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Chapter 1 - No Place Like Home

The Cultures of American Credit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2020

Nicky Marsh
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
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Summary

This chapter argues that questions over what kinds of money Americans should use, often assumed to be settled by the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, persisted throughout the twentieth century and in ongoing debates about who should be allowed what kinds of credit. It narrates the cultural forms of this history by combining critical accounts of the key transitions in the credit economy with new readings of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The first section argues that Frank Baum’s 1900 novella is better read through the emergence of retail credit than through the bimetal debates that have dominated its critical reception. The second section reads Victor Fleming’s 1939 film The Wizard of Oz through the debates about the ending of the depression and the shape of New Deal credit and argues that the film’s celebration of this credit obscured its political implications. The final section reads Sidney Lumet’s 1975 The Wiz through the crisis in the New Deal, and the subsequent emergence of neoliberal governance, that the New York financial crisis of the mid-1970s signalled.

Type
Chapter
Information
Credit Culture
The Politics of Money in the American Novel of the 1970s
, pp. 17 - 44
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • No Place Like Home
  • Nicky Marsh, University of Southampton
  • Book: Credit Culture
  • Online publication: 25 June 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108871211.002
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  • No Place Like Home
  • Nicky Marsh, University of Southampton
  • Book: Credit Culture
  • Online publication: 25 June 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108871211.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • No Place Like Home
  • Nicky Marsh, University of Southampton
  • Book: Credit Culture
  • Online publication: 25 June 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108871211.002
Available formats
×