Notes

Introduction

1. P. Biskind, Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Movies Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties (New York: Pantheon, 1983). See also D. M. White and R. Averson, The Celluloid Weapon: Social Comment in the American Film (Boston: Beacon, 1972).

2. See T. Louis and J. Pigeon, Le cinema americain d’aujourd’hui (Paris: Seghers, 1975), who claim that 1967 is a “revolutionary year.” Their point is disputed by Callisto Cosulich, who argues for 1969 as the turning point: Hollywood Settanta: il nuovo volto del cinema americano (Florence: Vallecchi, 1978). On dating and terminology: the dates cited for films in the text refer to year of release; sometimes the source is the film itself, though we also rely on film guides (Maltin, Halliwell, etc.), which sometimes provide different dates. We might note also that the year of the box-office gross rating is sometimes different from the year of release, as many films released late in the year appear on the following year’s list. For box-office grosses, we have relied on Variety as well as the book Film Facts. Some of the films we discuss are not strictly speaking “Hollywood films” in the traditional sense. Some were co-produced; others were made in other countries and were given primary release in the United States. Hollywood has indeed become international, and our continued use of the term “Hollywood film” is meant more to refer to a specific type of film production than to a localizable regional product.

3. See J. Mellen, Big Bad Wolves: Masculinity in the American Film (New York: Pantheon, 1977).

4. On changes in U.S. capitalism during this period, see the Union for Radical Political Economics volume Capitalism in Crisis, ed. D. Mermelstein (New York: Random House, 1975). On the New Right, see A. Crawford, Thunder on the Right: The “New Right” and the Politics of Resentment (New York: Pantheon, 1980).

5. Our psychoanalytic model consists of a mixture of traditional Freudianism and more contemporary “object relations” theory. We have employed the latter more than the former because it emphasizes the cultural, social, and “superstructural” determinants of the psyche, things which strike us as more amenable to change than the instincts. Indeed, in some ways, this work deconstructs the metaphysical prioritizing of the instinctual dimension of the unconscious, the so-called primary processes, in Freudian theory. See P. Noy, “A revision of the psychoanalytic theory of the primary process,” International journal of Psychoanalysis (1969), no. 50, pp. 155-78. The theory emphasizes the internalization of external objects in the form of mental representations, an idea that derives in part from Freud’s work on mourning. See K. Abraham, “A Short Study of the Development of the Libido,” Selected Papers (London: Hogarth, 1949). It was developed by Klein particularly, but also by Kohut, Kernberg, Winnicott, and others. For general overviews of the approach, see E. Jacobson, The Self and the Object World (New York: International University Press, 1964), pp. 3-69; J. D. Sutherland, “Object relations and the conceptual model of psychoanalysis,” British journal of Medical Psychology (1963), no. 36, pp. 109-24, and “British Object Relations Theorists: Balint, Winnicott, Fairbairn, Guntrip,” journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (1980), no. 34, pp. 829-60; and H. Guntrip, Personality Structure and Human Interaction—The Developing Synthesis of Psychodynamic Theory (London: Hogarth, 1961). On the internalization of representations of objects and their mediation by cultural codes, see especially R. Schafer, Aspects of Internalization (New York: International Universities Press, 1968), and G. Platte and F. Weinstein, Psychoanalytic Sociology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972). On the concept of mental representation and its role in psychopathology, see D. Beres and E. Joseph, “The Concept of Mental Representation in Psychoanalysis,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis (1970), no. 51, pp. 1-9; S. J. Blatt and S. Shichman, “Two Primary Configurations of Psychopathology,” Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought (1983), vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 187-254; Blatt, “Levels of Object Representation in Anaclitic and Introjective Depression,” Psychoanalytic Study of the Child (1974), no. 29„ pp. 107-57; Blatt, C. Wild, and B. Ritzier, “Disturbances of object representation in schizophrenia,” Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Science (1975), no. 4, pp. 235-88; S. Fraiberg, “Libidinal Object Constancy and Mental Representation,” Psychoanalytic Study of the Child (1969), no. 24, pp. 9-47; L. Freedman, “The Barren Prospect of a Representational World,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly (1980), no. 39, pp. 215-33; A. Loewald, “On Internalization,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis (1973), no. 54, pp. 9-17; Loewald, “Instinct Theory, Object Relations, and Psychic Structure Formation,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (1978), no. 29, pp. 39-106; P. Noy, “Symbolism and Mental Representation,” International Review of Psychoanalysis (1975), no. 2, pp. 171-87; J. Schimek, “A Critical Reexamination of Freud’s Concept of Mental Representation,” International Review of Psychoanalysis (1975), no. 22, pp. 171-87. For a more sociological elaboration of object relations theory into theory of social relations, see N. Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).

