Tinsel and Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt

Tinsel and Rust tells the story of Hollywood’s role in the shaping of the Rust Belt in the United States. During the 1970s and 1980s, filmic representations of shuttered auto plants, furloughed millworkers, and decaying downtowns in the industrial heartland contributed to pervasive narratives of American malaise and decline--informing the wider cultural view of these cities and their people. Author Michael D. Dwyer untangles the complicated relationship between Hollywood and the Rust Belt, exploring how the sociocultural image of the region has become a tool to tell stories about America’s mythic past, degraded present, and potential futures.

Dwyer offers a reading in twofold: through the conventional lens of film and cultural studies, and through an interdisciplinary lens that pulls in elements of cultural geography and urban studies to understand the ways in which Americans learned to interpret the cities and towns of the industrial Midwest. Each chapter spotlights a different Rust Belt city--Johnstown, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit--and considers how films and filmmaking processes helped shape audiences’ cultural understanding of those cities. Over the course of the book, Dwyer also examines several films which offer notable representations of the Rust Belt, including Slap Shot, The Blues Brothers, Major League, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and It Follows. Finally, the volume highlights how in more recent years, cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Cleveland have all attempted to remake their public image and revitalize their economies through film and media production.

Michael D. Dwyer is associate professor of Media and Communication at Arcadia University, where he teaches courses in Hollywood film, media studies, and writing. He is the author of Back to the Fifties (OUP, 2015). He lives in Philadelphia with his partner, Rachel.