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8.2 Movies and Culture

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Recognize how movies reflect cultural attitudes, trends, and events.

2. Indicate how movies influence culture.

Movies Mirror Culture

The relationship between movies and culture involves a complicated dynamic; while American movies
certainly influence the mass culture that consumes them, they are also an integral part of that culture, a
product of it, and therefore a reflection of prevailing concerns, attitudes, and beliefs. In considering the
relationship between film and culture, it is important to keep in mind that, while certain ideologies may
be prevalent in a given era, not only is American culture as diverse as the populations that form it, but it
is also constantly changing from one period to the next. Mainstream films produced in the late 1940s
and into the 1950s, for example, reflected the conservatism that dominated the sociopolitical arenas of
the time. However, by the 1960s, a reactionary youth culture began to emerge in opposition to the
dominant institutions, and these antiestablishment views soon found their way onto screen—a far cry
from the attitudes most commonly represented only a few years earlier.

In one sense, movies could be characterized as America’s storytellers. Not only do Hollywood films
reflect certain commonly held attitudes and beliefs about what it means to be American, but they also
portray contemporary trends, issues, and events, serving as records of the eras in which they were
produced. Consider, for example, films about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks: Fahrenheit
9/11, World Trade Center, United 93, and others. These films grew out of a seminal event of the time,
one that preoccupied the consciousness of Americans for years after it occurred.

Birth of a Nation

In 1915, director D. W. Griffith established his reputation with the highly successful film The Birth of a
Nation, based on Thomas Dixon’s novel The Clansman, a prosegregation narrative about the American
South during and after the Civil War. At the time, The Birth of a Nation was the longest feature film
ever made, at almost 3 hours, and contained huge battle scenes that amazed and delighted audiences.
Griffith’s storytelling ability helped solidify the narrative style that would go on to dominate feature
films. He also experimented with editing techniques such as close-ups, jump cuts, and parallel editing
that helped make the film an artistic achievement.

Griffith’s film found success largely because it captured the social and cultural tensions of the era. As
American studies specialist Lary May has argued, “[Griffith’s] films dramatized every major concern of
the day.”Lary May, “Apocalyptic Cinema: D. W. Griffith and the Aesthetics of Reform,” in Movies and
Mass Culture, ed. John Belton (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 26. In the early
20th century, fears about recent waves of immigrants had led to certain racist attitudes in mass culture,
with “scientific” theories of the time purporting to link race with inborn traits like intelligence and other
capabilities. Additionally, the dominant political climate, largely a reaction against populist labor
movements, was one of conservative elitism, eager to attribute social inequalities to natural human
differences.“Birth of a Nation,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd ed., ed. William A. Darity, Jr.,
Gale Virtual Reference Library, 1:305–306. According to a report by the New York Evening Post after
the film’s release, even some Northern audiences “clapped when the masked riders took vengeance on
Negroes.”Charles Higham. The Art of the American Film: 1900–1971. (Garden City: Doubleday &
Company, 1973), 13. However, the outrage many groups expressed about the film is a good reminder
that American culture is not monolithic, that there are always strong contingents in opposition to
dominant ideologies.

While critics praised the film for its narrative complexity and epic scope, many others were outraged
and even started riots at several screenings because of its highly controversial, openly racist attitudes,
which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and blamed Southern blacks for the destruction of the war.Charles
Higham. The Art of the American Film: 1900–1971. (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1973), 10–
11. Many Americans joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
in denouncing the film, and the National Board of Review eventually cut a number of the film’s racist
sections.Lary May, “Apocalyptic Cinema: D. W. Griffith and the Aesthetics of Reform,” in Movies and
Mass Culture, ed. John Belton (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 46. However, it’s
important to keep in mind the attitudes of the early 1900s. At the time the nation was divided, and Jim
Crow laws and segregation were enforced. Nonetheless, The Birth of a Nation was the highest grossing
movie of its era. In 1992, the film was classified by the Library of Congress among the “culturally,
historically, or aesthetically significant films” in U.S. history.

“The American Way”

Figure 8.6
Until the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, American films after World War
I generally reflected the neutral, isolationist stance that prevailed in politics
and culture. However, after the United States was drawn into the war in
Europe, the government enlisted Hollywood to help with the war effort,
opening the federal Bureau of Motion Picture Affairs in Los Angeles. Bureau
officials served in an advisory capacity on the production of war-related
films, an effort with which the studios cooperated. As a result, films tended
The Birth of a Nation
toward the patriotic and were produced to inspire feelings of pride and expressed racial tensions
confidence in being American and to clearly establish that America and its of the early 20th century.
allies were forced of good. For instance, critically acclaimed Casablanca
paints a picture of the ill effects of fascism, illustrates the values that heroes
like Victor Laszlo hold, and depicts America as a place for refugees to find
democracy and freedom.Review of Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz, Digital History,
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/bureau_casablanca.cfm.

