Word: briefings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Over time, historians have found other, quieter "revolutions," with a noble legacy worthy of an intellectual defense. Recently, Eric Foner, in his account of the Reconstruction period, portrayed the time as a brief period of true emancipation for Blacks in America. He implicitly called for contemporary America to live up to the vision of racial equality of that time...
...uniformly critical of the state of American society today--even attempt to find a rosy past? Wouldn't their critiques of repugnant, self-perpetuating class divisions in America be enhanced by demonstrating that the American experiment was flawed from the start? Why acknowledge that there was a time--however brief--when America was able to right itself and lay down the roots of a just society...
...hope for finding a growing re-acceptance of "popular" culture--the underlying purpose of these histories which look back to a brief American utopia--Levine overstates his case. For example, he explicitly praises the New York Times for its Sunday "Arts and Leisure" section's broad definition of "art," failing to recognize the subtle discrimination that goes on in those pages. Namely, that rock, jazz and "popular" music are written about in the "Recordings" page, while "classical" music appears under the simple heading "Music." This is but one example of how cultural distincitons still exist, and Levine fails to hold...
...only does the brief 13-page epilogue not meet the historical standards Levine presents in the rest of the book, it leaves the reader with an uneasy feeling that the whole historical excursion has been designed to encourage you to feel greater cultural tolerance. No doubt this is a worthy goal. But it seems Levine is on firmer ground when he presents the details of an integrated culture, and the ugly process whereby culture was used to divide people. When he presumes to discuss our current cultural problems, his approach seems as flawed as reading a book through the lens...
...fullest justice to their theatrical source material. To make them even more attractive to movie buffs and general viewers, disc producers are offering extras unavailable on tape and often even in theaters, such as Bolger's full dance number, which never made it into the Wizard, and Ebsen's brief appearance...