Jen Hitchcock

History 579

Blue-Collar Hollywood: Liberalism, Democracy, and Working People in American Film

by John Bodnar

Blue Collar Hollywood looks at how working class and common people have been depicted in film from the 1930’s to the 1980’s. John Bodnar argues that the representations of working people in movies since the 1930’s cannot be completely understood by analyzing them through class-based frameworks. To get a more thorough understanding of how common people have been represented in culture, Bodnar suggests beginning “by looking more broadly at powerful American political traditions that have played pivotal roles in American life and at the way those traditional ideas were deployed and remade in American culture.”(xxi) Movies, and how working people have been represented in them, have reflected a much more diverse set of wants and desires over time. Bodnar asserts that the tensions between liberalism and democracy in the political arena manifest in how working people in film have been depicted as pursuing (or being denied) these wants and desires.

Bodnar points out that since the turn of the century, mass culture, and specifically, the movies, undermined the orderly way in which mainstream political movements and their ideological arsenals” (xvi) sought to shape the mindsets and actions of individuals. As cultural authority shifted from the traditional establishments of church and government to the individual, mass culture served as a new forum for public discourse in which ideas of ethics and values could be communicated and debated. Bodnar suggests, “all along, mass culture was tackling dimensions of liberal thinking that traditional politics tended to ignore by promoting a heated discussion of the range of desires and wants in human nature.” (223) Mass culture, and especially film became venues to explore the topics politicians and societal leaders were not addressing. “Amidst the unending assertion of financial, emotional and political concerns, these films, and much of American mass culture,” Bodnar asserts, “were continually inscribed by the powerful current of liberalism and, to a lesser extent, democracy that flowed through the American imagination.” (220)

Bodnar arranges his book chronologically with chapter one beginning with the films of the nineteen-thirties. In this chapter, he argues that a strong current of both liberal individualism and democratic ideals ran through the films of the decade. The duality of the films were reflective of the political fabric of the time where “no single political doctrine-conservative or radical-could generate mass support at either the ballot box or the ticket booth.” (3) In the movies, individuals who were seeking out a better life for themselves, at the same time held a strong desire to also contribute to the collective. Strong individualism was a means to upholding a strong democratic environment. This was apparent in characters such as the Grapes Of Wrath’s Tom Joad. In Frank Capra’s films, relationships in which people of all classes and differing gender existed in a cooperative environment served as a metaphor for democracy, trumping those relationships in which one person in the group had undue power over the others. “Hope and anxiety coexisted in these fictive people, who were grounded in the complexities of a political imagination riddled with realistic doses of democracy and liberalism.’ (53)

Chapters two and three cover the films of the war and postwar years. During the war years, Hollywood, along with other forms of mass media, was involved in the wartime effort, working to win the support of the public for the wartime policies of the Roosevelt administration. “The growing convergence between the interests of the state and the film industry…had distinct implications for the representation of American political ideals and the people who adhered to them.”(55) The exploration on screen of the up and downsides of liberalism was lost to films that promoted self-sacrifice for the defense of the nation and patriotic participation. “Democratic instincts prevailed over those that were more liberal.” (86) While the wartime years depicted common people in unrealistic, overly sentimentalized films, the post war years once again began putting forth films that portrayed working people in gritty, more realistic situations. In a political environment that was questioning the ability of common people as capable participants in a democratic society plagued by the threat of atomic obliteration, paradoxically, films began exploring the negative aspects of racial, ethnic and religious prejudice.

Chapter four explores the 1950’s, looking at how the politics of the time promoted illiberalism and intolerant agendas under the guise of democratic and liberal ideas. The politics of “containment” intended to “govern worlds that were both public and private, social and emotional.” (133) Films at this time often tended to show the underbelly of working class life, with characters representing the less rosy, more realistic side of life that existed on the other side of the rhetoric being put forth by government and business. The liberal dream sometimes failed, as boxer character Tony Moreno illustrated. “Mass cultural products like film continued to move further and further away from the assurances of traditional political organizations and closer to acknowledging that personal longing and frustrations were what mattered most.” (175)

Bodnar finishes by examining how film responded to the breaking down of trust in government institutions and leaders beginning in the 1960’s. Bodnar suggests that political life in the thirties, forties and fifties “tended to emphasize the power of institutions over individuals, the concerns of men over women and the power of whites over blacks,” therefore “the expression of democracy and liberalism was generally distorted to serve political reality.” (177) Film at this time was reflective of the doubt that plagued many Americans about the stability of their future in the hands of their government, capitalism and the value system that was so integral to the American story. Characters such as Karen Silkwood and Ron Kovic illustrated this on the screen.