Unhomed

Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema

Pamela Robertson Wojcik

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English

University of California Press
17 July 2024

Dance & Performing arts

In this rich cultural history, Pamela Roberston Wojcik examines America's ambivalent and shifting attitude toward homelessness. She considers film cycles from five distinct historical moments that show characters who are unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than fixed—characters who fail, resist, or opt out of the mandate for a home of one's own. From the tramp films of the silent era to the 2021 Oscar-winning Nomadland, Wojcik reveals a tension in the American imaginary between viewing homelessness as deviant and threatening or emblematic of freedom and independence. Blending social history with insights drawn from a complex array of films, both canonical and fringe, Wojcik effectively ""unhomes"" dominant narratives that cast aspirations for success and social mobility as the focus of American cinema, reminding us that genres of precarity have been central to American cinema (and the American story) all along.

By: Pamela Robertson Wojcik
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 408g
ISBN: 9780520390362
ISBN 10: 0520390369
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 17 July 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction. All Over the Map: Figurations of Mobility and Placelessness 1 • Ubiquitous: The Tramp’s Mobile Masculinity 2 • Uncivilized: World War II Mobilization and Homecoming as Social Problem 3 • Adrift: The Ambivalent Freedom of the Female Hitchhiker 4 • Trash: The Homeless as Urban Waste Epilogue. Stuck: Precarity and Perpetual Motion as Slow Death Notes Works Cited Index

Pamela Robertson Wojcik is Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre and Concurrent in Gender Studies and American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of several works of film and cultural studies, including Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction and The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975.

Reviews for Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema

""This will be an incredibly useful text for any student of media/film studies or American studies, and especially for those concerned with how contemporary art is processing the various crises of domesticity within the USA."" * Screen *