magiadoreal

The repeated recourse to Great Depression and World War II-era popular culture - in Lucas' space adventures, in Spielberg's Indiana Jones series, in the Superman and Batman films - sought to revive national myths and dreams by drawing on narratives and characters from the last era of ideological coherence and common belief. Filmmakers reached back in time, or out in space, for that which eluded them in the present. Their repetitions and appropriations, however, implied no perspective on the past, nor any dialogue between past and present. If inevitable differences between eras were acknowledge, it was through a self-conscious knowingness. (...) At best the films became simply nostalgic, expressions of the regret at the loss of former certainties and the emptiness of the transient cultural proeminence that blockbusters attained. Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America , p. 357-8.

They were a new race, these men and women of the movies, said a writer in the 1920s. They were a people dedicated more completely to the body, to beauty and health, than any the world had seen before. (...) They lived unspritual lives, said a visiting European intellectual, lives devoted to the senses. Hollywood possessed no theater, no good bookshops, no museums, no art galleries, no institutions of traditional high culture. They played golf at their country clubs and tennis on their private courts. They swam in their pools or at the beachside colony in Santa Monica. They ate and drank, they listened to the radio, they danced, they flirted. They had a wonderful time. Robert Sklar, "Movie-Made America", pp. 77.