The American Dream and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema
eBook - PDF

The American Dream and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

  1. 174 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The American Dream and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

About this book

While the myth of a classless America endures in the American Dream, the very stratification that it denies unfairly affects the majority of Americans. Study after study shows that it's increasingly difficult for working class people to achieve upward mobility in the US - so how does the American Dream continue to thrive?


J. Emmett Winn shows us that the American Dream's continued glorification in contemporary Hollywood cinema should not be ignored. The book explicates three major themes surrounding the American Dream in contemporary Hollywood cinema and relates those findings to the United States' social and cultural changes in the last 25 years. Through his thoughtful analysis of films as diverse as Working Girl, Titanic, Pretty Woman, Flashdance, The Firm, Good Will Hunting, Saturday Night Fever, Wall Street and many others, Winn shows that contemporary Hollywood is very much in the business of keeping the Dream alive.

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Information

Publisher
Continuum
Year
2007
Print ISBN
9781441129758
eBook ISBN
9781441109651
Edition
1
Topic
Media & Performing Arts
Subtopic
Film History & Criticism
Moralizing
the
Material
125
language
of 
the
individual.
In
other 
words,
the
economic
conditions
that
divide
the
U.S. 
population
are
reduced
to 
the
problems
of
individual
characters
and 
are
solved 
through 
cross-class
relationships.
The
result
is
that
the
gulf
that 
exists 
between
the
affluent
and
underprivileged
is
bridged
by
pleasant 
interpersonal 
relationships 
that
personify
both
material
security
and
moral 
goodness.
The
upper-class
and
lower-class
characters
are
united
in 
a
rhetorical 
rehabilitation
of 
a
class-divided
society,
the
personification
of 
the
American 
Dream. 
This 
rhetorical
move
extends
a
heartening, 
placating,
and
healthy 
view
of 
the
United
States
as 
the
exalted 
land
of 
the
American 
Dream. 
Just
as 
the
various
characters
are
cured,
the
nation's
immoral 
economic 
imbalances
are
rhetorically 
healed.
In
short,
the 
films
symbolically 
solve
America's
eco-
nomic 
disparity 
through 
relationships 
that 
moralize 
material 
wealth
by
making
it 
one
part
of 
a
virtuous 
cross-class 
relationship.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. 1. The American Dream, Upward Mobility, and Hollywood Film
  4. 2. Moralizing Mobility
  5. 3. Moralizing Failure
  6. 4. Moralizing the Material
  7. 5. The American Dream and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema
  8. Bibliography
  9. Index

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