Michael D. Dwyer’s book, Tinsel and Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt, opens with the same question that frames our journal's debut issue: “What is the Rust Belt?” Dwyer’s answer to this question lies in the Hollywood films he examines across the five chapters in his book as he looks at movies that depict and/or were made in Johnstown, PA; Chicago; Cleveland; Pittsburgh; and Detroit over the last 50 years. He argues, “Screen representations of shuttered auto factories, unemployed millworkers, and decaying main streets in ‘the industrial heartland’ have significantly contributed to narratives of American decline and despair since the 1970s” (2). Popular films played in movie theaters and replayed across cable television have framed the idea of the Rust Belt in the American imagination. In other words, a group of outsiders has defined our region. 

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But Tinsel and Rust is not only concerned with films depicting the region—it is also about how the Rust Belt, in search of new industry in the late twentieth century, welcomed its newfound status as a destination for filmmakers. He writes, “One primary goal of this book is to explore the effects of Hollywood’s increasing presence within the Rust Belt at the precise time that Rust Belt communities were attempting to counteract the effects of deindustrialization with cultural representation” (14). The tension between Hollywood and the Rust Belt frames this very accessible and eminently quotable book, which tells the story of America, its workers, and a region that is both forgotten and always in the spotlight. 

 

Hollywood, Dwyer argues, was not just complicit in deindustrialization but actively participated in the reshaping of the region in the American imagination. Chapter 1 features the eastern Pennsylvania town of Johnstown with a discussion of the films Slap Shot (1977), Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1982), and All the Right Moves (1983). Johnstown, once known for its radical labor history, was in crisis by the late 1970s. Dwyer argues, persuasively, that these films were not just documenting the crisis; rather, they actively played a role in the acceptance of the disinvestment. He writes, “To put a finer point on it, Hollywood films’ deployment of Rust Belt iconography and their simultaneous utilization of aesthetic conventions of landscape worked to further the interest of the companies that were in the process of disinvesting from cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh by absolving them of responsibility for the material and cultural consequences of their corporate strategies” (28). Thus, by the mid-1980s “the mill, Johnstown, and the Rust Belt writ large are positioned as places to be avoided and escaped" (51). What is the Rust belt, then? A place to leave, according to the films discussed in his book. 

 

Dwyer should be commended for each of the short histories he offers, which begin each of his chapters. Not only does he offer us a short course on film, but he also succinctly orients us to the regional history of each city he explores. Chicago, a city “that was never wholly defined by deindustrialization” (57) is the focus of the second chapter of the book. Dwyer, who is very convincing throughout, makes the case for including Chicago, as it “deliberately re-engineered its own geography specifically to benefit industry and trade” (65). Dwyer masterfully leans into Chicago's ambivalent relationship to the Rust Belt as he explores films that captured both a modern-day segregated city in Cooley High (1975) as well as the burgeoning status of the suburbs in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) and Adventures in Babysitting (1987). Successfully guiding the reader through such a large topic in one chapter is an example of Dwyer's great strengths as a writer. As he turns to the films, he writes, “the economic effects of deindustrialization had not reached Chicago’s white neighborhoods” so it was “considered ‘race problems’ rather than issues of national concern” (75). In contrast, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Adventures in Babysitting, which feature white characters in the suburbs, tell a very different story of the Windy City: “The oscillating view of the city in these two films from the mid-1980s—of postindustrial playground in one, as deindustrialized threat in the other—in many ways presages Chicago’s success and struggles in the final few decades of the twentieth century, and its ambivalent relationship with the ‘Rust Belt’ label still today” (85). This kaleidoscopic view of the city has clearly benefited Chicago, as it was never fully considered a Rust Belt city even as many suffered during peak deindustrialization. Is the Rust Belt a place wholly defined by deindustrialization? A view from Chicago suggests that this is one of the effects of Hollywood’s framing of the region. If Chicago’s identity in the national imagination weathered the storm of deindustrialization, Cleveland, he makes clear, did not. In chapter 3, Dwyer notes that “Cleveland (and Clevelanders) experienced deindustrialization and depopulation not just as a matter of economics and politics but as a loss of status and dignity” (99). Once known as the Sixth City, Cleveland fell from grace. Today, Cleveland has a complicated relationship with Hollywood, which Dwyer leans into as he explores films like American Splendor (2003). Based on Harvey Pekar’s underground comic of the same name, this film, like others, documents Clevelanders' lived experience in a postindustrial world, demonstrating that Cleveland's new status quo was not simply accepted passively, as the jokes about the city seem to suggest. This, Dwyer states, has not yet been explored enough. “The centrality of ‘image’ to Rust Belt cities’ strategies for managing decline," he argues, "is underexamined in scholarship on deindustrialization and reveals the ways that citizens and powerbrokers alike in places like Cleveland resisted and responded to narratives of their own ‘rusting’” (106). Further, “In alignment with Pekar’s Rust Belt consciousness, American Splendor actively attempts to identify, and distinguish itself from, the traditions of Hollywood storytelling” (111). If Pekar’s story resists Hollywood, The Avengers (2012), also filmed in Cleveland, allows Dwyer to reflect on a different relationship that Rust Belt cities have with Hollywood as they seek out their approval and the financial benefits. He wonders about the tradeoff, though. Dwyer notes that while Cleveland was celebrated by the filmmakers, it was hardly recognizable to outsiders in the film. The Rust Belt in this case is both a place of celebrated opportunity and yet simultaneously under erasure. While Cleveland and the Rust Belt look for the approval and money from Tinsel Town, Dwyer asks, how much are we getting back and how does this relationship continue to define the region?

