American Recordings

In American Recordings, Francesco Jodice recounts the 20th century as the American century, which shaped the collective imagery of various generations: President Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation, the arms race, nuclear testing, the widespread dissemination of information as chronicled in Sidney Lumet’s Network, the birth of the horror genre with Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Society directed by Brian Yuzna, the readings of freethinker Gore Vidal in Nicholas Wrathall’s The United States of Amnesia, the documentary film End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones, the spread and rise of television which disseminates the American historical imagination every day. Jodice transfers into book form the film work of the same name, a symphony which traces the all-American myths and heroes and which reflects on the power of imagery in the formation of cultural processes.