Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity (Audible Audio Edition) Leigh H Edwards Beth Richmond University Press Audiobooks Books
Download As PDF : Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity (Audible Audio Edition) Leigh H Edwards Beth Richmond University Press Audiobooks Books
Throughout his career, Johnny Cash was depicted - and depicted himself - as a walking contradiction social protestor and establishment patriot, drugged wildman and devout Christian crusader, rebel outlaw hillbilly thug and elder statesman.
Leigh H. Edwards explores the allure of this paradoxical image and its cultural significance. She argues that Cash embodied irresolvable contradictions of American identity that reflect foundational issues in the American experience, such as the tensions between freedom and patriotism, individual rights and nationalism, the sacred and the profane. She illustrates how this model of ambivalence is a vital paradigm for American popular music, and for American identity in general.
Making use of sources such as Cash's autobiographies, lyrics, music, liner notes, and interviews, Edwards pays equal attention to depictions of Cash by others, such as Vivian Cash's publication of his letters to her, documentaries and music journalism about him, Walk the Line, and fan club materials found in the archives at the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, to create a full portrait of Cash and his significance as a cultural icon. The book is published by Indiana University Press.
Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity (Audible Audio Edition) Leigh H Edwards Beth Richmond University Press Audiobooks Books
Leigh Edwards has succeeded at a difficult task: she has written an academic book with a wide appeal. Part of that appeal stems from the multifaceted approach Dr. Edwards uses to make her point. Through media analysis, fan studies, and literary analysis of lyrics (among other techniques), she paints a convincing picture of the resonance between Johnny Cash -- warts, contradictions and all -- and America's view of itself.Anyone who is interested in learning about Johnny Cash, country music, media studies, analysis of lyrics, etc., will enjoy reading this book. They will also enjoy following along with the way in which Dr. Edwards pieces together the puzzle. By considering how various constructions of authenticity, manhood and masculinity, race, class, and religion apply to Cash -- his image and his oeuvre -- she has broken ground on a new kind of scholarship: one that is accessible and enjoyable to a broad audience of literate readers.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It gave me many things to think about and helped me gain insight into the music industry, fandom and celebrity, and how personal identity can relate to national consciousness. I highly recommend it.
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Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity (Audible Audio Edition) Leigh H Edwards Beth Richmond University Press Audiobooks Books Reviews
Leigh Edwards truly captures not only another perspective of the life of Johnny Cash, but a captivating look at one person's influence on American society. This academic work, while written from a thoughtful research perspective, is a literary art that presents the impact of Johnny Cash (the man and the music) on a cultural/sub-cultural level of a pivotal era in the 20th century and beyond.
While this analysis of Cash is above all academic the writing is accessible such that this business analyst and devoted Cash fan did not struggle to follow the arguments. After all, Cash was both complex and the everyman which is precisely the point. Find out for yourself the extent to which Cash (in all his incarnations) influenced popular culture and challenged the checkboxes on surveys in so many ways.
Leigh Edwards does a fine job of showing how complex the world of country music is; the genre is so often written off as simplistic, but many of the truly good performers are real artists with genuinely paradoxical works and images.
Edwards has done her research and the combination of archival, scholarly, and fan materials provides a more complete picture of Cash and his place in American music.
Though overly seasoned with a lot of social science jargon, this analysis of the late Johnny Cash's musical identities is a welcome addition to the catalogue of works about American popular music. Edwards' main point is that Cash was a strongly individual musician who straddled various musical genres (rockabilly, country, roots rock, gospel) and projected a lot of different images (patriot, sinner, prison rights advocate, evangelical Christian, drug addict, etc.) during his lengthy, mutable career, and that his many personae were reflective of Southern White Male culture and non-homogeneous American culture as a whole. She illustrates these various "binaries" very effectively throughout the book, with many vivid descriptions of Cash's lyrics, performances and videos and her extensive research of Cash's writings and interviews.
