Tinsel and Rust: Hollywood Film and Postindustrial Cities in the United States

FAIN: FT-259957-18

Michael David Dwyer, PhD
Arcadia University (Glenside, PA 19038-3215)

Preparation for publication of a book-length study of the relationship between postindustrial cities and film in the United States, from the 1970s to the present.

Since the term entered popular usage in the early 1980s, the “Rust Belt” has gained considerable cultural and political pull in the United States. Not merely a descriptor for a geographical region surrounding the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley, “the Rust Belt” serves as a potent symbol for America’s past, present, and impending future. Much of the social construction of the idea of the Rust Belt—both then and now–has occurred in popular film. Filmic representations of shuttered auto plants, unemployed laborers, and decaying downtowns have all contributed to narratives of American decline. At the same time, cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh have actively attempted to court film and television production in an effort to craft their own stories of American renewal. In my manuscript Tinsel and Rust: Hollywood Film and Postindustrial America, I examine the complicated relationship between postindustrial cities and the creative industries in the United States.

Media Coverage

Dwyer Receives NEH Grant to Study Rust Belt Cities in Film (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Caitlin Burns
Publication: Arcadia Bulletin
Date: 4/18/2018
URL: https://www.arcadia.edu/news/2018/04/dwyer-receives-neh-grant-study-rust-belt-cities-film

Associated Products

“Cooley High, Cabrini-Green, and the Uneven Rusting of Chicago” (Book Section)
Title: “Cooley High, Cabrini-Green, and the Uneven Rusting of Chicago”
Author: Dwyer, Michael D
Editor: Palmer, Lorrie
Abstract: Cooley High (1975), a coming of age drama set in Chicago's Cabrini-Green public housing projects in 1963, is most often discussed as a "nostalgia film." However, this chapter argues that it goes beyond simple romanticization of "the good old days" and instead reveals and reflects upon the myriad ways that residents of mid-century public housing were confined by a built environment that reinforced racial segregation and White supremacy. In this light, Cooley High affords us an opportunity to see how the so-called ‘urban crisis’ of the 1960s served, in part, as a cover story that allowed the powerful to pin the blame for massive divestment in industrial cities on their most vulnerable communities. This not only renders visible the relationships between race and space, but also the centrality of the concept of the so-called ‘failing public housing project’ to the emergent concept of the Rust Belt city in decline.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1420380836
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Book Title: Home Screens: Public Housing in Global Film & Television
ISBN: 9781350253964

"The Rise of the Commuter Class: Postindustrialism, Expressways, and Chicago Teen Films of the 1980s" (Article)
Title: "The Rise of the Commuter Class: Postindustrialism, Expressways, and Chicago Teen Films of the 1980s"
Author: Dwyer, Michael D.
Abstract: Michael Dwyer re-examines the 1980s Chicagoland teen films Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Adventures in Babysitting as commuter narratives that speak to the city’s emerging postindustrial identity.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/2023/09/commuter-class/
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Publisher: Mediapolis

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