huge attendances. By the mid-1980s, however, boththe NFS and American Classic Screen had sadly gone

out of business.Welsh and Tibbetts’s three volumes collect some of

the best contributions to the journal. Interviews con-tains pieces on stars such as Fred Astaire, Joan Bennett,

Fred MacMurray, and directors such as Frank Capraand Rouben Mamoulian; Profiles has a wide-ranging

selection encompassing Mickey Rooney, Boris Karloff,lesser known actors such as George Bancroft and Elis-sa Landi, and director Charles T. Barton. For me, the

Features volume offers the most interesting menu,including articles on Errol Flynn, Kim Novak, and

Greta Garbo; studies of Busby Berkeley and WilliamWellman; critiques of classics such as Birth of a Nation,

The Jazz Singer (1927), and King Kong (1933); as wellas pieces on the lesser known work of John Ford and

Val Lewton. The book’s final section, “Film History,”includes articles on Disney, racism in World War II

films, images of communism in Hollywood, and astudy of adaptations of Alice in Wonderland.

Many pieces were penned by those associated with

the NFS, including Welsh, Tibbetts, the screenwriterFrank Thompson, the academic Gene D. Phillips, and

Herman Weinberg. The journal proved influential,despite its short life, catering both to film scholars as

well as non-specialists with an abiding love of oldmovies. Tibbetts and Welsh suggested in the introduc-

tion to Features that American Classic Screen showedhow “[film] theory should inform the experience, justas the experience of viewing movies should inform

(and perhaps reform) the Theory” (xx).While some of the theoretical perspectives might be

slightly dated (there is no mention of the now-currentinterest in reception studies, even in Welsh and Tibb-

etts’s introductions), the overwhelming impressioncommunicated by the anthologies is one of almost lim-

itless enthusiasm. American Classic Screen was writtenand published by aficionados for aficionados, with no

purpose other than to celebrate those artists both infront of and behind the camera, who had helped to sus-tain the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood cinema.

The majority of the subjects profiled are no longerwith us; but their achievements live on in these vol-

umes. The trilogy makes for great bedtime reading, aswell as providing a valuable resource for any introduc-

tory course in Hollywood film in colleges and/or uni-versities.

–-Laurence Raw

Baskent University

Courage and Consequence: My Life as a

Conservative in the FightKarl Rove. New York: Threshold Editions, 2010.

Karl Rove became known as “the Architect,” who

not only masterminded George W. Bush’s successfulbid for the White House, but helped the ex-President

retain power for the full two terms. In this lengthymemoir, Rove recounts his meteoric rise to power as

well as settling old scores against his many critics.He began his political career in the early 1980s, and

by the middle of that decade had acquired the image of

a consultant who was paid vast sums of money inreturn for getting his clients elected (61). Rove devotes

an entire chapter to deconstructing the notion of a“Rovian Campaign,” which according to the press

represented something “fear-based, smear-based,anything goes” (64). In contrast Rove claims that his

campaigning style contained some of the basicelements of the “American Dream”—big ideas, and

driven by historic data as well as embodying thebasic democratic principles of fairness and equality.Any ideas promoted in such campaigns should be

easily understood and capable of being widely dissem-inated (66).

In many ways, Rove’s relationship to his politicalemployers is strongly reminiscent of Tony Curtis’s

Sidney Falco to Burt Lancaster’s J. J. Hunsecker in thefilm Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Both Rove and Fer-

ris understand the significance of concealing their truefeelings and being “nice to people where it pays [them]to be nice”—quoting a line from the screenplay. They

can enjoy great success—whether material, political orboth—by ensuring that their paymasters remain in

power for as long as possible, irrespective of whetherthey are doing a good job or not.

The book recounts a momentous decade in Ameri-can politics from a neo-conservative perspective.