6. We use the terms “metaphor” and “metonymy” to name the two major axes of representation, with metaphor being the vertical or idealizing axis and metonymy being the horizontal or materializing axis. This should not be taken as a condemnation of metaphors. Actual metaphors can themselves be part of a metonymic approach to the representation of the social world. And metonymy can itself be a conservative trope in certain contexts, as Judith Harris argues in regard to law (see “Recognizing Legal Tropes: Metonymy as Manipulative Mode,” American University Law Review, Vol. 34 [Summer 1985], pp. 1215-29). We use the terms to name general rhetorical strategies, not specific tropes. In our use, metaphor is linked to ideology for several reasons. Metaphor consists of an empirical image (an eagle, say) and an absent, or ideal meaning (“freedom”). Metaphor suggests a static or spatial structure; the hidden or unstated meaning is simultaneous with the vehicle of its communication. It is associated with tradition and authority in that hidden meanings have to be known and in that because invisible they have to be believed. Metaphor as a general rhetorical strategy also implies codes of meaning from which the significance of an image is deduced. Metaphors privilege analogical thought of the sort which favors identities over differential thinking. That is, an image is analogically identified with a meaning. Metaphor is context-free and universalistic; its meanings transcend material ties and are not contingent upon specific circumstances. Metaphor implies an autonomous ego, the determiner of meaning and the deducer of truth. Metaphor is paradigmatic (implying order), hypotactic (implying a subordination of image to meaning), and disjunctive (operating as either/or propositions). A metaphor means one determinate thing specifically. Metaphor is vertical and hierarchical in that it places ideal meaning over material image and privileges the first.

Metonymy, on the other hand, orients thinking horizontally and equally. In metonymy, an image or sign signifies or means something with which it is connected by part to part or part for whole. Eagle rather than mean freedom would mean nest, or forest, or threatened species. Metonymy connects concrete things on an equal plane of reference, without idealizing one over the other. If metaphor lifts thinking out of reality and toward meta-material ideals like “freedom,” metonymy has a realist, concrete, and materialist orientation. Because no ideal meanings stand in to stop the flow of material references or connections, the lateral dissemination of meaning in a metonymic rhetorical mode is potentially endless. In contrast to the traditionalist orientation of metaphor, metonymy is future-oriented, dynamic, and indeterminate. Contiguous relations and connections are unpredictable, multiple, not limitable to an order of subordination (of image to ideal meaning) or of semantic equivalence. Rather than identify things analogically, metonymy affirms their difference while acknowledging their connectedness. Metonymy tends to be empirical, differentiated, and particular, rather than universalistic and identitarian; it decodes or runs down semantic paradigms of equivalence which determine meaning in fixed patterns; it is contextual and combinatory, paratactic (or coordinative) and conjunctive (operating as both/and propositions). We associate it with such deconstructive values as indeterminacy and undecidability, and it has clear similarities to what feminists pose as an alternative “woman’s” cognitive mode.

Nevertheless, we emphasize that metonymy is itself the name for the breaking down of simplistic distinctions such as that between metaphor and metonymy. If we use the opposition as we do, it is because in an ideological universe the world tends to end up divided in ideological ways. In a postideological world, it may be possible that such distinctions will no longer hold, but it is a feature of ideology as we see it operating in Hollywood film culture to subordinate the metonymic mode to the metaphoric.

