This is Not a Dissertation: (Neo)Neo-Bohemian Connections

Walter Moore, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation uses/packages selected post-World War II literature, film, and photography to identify and analyze various aspects/nuances and influences/connections of/on/to Neo-Bohemia in the contemporary United States, and aims to show how these textual associations and analyses interconnect with particular American cities and (neo)bohemian neighborhoods along with these spaces’/places’ related residents and players. These interconnections shed light on a particular kind of gentrification process: the tendency of struggling artists/bohemians to bring attention and investment to their chosen U.S. urban neighborhoods. These dynamics then fit on an arc-of-transformation—of a lower-class/working-class and/or abandoned place into a neo-bohemian zone of art and entertainment—but these dynamics also (inter)connect with a gentrification-of-the-imaginary among participants and onlookers/certain consumers of a (neo)bohemian fantasy who physically and mentally buy/“buy” into the myth of the struggling/starving artist (and her habitus) and thus seek out an alternate location of art, creativity, and what many consider as outside of society; for, my given texts both materially and fantastically speak to the pre-gentrification-to-neo-bohemian-gentrification plot points of this arc. In this writing—while highlighting the texts of Allen Ginsberg, Nelson Algren, Otto Preminger, Art Shay, S.E. Hinton, Francis Ford Coppola, Larry Clark, and a few others—I interweave incorporation and analyses of beat members, post-WWII working-class hipster characters, and the 1950s-based teenage rebel to show how these “early gentrifiers” have inspired the conditions of contemporary postmodern U.S. neo-bohemia. As the gentrification plot sails, as middle and upper class consumers buy into these conditions, I incorporate elements of the 1960s counterculture, aspects of pop-cultural and experimental film and photography, along with postmodern hipster modes of being, among a few other related representations and rhizomes that relate to and inspire parts of this process. My spotlighted neighborhoods for these applications/ connections/ arc(s) include New York’s the Lower East Side, Chicago’s Wicker Park, and Tulsa’s Blue Dome Zone. This dissertation begins with Bohemia and ends with Neo-Bohemia, but the arc remains a gritty one with an appropriate amount of stops, detours, and backtracking/overlapping—along with, of course, a requisite supply of fantasy and consumption. Bohemians and neo-bohemians alike—via stories, images, and the flesh—have historically and continually inspired and attracted consumers to particular U.S. urban neighborhoods in particular.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Duerfahrd, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American studies|American literature|Film studies

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