Rove’s views are predictable; he supports George W.Bush’s work on the domestic and foreign fronts—unlike Barack Obama who has apparently engaged “inan unprecedented and historically dubious denigrationof America, apologizing for it at home and abroad”

(529). On the other hand, Rove is strangely silent onthe Tea Party Movement and its impact on the Repub-

lican Party. He uses the Party’s success in Massachu-setts (2010) as an excuse to berate Obama’s policies of

Book Reviews 413

“skyrocketing spending and the explosion of govern-ment power” (530).

What emerges most tangible from Courage and

Consequence is Rove’s belief in the politics of conflict:

effective government can only be sustained by takingon and eliminating one’s opponents both inside and

outside the United States. Even though it is barely twoyears since he left office, his views seem oddly out-

moded at a time when many countries have experi-enced regime changes without American intervention,and where governments of all political persuasions

across the globe have tried and largely failed to dealwith a global economic crisis.

–-Laurence Raw

Baskent University

Cultural Diversity and Global Media:

TheMediation of DifferenceEugenia Siapera. Malden, VA, and Oxford: Blackwell

Publishing, 2010.

Eugenia Siapera’s book begins with an analysis of

the occasion in January 2010 when Barack Obamabecame the forty-fourth President of the United States.She believes, somewhat optimistically, that it proved

beyond doubt that “racism and discrimination, if theyeven exist, play only a small part in the success of an

individual” (1). On the other hand, Obama’s accessioncame at a time when the multicultural ideal came

increasingly under attack in America and elsewhere.“The veil of multiculturalism has been lifted, revealing

parallel societies where the law of the state does notapply,” declared the German newspaper Der Spiegel in

the wake of the 2004 Madrid bombings. A year later,the Danish magazine Jyllando-Posten published derog-atory cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, provoking

a major crisis both in Denmark as well as in other partsof northern Europe. Siapera believes that such occur-

rences are inevitable in the contemporary world, wherethe Internet brings members of different cultures clo-

ser together in cyberspace—hence promoting diversity—yet simultaneously encouraging greater resistance to

multiculturalism.Cultural Diversity and Social Media summarizes

familiar arguments concerning media manipulation:

television, radio, and print media in Europe and Amer-ica construct their own understandings of difference

rather than representing current debates on culturaldiversity. This is chiefly carried out for ideological

purposes, reflecting the (conservative) agenda of mostmedia producers. Siapera conflates “globalization”

with “Americanization,” in her understanding of cul-tural diversity. On the other hand, there are dissident

groups that resist dominant constructions: Siapera citesthe example of the local branch of the National Associ-

ation for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP), which went to court in 1915 in Los Ange-

les, in the hope of preventing the screening of D. W.Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, on the grounds that thefilm invoked racial tensions that could lead to violent

confrontation. They failed—chiefly because theylacked sufficient financial or political clout to take on

the Hollywood studios.Perhaps the book’s most readable section is the

analysis of how the Internet has revised yet reinforcedprevailing notions of cultural diversity. It has created

“a smorgasbord of identity […] that harks to thedomesticated and co-modified regimes of representa-

tion” (193). On the other hand, the Internet has givenspace to sites such as Kurdish Media and New Vision,both of which “show the possibilities of unity

without a centre and the creation of new publicspaces” (192).

Although Cultural Diversity and Global Media

does not break new intellectual ground, especially

where representations of contemporary American cul-ture are concerned, it sets forth in exhaustive detail the

complexities faced by governments in sustaining themulticultural ideal in a world becoming more andmore dominated by fragmented identities.

–-Laurence Raw

Baskent University

Inventing the “AmericanWay,” The

Politics of Consensus from the NewDeal

to the Civil Rights MovementWendy L. Wall. Chapel Hill: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Americans who are old enough may remember the

“Freedom Train.” Probably even more of them arefamiliar with Superman’s fight in the 1940s and 1950sfor “truth, justice, and the American way.” Some per-

haps may even recall the 1950s project encouragingprivate parties to direct a steady flow to other coun-

tries of praise for American institutions—the projectthat came to be called the “Crusade for Freedom”

(obviously, its target was Europe, not the Middle East).

414 The Journal of American Culture � Volume 34, Number 4 � December 2011