7. For an expanded discussion of these methodological and theoretical points, see M. Ryan, Politics and Culture (London: Macmillan, 1988). A final word on vocabulary. We occasionally use technical terms like “undecidability” and “imaginary.” We assume a familiarity with deconstruction in our audience, but readers unfamiliar with a term like “undecidability” should consult the works of Jacques Derrida or the introductions to his work by Culler, Leitch, Norris, Ryan, and Spivak. The term “imaginary” derives from Lacanian psychoanalysis, although we do not use it in its technical sense. We employ it to describe a shared or culturally instituted ideological consciousness. For a good explanation of this expanded use of the term, see J. Thompson, Essays on the Theory of Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). We also use the term “homosocial” to refer to the bonding that is crucial to male power. Although homosociality has erotic components, homosocial does not mean homosexual. See E. Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).

1. From Counterculture to Counterrevolution, 1967-1971

1. See A. H. Cantril and C. W. Roll, Hopes and Fears of the American People (New York: Universe, 1971); D. Yankelovich, The New Morality: A Profile of American Youth in the 70s (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974); J. Veroff et al., The Inner American: A Self-Portrait from 1957 to 1976 (New York: Basic Books, 1981).

2. On the reactionary thematics of the film, see M. Shedlin, “Police Oscar: The French Connection,” Film Quarterly (Summer, 1972), pp. 2-9. Debate over whether the film is “fascist” is found in articles by G. Epps and R. Leary in Film Critic, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1972), pp. 54-72. Although we do not believe that this and other similar films are “fascist,” we agree with Epps that they provide a “breeding ground of the fascist mentality” in their depiction of violence as the best means of eliminating crime as well as in their primitivism, racism, and authoritarianism.

Right-wing thinking in the U.S. tends to be overwhelmingly populist, although populism itself can also take radical forms. Populism appears in U.S. culture as a celebration of the virtue of the common man, resistance to large impersonal institutions, and a privileging of nature, rurality, and simplicity over urban, cosmopolitan modernity. On the dual politics of populism, see K. M. Dolbeare and P. Dolbeare, American Ideologies: The Competing Political Beliefs of the 70s (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1976).

2. Crisis Films

1. See S. M. Lipset and W. Schneider, The Confidence Gap: Business, Labor, and Government in the Public Mind (New York: Free Press, 1983).

2. On disaster films, see N. Roddick, “Only the Stars Survive: Disaster Movies in the Seventies,” Performance and Politics in Popular Drama, ed. D. Bradby, L. James, and B. Sharratt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); O. Eyquem, “Sur fond d’apocalypse,” Positif 179 (March 1976), pp. 39-45; I. Znepolsky, “Films catastrophiques, spectateurs catastrophes,” Ecran 50 (Sept. 1976), pp. 34-40; and three articles in Telecine 199 (May 1975), pp. 11-14.

3. Variety (Jan. 5, 1977) lists among the “All-Time Film Rental Champs”: 8, The Towering Inferno ($55 million); 14, Airport ($45.3 million); 16, The Poseidon Adventure ($42.5 million); 20, Earthquake ($36.1 million).

4. See Jump Cut, no. 1 (May-June 1974), pp. 3-4.

5. R. McCormick, “The Devil Made Me Do It! A Critique of The Exorcist,” Cineaste, vol. 6, no. 3 (1974), p. 21.

6. See P. Biskind, “Jaws” Jump Cut, no. 9 (Oct.-Dec. 1975), pp. 13-14, 26; F. Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” Social Text 1 (Winter 1979), pp. 130-48. For a more formal ideological analysis of the film see S. Heath, “ Jaws, Ideology, and Film Theory,” Film Reader 2, ed. P. Erens and B. Horrigan (Evanston: Northwestern Film Division Publication, 1977), pp. 166-68.

7. See E. Rapping, “The View from Hollywood: The American Family and the American Dream,” Socialist Review, no. 67 (Jan.-Feb. 1983), pp. 71-92; J. Hess, Jump Cut, no. 7 (May-June 1975), pp. 4-5.

