turn of the century. Second, it turns to Disneyland as the archetypal example of a postwar suburban order, one that promised to deliver a respite from the racial and sexual upheaval that characterized the culture of industrial urbanism. Together, film noir and Disneyland illuminate the meanings assigned to the structural transformation of the mid-century American city and reveal the cultural underpinnings of a grass-roots conservatism that prized white suburban homeownership. Ultimately, this article emphasizes the interplay of structure and culture, demonstrating the linkage between how cities are imagined and how they are made.

Key Words: popular culture • suburbanization • race and ethnicity • Disneyland • film noir • whiteness

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