Article2003

"Delicious Horrors": Mass Culture, The Red Cross, and the Appeal of Modern American Humanitarianism

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62 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Quarterly

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Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact Rhetoric and Communication Studies

Abstract

This essay analyzes the extraordinary rise of mass humanitarianism in the United States in the early twentieth century. It contests prevailing critical assumptions about the oppositional relationship between humanitarianism and sensationalism, arguing that modern humanitarianism is actually best understood as a creation of an increasingly entertainment-oriented mass culture. Revealing unexpected affinities in the presentation and appeal of American Red Cross promotional texts (especially the society's hugely popular magazine) and pulp magazines, advertisements, and commercial movies, the essay offers fresh perspectives on the cultural production of morality and citizenship in the age of mass media.

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References

2018Civilization and Its Discontents 1985The body in pain 1939The Civilizing Process 1996A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful (1759)1985Advertising the American Dream 1993The culture of sensibility: sex and society in eighteenth-century Britain 1999Compassion fatigue: how the media sell disease, famine, war and death 1992The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project

Cited by

2019Global humanitarianism and media culture 2012Depicting distant suffering: evangelicals and the politics of pictorial humanitarianism in the age of american empire 2007Public Sites Versus Public Sights: The Progressive Response to Outdoor Advertising and the Commercialization of Public Space 2020Humanitarianism: Keywords 2019Digital mediations of everyday humanitarianism: the case of Kiva.org 2013A critique of humanitarian reason: agency, power, and privilege

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