From Illusion To Nihilism In The Final Reel
During the 1940s and 1950s, many film manufactured in Hollywood were in direct keeping with the mythology that reaffirmed the American Dream and America’s sense of itself as the democratic ideal for the world’s oppressed societies. In these films, the image of sound leadership that could manage vast boundaries of time and space gave hope to people, reinforcing the beliefs that American democracy and capitalism would yield the good life. Social institutions like government, religion, and industry were reinforced as the means to this better life “By the end of the Eisenhower era, there was confident talk about the ‘end of ideology,’ the permanent growth of capitalist middle-class democracy as a model for the emerging new nations, the integration of all into the canons and benefits of the American achievement, and the benevolent conduct of the Pax Americana that would complete the American Dream” (57).
However, during the 1960s, the lost innocence and illusions of most of the American public engendered by domestic and international chaos, began to appear in Hollywood films as filmmakers began to explore the validity and effectiveness of many institutions, including capitalism, politics, and the military. As the inability of government, politics, religion and militaristic pursuits to provide the “American Dream” began to show itself in the public consciousness, so, too, it began to show itself in the entertainment of the era. Films like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night questioned the racism and prejudice inherent in American society, including the lack of access to the “American Dream” experienced by blacks who had to exist within a “corrupt and entrenched political” status-quo (65). The 1960s would end and the 1970s would begin with films like A Clockwork Orange and Little Big Man, two films that questioned autho
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