It's always dangerous to read too much into trends in popular culture. Nonetheless, there seems to be a strong relationship between the five movies nominated for best picture of 2007 and polls showing 70 percent of Americans believe the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction.
Except for Juno, a compelling Indie film that asks us to believe a pregnant sixteen-year-old is the smartest person in town, all of the Oscar nominees are relentlessly grim. Atonement follows the downward trajectory of a love affair undermined by the vengeful imagination of a besotted ingénue. Michael Clayton takes us inside the life of a marginal corporate attorney struggling to maintain his integrity while he salvages his law firm's defense of a multinational corporation accused of knowingly causing the deaths of hundreds of small farmers. And then the going gets really bleak.
No Country For Old Men follows a West-Texas loner who absconds with drug money and is tracked by a psychopathic hit man. (As was true with last year's winner, The Departed, the suspense is whether any character we care about will be left alive at the end of the movie.) Finally, There Will Be Blood tracks the disintegration of an oil prospector who loses his soul as his wealth increases.
Three of these films conclude the universe provides no justice. A fourth, Michael Clayton, takes the position that justice is at best a haphazard occurrence. Only in Juno does the audience get the sense of a well-ordered world and that's from the perspective of a pregnant sixteen-year-old.
It's not as if these movies are unrepresentative of Hollywood, in general. 2007's highest grossing films included Spider Man III, the latest installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, The Bourne Ultimatum, 300, and I am Legend. Of the top ten films only Shrek III and The Simpson Movie would be classified as light-hearted. And a year ago, the candidates for the Oscar included Babel, The Departed, Letter From Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen; the first three were also extraordinarily grim.
If you subscribe to the theory that popular culture reflects the national psyche, then as you watch the five films nominated for this year's Oscar, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that Americans are dejected. Indeed, most of the novels we read and the programs we watch on TV support this judgment. In 2007 the plot of the average bestseller was "a killer stalks the streets" and the most popular TV series was "Lost," where 71 survivors of a plane crash are marooned on a desert island and continually threatened by malevolent entities.
The common theme in our books, movies, and TV programs seems to be that Americans live in a universe where the rules no longer make sense. In this grim new world, success is not determined by hard work and perseverance, but rather by random factors such as who you know, where you were born, and whether your number comes up in the lottery. Meanwhile, as we trudge through this inhospitable terrain, we believe we are constantly in terrible danger: death and destruction can happen at any minute and there is little that can save us except a super hero, the Virgin Mary, or a sagacious pregnant sixteen-year-old.
One interpretation of our mythic malaise is that it's a natural byproduct of the culture of fear ruthlessly inculcated by the Bush Administration after 9/11. For more than six years their relentless message has been "the barbarians are storming the gates and there is nothing you can do about it except trust Dubya and pray for the rapture." The prevalence of this culture of fear explains the popularity of movies like I Am Legend, where the narrative concerns a ravaged New York beset by insatiable zombies; a culture so inhospitable there's little the average person can do but run for the hills.
There's an additional interpretation of America's angst. At the same time we have been rendered numb by fear, the public has lost confidence in our economic system. At one time Americans believed if we worked hard and played by the rules we would inevitably improve our lives and those of our children; in any event, we felt certain that at the end of our days we would accomplish a dignified retirement – If we were sick pr infirm, we would be cared for. Now many of us fear for the future: the average American believes things are getting worse rather than better; we regret the world we are bequeathing to our children; and fear for what will happen to us in our old age. In place of the myth of the benevolent community we find ourselves marooned in an inhospitable landscape, continually threatened by malevolent entities.
Who should we blame? According to Hollywood, the fault lies with American adults. What's the solution? Juno for President.
Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and Quaker actvist. He is particularly interested in progressive morality and writes frequently on the ethical aspects of political and social issues.
who's specialization is American popular culture, I agree that it's "always dangerous to read too much into trends in popular culture." But I don't know many Americans who read anything in it at all (except those in my profession, who only get read by others in the profession). "It's only a movie," is the much more frequent response. So I welcome your thesis.
"It's only a movie" is part and parcel of that notion that Hollywood writers and directors are somehow not a cross-section of Americans and thus cannot reflect what's on Americans' minds -- a notion that gets articulated every time some director or actor speaks out on political issues. E.g., why should Americans listen to Susan Sarandon or Tim Robbins; they're only Hollywood actors, so what can they possibly know? Unless you are Ronald Reagan or Arnold Schwartzenneger or some other Hollywood Republican, the movie industry is not to be taken seriously on political or social issues.
When Americans were gung-ho for invading Iraq, finding those WMD, and nailing Saddam for personally masterminding 9/11, Hollywood pumped out heroic war movies. That's why poor Jessica Lynch got so easily exploited as the subject of a TV version of *Saving Private Ryan*.
Historical truth was a prominent theme that ran through American popular culture throughout the period between the fall of the USSR and 9/11 because without having to worry about a commie under every bed, Americans were finally getting the opportunity to focus on domestic issues, rethinking what it really is to be an American, rethinking the past with a view to being a bit more honest about it. It was painful and sometimes violent (e.g., the LA riots of 92), but Americans were making progress on it.
Yes, these last two years of Oscar nominations reflect American anxiety. Why wouldn't they? I think, however, it might be put in a larger context. Anxiety -- even hysteria -- about "national security" has dominated the American psyche since at least the time of McCarthy and HUAC. It's just not a topic most Americans could ever speak rationally about. There is a dark underside to the well-loved myth that America is the greatest country on earth: "We have it all, and the rest of the world wants to take it away from us."
Now that most Americans know that not even the mightiest army of all time and the biggest nuclear arsenal on earth cannot guarantee "national security," there is a special quality to Hollywood angst. So I would encourage Americans to read more into popular culture, not caution them about the dangers of reading too much.
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delia (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 112 comments)
on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 10:57:53 AM
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