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If I wanted to understand a culture via their movies, I would not reach out exclusively for their serious dramas, historical pieces, and solemn biopics. I would

If I wanted to understand a culture via their movies, I would not reach out exclusively for their serious dramas, historical pieces, and solemn biopics. I would certainly rope stuff like Star Wars in. The way I see it, there was a fascinating trend in action movies throughout my life, when the hero went from plain good 100% hero (say, a late 80s hero), to a grizzled guy that's ultimately got his heart in the right place (Wolverine types, Die Hard types), to fairly despicable people that "go out like men" doing epic stuff (Walter White), to completely messed up manipulative people that are triumphant and that's it (House of Cards dude). People find this kind of analysis very non-rigorous, but I often feel like the fact that these were successively popular with American audiences matches pretty well the changing self-image of America-the-nation. From pretense of full-righteousness to cynical "realism" and taking pride in "somebody has to do it" to "at least we're on top". So, I think extremely deep reads of fairly shallow but resonant fiction are often very worthwhile. edit: Of course, someone will point out that these are popular with different demographics and whatnot, that my cohort aged, etc.- I'm not going to turn this into a rigorous statistical analysis. It's just musings.

chr15p 11y ago
I was about to laugh at you for not realising that Netflix's House Of Cards is actually a remake of a BBC series from 1990, but on reflection that probably adds to your point. Many British films of the 1950's and 60's (also being non-rigorous!) are morally very black and white, lots of war movies, but also things like the early James Bond films have an absolute faith that Britain was a world power, maybe alongside the US and USSR, but still important, whereas by the late 1980's that self confidence had pretty much gone and instead you get the shades of grey and cynicism of things like House Of Cards. Of course Britain's loss of empire was much more definitive then any US decline, which is mostly a post-9/11 post-iraq war loss of confidence but there is an interesting parallel. Most programmes are a commentary on the time they are made, not the time they are set so I agree deep reads can be very revealing.

chr15p 11y ago

I was about to laugh at you for not realising that Netflix's House Of Cards is actually a remake of a BBC series from 1990, but on reflection that probably adds to your point. Many British films of the 1950's and 60's (also being non-rigorous!) are morally very black and white, lots of war movies, but also things like the early James Bond films have an absolute faith that Britain was a world power, maybe alongside the US and USSR, but still important, whereas by the late 1980's that self confidence had pretty much gone and instead you get the shades of grey and cynicism of things like House Of Cards. Of course Britain's loss of empire was much more definitive then any US decline, which is mostly a post-9/11 post-iraq war loss of confidence but there is an interesting parallel. Most programmes are a commentary on the time they are made, not the time they are set so I agree deep reads can be very revealing.