3. Genre Transformations and the Failure of Liberalism

1. See W. Wright, Six-Guns and Society.

2. See W. Wright, “The Empire Bites the Dust,” Social Text (Fall 1982), pp. 120-25. We do not suggest that capitalism, operating as a spurious collective subject, generates myths that reinforce its legitimacy. Rather, myths advocating values and institutions central to capitalism are integral to the cultural discourse of the United States from its origins. See A. Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), and R. Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1980). This mythic discourse, which assumed different though related forms in previous eras, is worked out in the mid-twentieth century in the film western.

3. Dan Georgakas, however, argues that even in those films that are more sympathetic to Indians there are fundamental distortions of Native American culture and continuing negative Hollywood stereotypes. See “They Have Not Spoken: American Indians in Film,” Film Quarterly (Spring 1972), pp. 26-32.

4. P. Roffman and J. Purdy, The Hollywood Social Problem Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981) point out that whereas social problem films comprised 28% of Hollywood’s total film output in 1947, during the height of the blacklist period they decline significantly and by 1954 make up only 9.2% of films produced.

5. See, for example, H. Hertzberg and D. D. K. McClelland, “Paranoia. An idee fixe whose time has come,” Harper’s (June 1974), pp. 51-60. In a review of The Parallax View in Time (July 8, 1974, p. 16) R. Schickel talks about the new genre of the “paranoid thriller,” and S. Farber in The New York Times (Aug. 11, 1974) and P. Kael in The New Yorker (Aug. 5, 1974) discuss the paranoid vision of such movies. G. Weed analyzes basic traits of the new “paranoid genre” and contextualizes it within film history in an article, “Toward a Definition of Filmoia,” in The Velvet Light Trap, no. 13 (1974) pp. 2-6. Film critics continued to see paranoia films as a dominant trend of the 1970s. J. Cawelti, for example, discusses “Fascination with Conspiracy or Paranoia as Norm” in “Trends in Recent American Genre Fiction,” Kansas Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 4 (Fall 1978), pp. 13-15.

6. See the article by R. T.Jameson, “The Pakula Parallax,” and the accompanying interview with Pakula in Film Comment (Sept.-Oct. 1976), pp. 8-19, where Pakula states: “I think that paranoia is a terribly misused word, the sort of word that’s used constantly today. . . . I use it to represent an excessive fear of the unknown, the unseen.”

7. See Pakula’s interview in Film Comment, where he states: “I had just made a film, The Parallax View, which someone . . . said had destroyed the American hero myth. If that’s true, All the President’s Men resurrects it. One film says the individual will be destroyed, it’s Kafkaesque that way, Central European. . . . The Woodward and Bernstein story is the antithesis of that. Film students have asked me how I could do one and then the other, and I say, it’s very simple: Parallax View represents my fear about what’s going on, and All the President’s Men represents my hope” (p. 16).

4. Class, Race, and the New South

1. T. B. Edsall, The New Politics of Inequality (New York: Norton, 1985), p. 213; W. Watts and L. A. Free, eds, The State of the Nation (New York: Universe Books, 1975); Watts and Free, The State of the Nation III (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1978), pp. 9-14; A. Campbell, The Sense of Well Being in America: Recent Patterns and Trends (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), pp. 168-73; J. L. Goodman, Jr., Public Opinion During the Reagan Administration: National Issues, Private Concern (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, 1983); P. E. Converse et al., American Social Attitudes Data Resourcebook 1947-1978 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980).

2. For a good assessment of the working-class film phenomenon of the seventies, see A. Auster and L. Quart, “The Working Class Goes to Hollywood: FIST and Blue Collar,” Cineaste, vol. IX, no. 1 (1978), pp. 4-7; and P. Biskind and B. Ehrenreich, “Machismo and Hollywood’s Working Class,” Socialist Review no. 50-51 (Mar.-June, 1980), pp. 109-31.

3. More than working class or New South films, films about blacks have elicited a good amount of critical and scholarly attention. Most books concentrate on film history through the early seventies. See L. Patterson, Black Film as Genre (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978); D. J. Leab From Sambo to Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion Pictures (Boston: Houghton, 1975); J. Pines, Blacks in Films: A Survey of Racial Themes and Images in American Film (London: Macmillan, 1975).