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Dwyer navigates this question in the next chapter as he reflects on how the spotlight Hollywood has placed on the Rust Belt simultaneously erases the region. He reflects on the dividends received from our relationship with Hollywood, opening with Sienna Miller’s scandal in referring to Pittsburgh as “Shitsburgh” in a 2006 interview with Rolling Stone. Having been on location in the Steel City for her movie, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (2008), Miller quickly apologized, but more trouble arose when “Pittsburgh’s mayor immediately and publicly excused it, which left locals wondering where the allegiance of city officials truly were” (135). Again, the tension between the Rust Belt and Tinsel Town emerges, which leads Dwyer to ask, “Was it truly worth it to bring these Hollywood types to town for a few weeks, only to have them denigrate the city to a national publication and eventually churn out a lackluster film in the process” (149)? Dwyer turns to what he refers to as “Pittsburgh Creative Class films of the 2000s,” including Adventureland (2009) and Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012). In these films we are led to see the city through “Millennial protagonists” who “are universally suburban, upper-middle-class, and almost entirely insulated from the process of deindustrialization” (150). The connection between the Miller scandal and these films is threaded through a discussion of Richard Florida’s book The Rise of the Creative Class (2002), which saw Pittsburgh as a model for the future of the creative class in which the Rust Belt becomes a playground for outsiders who write over its industrial history.

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Finally, Detroit and the horror genre are the focus of the final chapter of the book. Films released between the 2008 financial crisis and the 2016 election, either filmed in and/or about Detroit, reflect the national feeling about the Motor City, which became an icon for the end of the Rust Belt era as it also became the central character in the financial crisis. As Dwyer puts it, films like It Follows (2014) or Buzzard (2014) illustrate "how the affective experience of the Great Recession was meaningfully different in the Rust Belt because of the generational effect of massive deindustrialization” (193). Each chapter looks at a different genre of film, but it’s this one where the pairing really is exceptionally effective. While the last chapter is about the horror genre, Dwyer does not end on a negative note, but rather uses the genre to discuss the pain. He closes his work by writing, “The horrors continue, but in the Rust Belt and beyond, the story’s not over yet. In the midst of difficulty, and in defiance of despair, the struggle continues” (204). His book concludes with a tempered hope, recognizing the trauma that the region has suffered, but like most horror films, he also reckons with our humanity and a hope for the future. In these films from and about Detroit, the Rust Belt is a place that has experienced compounding traumas but has survived. 

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As I close, I want to note that I write this review from Cleveland, Ohio, in the fall of 2025, following what has been described as our Summer of Superman. James Gunn’s Superman (2025), a reboot of the franchise, opened to popular and critical acclaim. Significantly, though, Cleveland was the stage of the new film, not erased for another city; rather, the former “Mistake on the Lake” became Metropolis, and we also received credit for one of the greatest cultural exports of all time, the Man of Steel. Will this be an outlier? We don’t know yet, but I hope that it might be the beginning of a new chapter for Tinsel Town and the Rust Belt. The feeling of hope was palpable across the city. 

“Moods, feelings, and/or affects that are directed toward, associated with, or emerge out of the Rust Belt” (175), Dwyer notes, toward the end of his book, is one of his concerns for this project. It’s something that I think an insider like Dwyer knows well. This is one of the great strengths of the book because while Tinsel and Rust presents a history of Rust Belt film, this book is also about five American cities, their workers, and a hope for the future of the region. He makes clear the story is not over. He opens with the question, “What is the Rust Belt?” He answers that it is a story for too long defined by Hollywood, but one that is still in progress.