5. The suburbanization of American culture

After World War II, the United States emerged as the world’s dominant superpower, inaugurating a golden age of prosperity and abundance. Depression and war were over, affording time to enjoy the comforts of domestic normalcy. Yet the cultural record of that moment belied the cause for optimism. “The suburbanization of American culture” describes how postwar American culture registered a new set of spatial and racial tensions and codified a new suburban way of life. It considers Hollywood’s film noir genre; the soaring popularity of television in the 1950s; the development of shopping malls and theme parks; the increasing automobile culture; the rise of pop art and rock and roll; and the American youth radicalized by the Vietnam War.