4. On the ideology of the new black bourgeoisie, see M. Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (Boston: South End Press, 1982).

5. A. Hacker, U.S. A Statistical Portrait of the American People (New York: Pantheon, 1983), p. 123.

6. See P. T. Johnson’s excellent historical assessment in The Crisis, vol. 93, no. 1 (1986).

7. On the development of the New South, see A. Watkins and D. Perry, The Rise of Sunbelt Cities (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977) and K. Sale, Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment (New York: Random House, 1975). For a good account of the transformation from Old South films to New South films, see E. Campbell, The Celluloid South: Hollywood and the Southern Myth (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981).

8. M. Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream (New York: Verso, 1986), p. 222.

5. The Politics of Sexuality

1. See Sexual Stratagems: The World of Women in Film, ed. P. Erens (New York: Horizon, 1979); E. A. Kaplan, Women and Film (New York: Methuen, 1983); A. Kuhn, Women’s Pictures (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982); and T. de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).

2. D. Denby, “Men Without Women, Women Without Men,” reprinted in Film 1973-74, ed. D. Denby and J. Cocks (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1978), p. 168.

3. M. McCreadie, “Latter-Day Loreleis: New Screen Heroines,” Cineaste (1982), vol. XII, no. 2, pp. 16-18.

4. See the excellent discussion of the rhetoric of images in Kramer by R. A. Balin, Jump Cut (Oct. 1980), pp. 4-5.

5. On the scapegoating of women, see T. O’Brien, “Love and Death in the American Movie,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (Summer 1980), vol. IX, no. 2, pp. 91-92; and M. Haskell, “Lights. . . Camera. . . Daddy!” The Nation (May 28, 1983), pp. 673-75.

6. See O. Eyquem, “Un retour du melodrame,” Positif, nos. 228-30 (March, April, May 1980), and D. Kehr, “The New Male Melodrama,” American Film (April 1983), pp. 43-47.

7. See the panel discussion “Out of the Closet and on to the Screen,” in American Film (Sept. 1982), pp. 57-64, 81.

6. Horror Films

1. See A. Britton, R. Lippe, T. Williams, and R. Wood, American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film (Toronto: Festivals of Festivals Publication, 1979). Variety claimed that in 1980 horror and science fiction films would generate more than one-third of all box-office rentals, and predicted that by 1981 the figures would reach 50%. See “Horror Sci-Fi Pix Earn 37% of Rentals—Big Rise During 10-Year Period” (Jan. 1981). Cinefantastique reported in a decade recap that half of the top ten money-making films of all time were horror and science fiction; see 9:3/9:4 (1980), p. 72.

2. At a time when the genre cycle of demonically possessed children films began to accelerate, an article appeared in Esquire (March 1974) titled “Do Americans Suddenly Hate Kids?” In Newsweek, an article on “The New Child” (March 4, 1974) claimed that “The latest perception is that adults don’t even like children” (75), mentioning increased brutality toward children and the growing tendency of couples not to have children.

3. Wood, American Nightmare, p. 91.

4. M. Mackey, “The Meat Hook Movie, The Nice Girl, and Butch Cassidy in Drag,” Jump Cut, no. 14 (1977), p. 12.

5. M. J. Murphy, The Celluloid Vampire (Ann Arbor: Pierian, 1979), pp. ix-xi.

6. See G. Brown, “Obsession,” American Film (Dec. 1983), pp. 29-34, and S. Bathrick, “Ragtime: The Horror of Growing Up Female,” Jump Cut, no. 14 (1977), pp. 9-12.

7. See Film Quarterly (Fall 1981), pp. 44ff., and the De Palma interview in Film Comment (Jan. 1983), p. 38. See also “ ‘Double Trouble’—an interview with Brian De Palma,” Film Comment (September-October 1984), pp. 13-17.

8. Thompson suggests that “psychos escape so easily in these films that the case for capital punishment is subtly emphasized.” See Overexposures (New York: Morrow, 1981), p. 184.