I was so pleased with the promptness of delivery, and the book is awesome, i highly recommend it.
Edward's book is a pleasurable read celebrating an American cultural icon while provoking deeper thought into the influence of pop culture on our attitudes and belief systems. Brilliant!
Like the "Boy Named Sue" who wants to kill his evil father but then forgives him for having given him a girl's name, I was put off at first by the perspective adopted in this book, but (to borrow from the song's lyrics), "I came away with a different point of view".
Leigh Edwards makes heavy use of academic jargon and political correctness. Introducing the issue of race relations in the first pages of her book, she states in the endnotes that she uses the term "American Indian" as "the most commonly used term in current academic discussions, but [she does so] with the knowledge that the issue of naming for indigenous groups is a contested one because of the power dynamics of colonialism and imperialism." Likewise, she underscores that she uses the name "America" as a placeholder, but notes that "the term is contested in much American studies scholarship".
Placing "America" between quotation marks at first seemed to me like putting the innocent behind bars, or desecrating the Ragged Old Flag. Johnny Cash, for one, never used brackets or put gloves when talking about the issues he cared about. He had no qualms about calling a Pima Indian a Pima Indian. He talked straight, and his songs have the immediacy of truthfulness.
Bono, the singer from the Irish band U2, once declared that "nothing is as macho as Johnny Cash's voice". And he added "We're all sissies in comparison to him." But Leigh Edwards takes a girlie perspective on Johnny Cash and, in doing so, she sissifies him. She goes as far as endorsing the radical assertion of another media critic who claimed Cash as a lesbian icon "because he allows fans to identify with 'troubled and suffering masculinity'" Questioning gender is looking for trouble. Remember that in A Boy Named Sue the hit-and-run father declares that he gave his son a girl's name to harden him because "Son, this world is rough and if a man's gonna make it, he gotta be tough."
The author explains that "As a literary critic, my method of interpretation is to analyze thoroughly the polyvalence of cultural texts and to place them in relevant socio-historical and theoretical contexts." But is a gender perspective really relevant to assess Cash's contribution to the Americam psyche? And why all this emphasis on class and race, when all that seemed to matter to Johnny Cash was his personal relationship with God? "I'm a Christian, don't put me in another box", he once warned an interviewer. And he added "Being a Christian is not for sissies."
At least that's what I thought. But as I wrote in the beginning, this book confronted me with another perspective, and I came away with a different viewpoint. For a start, I realized that gender issues are not only limited to women, nor even to "troubled masculinities". Macho types and straight shooters, too, can be the object of a gender analysis. Likewise, the local context of "working-class Southern whites" is relevant to the topic at hand, if only to understand the "Southernization of America" that didn't start nor stop with a president hailing from Texas. Country music is as much Dixie Chicks as it is Tobie Keith.
So like The Boy Named Sue, I made peace with the author despite her labeling and criticism. But, as the song concludes "If I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna name him... Bill! or George! Anything but Sue! (I still hate that name!)"
Leigh Edwards has succeeded at a difficult task she has written an academic book with a wide appeal. Part of that appeal stems from the multifaceted approach Dr. Edwards uses to make her point. Through media analysis, fan studies, and literary analysis of lyrics (among other techniques), she paints a convincing picture of the resonance between Johnny Cash -- warts, contradictions and all -- and America's view of itself.
Anyone who is interested in learning about Johnny Cash, country music, media studies, analysis of lyrics, etc., will enjoy reading this book. They will also enjoy following along with the way in which Dr. Edwards pieces together the puzzle. By considering how various constructions of authenticity, manhood and masculinity, race, class, and religion apply to Cash -- his image and his oeuvre -- she has broken ground on a new kind of scholarship one that is accessible and enjoyable to a broad audience of literate readers.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It gave me many things to think about and helped me gain insight into the music industry, fandom and celebrity, and how personal identity can relate to national consciousness. I highly recommend it.
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