Book Review: A Moment of Danger: Critical Studies in the History of U.S. Communication since World War II, edited by Janice Peck and Inger L. Stole

Abstract

A Moment of Danger: Critical Studies in the History of U.S. Communication since World War II. Janice Peck and Inger L. Stole, eds. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2011. 418 pp. $29.00 pbk.History, we are often reminded, is not a simple matter of calling up the past in its pure form, an objective process that generates value-free reconstructions of actually happened. Instead, as a generation of scholars and theorists of historical memory have shown, it is an imperfect and selective process that reveals power relationships and inherent social inequalities. This is of particular concern when the past is mobilized selectively to marginalize outsiders or to enhance the legitimacy of powerful institutions by excising historical alternatives from popular memory. Control of historical narratives during these moments of danger, as Walter Benjamin termed them, is an essential element of the maintenance of hegemony.The essays in the book A Moment of Danger: Critical Studies in the History of U.S. Communication since World War II, co-edited by Janice Peck, associate professor of media studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Inger L. Stole, associate professor in the communication department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, serve the important function of reclaiming some of these forgotten or mis-remembered moments. Reexamining alternatives reminds us that the dominance of corporate mass media, dominated by commercial interests and less attentive to the interests of the public, is not a historical inevitability that should not be questioned or challenged. As they suggest, the forces associated with the cold war consensus, the postwar red scare, and the rise of neo-liberalism tended to promote narratives of unity and the Way that distort our memories of the postwar era. The harmful effects of the blacklist in film and broadcast, the slow demise of labor's point of view in mass media, and the emergence of the argument that the United States had entered a post-racial age are among the topics scrutinized in this book.Although the quality of the essays varies, a common hazard in an edited collection of this nature, the overall effect of the book is excellent. Strongest among the contributions are those of the two editors. Stole's piece on the Advertising Council and consumer politics during World War II, which draws from her important recent books, is a model analysis of the complicated cultural politics of large-scale commercial interests in American political history. Peck's essay examines the complex discourse surrounding Oprah Winfrey and the question of empowerment and institutional discrimination in what is supposed to be an increasingly post-racial society. Those readers who see Winfrey as a champion of civil rights will be surprised by the nuance that Peck brings to her analysis.Several strong essays feature new scholarship on mass media of the postwar red scare era. Edward Alwood, professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University, argues that scholars must continue to measure the mechanisms and effects of government suppression during the McCarthy period. …