9. G. Gerbner and L. Gross, “Living with Television: The Violence Profile,” Journal of Communication (Spring 1976), pp. 172-97.

7. Vietnam and the New Militarism

1. See G. Adair, Hollywood and Vietnam: From THE GREEN BERETS to APOCALYPSE NOW (New York: Proteus, 1981); L. Suid, Guts Glory: Great American War Movies (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1978); J. Smith, Looking Away: Hollywood and Vietnam (New York: Scribners, 1975); A. Britton, “Sideshows: Hollywood in Vietnam,” Movies 27-28 (1980-81), pp. 2-23; and “Preparer a une troisieme guerre mondiale: les films americains menent campagne (1970-1980),” Cinethique (1981), pp. 1-36.

2. On returning vet films, see Adair, Hollywood and Vietnam; Smith, Looking Away; and A. Auster and L. Quart, “Man and Superman: Vietnam and the New American Hero,” Social Policy (Jan.-Feb. 1981), pp. 61-64, and “The Wounded Vet in Political Film,” Social Policy (Fall 1982), pp. 25-31.

3. F. Liebowitz, “Recycling American Ideology: The Second Coming of Michael Vronsky,” Telos, no. 47 (Spring 1981), pp. 204-208.

4. See the provocative reading of The Deer Hunter as nihilistic tragic epic in F. Burke, “The Deer Hunter and Jaundiced Angel,” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory (Winter 1980), pp. 123-31. Also, see R. Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 270ff.

5. For a discussion of the relation between films about military life and the new militarism, see Tabloid, no. 4 (1981), pp. 3-17.

6. See G. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: The Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964), pp. 55, 60, 62, 94, 281.

8. The Return of the Hero

1. See F. F. Piven and R. Cloward, The New Class War (New York: Pantheon, 1981).

2. G. Gilder, Wealth and Poverty (New York: Basic Books, 1981). Gilder demonstrates the neoconservative abhorrence of rationality and the desire to return to primitive faith and instinct (biology) as a basis for social hierarchy. Society should be governed by a “supply side political” elite of male businessmen.

3. For a good ideological critique of the film, see D. Ruby, “ Star Wars: Not so Far Away,” jump Cut, no. 18, pp. 9-13. Ruby points out that the rebels are in fact restorers of an old order, like the fascist revolutionaries in twentieth-century Europe. The fascist elements in Star Wars are criticized in R. Jewett and J. S. Lawrence, “ ‘Pop Fascism’ in ‘Star Wars’—or vision of a better world?” Des Moines Sunday Register (November 27, 1977). Jewett and Lawrence quote the film’s director, George Lucas, in the novelistic version of the movie and compare these passages to ones from European fascist writers to argue convincingly for an ideological parallel: “ ‘The Jedi have been . . . the most powerful, most respected force in the galaxy . . . the guarantors of peace and justice,’ [Lucas writes.] . . . [Jewett and Lawrence continue:] The Fascist thinker Palmieri described such warriors as capable of ‘that magic flash of a moment of supreme intuition’ which comes ‘to the hero and none other.’Just as the European heroes of the 1930s proclaimed, ‘We think with our blood,’ Skywalker is informed that his father was a Jedi who would never hesitate to embark on an ‘idealistic crusade’ because his decisions came to him ‘instinctively.’ “ In Lucas’s book version of Star Wars (New York: Ballantine, 1976), his description of the Imperial Troopers echoes right-wing denunciations of the Soviet Union and the New Deal welfare state: “These fearsome troops enforce the restrictive laws with callous disregard for human rights. Quite often they are tools used to further the personal ambitions of the Imperial governors and bureaucrats.” For a sense of the right-wing use of the word “empire” as a metaphor for big government and urban cosmopolitan liberalism, see C. N. Wilson, “Citizens or Subjects,” in R. W. Whitaker, ed., The New Right Papers (New York: St. Martins, 1982): “[An empire] consists of subjects, interchangeable persons, having no intrinsic value, to be manipulated in the interests of that abstraction, the empire.” It is interesting that a number of critics have pointed out that the storm troopers are all the same size and shape, interchangeable, in other words.

4. See R. Wood, “Wood on Cimino,” Cine Action! no. 6 (August 1986), pp. 57-65.

5. See the article “ ‘I’m the Boss’,” Film Comment (July-Aug. 1980), pp. 49-57, where Lucas takes credit for the idea of Raiders and asserts his control over the conception and editing of the film.

6. See “Case Histories of Business Management: A Memo from Francis Ford Coppola,” Esquire, vol. 88, no. 5 (November 1977), pp. 190–96. Coppola reorganized his production unit in an authoritarian manner: “This company will be known as American Zoetrope and . . . it is me and my work. . . . There is only one person in authority and that is me. . . . Don’t presume anything. When in doubt, go back to my original directive.” His wife even noticed this during the shooting of Apocalypse: “More and more there are parallels between the character of Kurtz and Francis.” See “Notes,” New York Times Magazine (August 5, 1979), p. 39. As further examples of Coppola’s fascination with authoritarianism, Milius refers to him as the “Bay Area Mussolini,” and in 1967 Coppola said that he patterned his life on that of Hitler. Not surprisingly, by 1979 his company would be distributing Our Hitler. See MacLean’s (August 27, 1979). Given his conservatism, it is interesting that he originally intended to include a segment in Apocalypse which blamed student rioting for the French defeat in the war. See “Dialog on Film: Martin Sheen,” American Film, vol. 8, no. 3 (December 1982), pp. 20-28. On Coppola’s petit-bourgeois propensities, see S. Braudy, “Francis Ford Coppola: Portrait of the Godfather’s Film Father,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 238, no. 2 (August 1976), pp. 67-73.

9. Fantasy Films

1. In an interview with Rolling Stone (Jan. 26, 1978), Spielberg explicitly notes that he intended to make the ending a quasi-religious experience (p. 23). See the critique of the vacuousness of Spielberg’s religiosity in A. Gordon, “Close Encounters. The Gospel According to Steven Spielberg,” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. VIII, no. 3 (1980), pp. 156–64.

10. The Politics of Representation

1. See B. Klinger, “ ‘Cinema/Ideology/Criticism’ Revisited: The Progressive Text,” Screen, vol. 25, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 1984), pp. 30-44.

2. See S. Blatt, J. Schimek, and B. Brenneis, “The nature of psychotic experience and its implications for the therapeutic process,” in Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia, J. Strauss et al., eds. (New York: Plenum, 1980).

3. See “Talkin’ Reds” in Socialist Review, no. 62 (March-April 1982), pp. 109–24; J. Trinkle in The Guardian (Dec. 23, 1981), p. 22; and the dossier assembled by C. Kleinhans and J. Hess Jump Cut, no. 28 (1983), pp. 6-11.

4. On Missing, see “The Missing Dossier,” Cineaste, vol. XII, no. 1 (1982), pp. 30-38.

5. On the aesthetics and politics of U.S. documentary, see B. Nichols, Ideology and the Image (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), and “The Art and Politics of the Documentary: A Symposium,” Cineaste, vol. XI, no. 3 (1981), pp. 12–21. Our discussion has been aided by an article by Chuck Kleinhans and B. Ruby Rich, “The Relations of Avant-Garde and Radical Political Cinema in the U.S.,” Cinemaction (April 1980) (mimeo). See the special issue of jump Cut (no. 28—1983) on independents. Framework devoted three important issues to the U.S. independent movement (nos. 19, 20, and 21—1983). For a full listing of social issue films, see Reel Change: A Guide to Social Issue Films, ed. P. Peyton (Film Fund, P.O. Box 909, San Francisco, Calif. 94101).

6. L. Garafola, “Independents at the Crossroads,” Jump Cut, no. 28 (1983), pp. 35-37.

Conclusion

1. W. D. Burnham, The Current Crisis of American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 259-60.

2. We have relied on Public Opinion and The Gallup Survey for our polling information. Our position is confirmed in T. Ferguson and J. Rogers, “The Myth of America’s Turn to the Right,” Atlantic Monthly (May 1986), pp. 43-53.