These early World War II films were sometimes overtly propagandist, intended to influence American
attitudes rather than present a genuine reflection of American sentiments toward the war. Frank
Capra’s Why We Fight films, for example, the first of which was produced in 1942, were developed for
the U.S. Army and were later shown to general audiences; they delivered a war message through
narrative.Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits and
Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (Los Angeles: The Free Press, 1987), 122. As the war
continued, however, filmmakers opted to forego patriotic themes for a more serious reflection of
American sentiments, as exemplified by films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.

Youth versus Age: From Counterculture to Mass Culture

In Mike Nichols’s 1967 film The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman, as the film’s protagonist, enters into a
romantic affair with the wife of his father’s business partner. However, Mrs. Robinson and the other
adults in the film fail to understand the young, alienated hero, who eventually rebels against them. The
Graduate, which brought in more than $44 million at the box office, reflected the attitudes of many
members of a young generation growing increasingly dissatisfied with what they perceived to be the
repressive social codes established by their more conservative elders.Tim Dirks, review of The
Graduate, directed by Mike Nichols, Filmsite, http://www.filmsite.org/grad.html.

This baby boomer generation came of age during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Not only did the youth
culture express a cynicism toward the patriotic, prowar stance of their World War II–era elders, but
they displayed a fierce resistance toward institutional authority in general, an antiestablishmentism
epitomized in the 1967 hit film Bonnie and Clyde. In the film, a young, outlaw couple sets out on a
cross-country bank-robbing spree until they’re killed in a violent police ambush at the film’s close.John
Belton, American Cinema/American Culture. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 286.

Bonnie and Clyde’s violence provides one example of the ways films at the
time were testing the limits of permissible on-screen material. The youth Figure 8.7

culture’s liberal attitudes toward formally taboo subjects like sexuality and
drugs began to emerge in film during the late 1960s. Like Bonnie and Clyde,
Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 Western The Wild Bunch, displays an early example
of aestheticized violence in film. The wildly popular Easy Rider (1969)—
containing drugs, sex, and violence—may owe a good deal of its initial
success to liberalized audiences. And in the same year, Midnight Cowboy,
one of the first Hollywood films to receive an X rating (in this case for its
sexual content), won three Academy Award awards, including Best
Picture.John Belton, American Cinema/American Culture. (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1994), 288–89. As the release and subsequently successful Bonnie and Clyde
reception of these films attest, what at the decade’s outset had been reflected the attitudes of

countercultural had, by the decade’s close, become mainstream. a rising youth culture.

The Hollywood Production Code

When the MPAA (originally MPPDA) first banded together in 1922 to combat government censorship
and to promote artistic freedom, the association attempted a system of self-regulation. However, by
1930—in part because of the transition to talking pictures—renewed criticism and calls for censorship
from conservative groups made it clear to the MPPDA that the loose system of self-regulation was not
enough protection. As a result, the MPPDA instituted the Production Code, or Hays Code (after MPPDA
director William H. Hays), which remained in place until 1967. The code, which according to motion
picture producers concerned itself with ensuring that movies were “directly responsible for spiritual or
moral progress, for higher types of social life, and for much correct thinking,”“Complete Nudity is
Never Permitted: The Motion Picture Code of 1930,” http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5099/. was
strictly enforced starting in 1934, putting an end to most public complaints. However, many people in
Hollywood resented its restrictiveness. After a series of Supreme Court cases in the 1950s regarding the
code’s restrictions to freedom of speech, the Production Code grew weaker until it was finally replaced
in 1967 with the MPAA rating system.“The Production Code of the Motion Picture Producers and
Distributers of America, Inc.—1930–1934,” American Decades Primary Sources, ed. Cynthia Rose
(Detroit: Gale, 2004), vol. 4, 12–15.

MPAA Ratings

As films like Bonnie and Clyde and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) tested the limits on violence
and language, it became clear that the Production Code was in need of replacement. In 1968, the MPAA
adopted a ratings sytem to identify films in terms of potentially objectionable content. By providing
officially designated categories for films that would not have passed Production Code standards of the
past, the MPAA opened a way for films to deal openly with mature content. The ratings system
originally included four categories: G (suitable for general audiences), M (equivalent to the PG rating of
today), R (restricted to adults over age 16), and X (equivalent to today’s NC-17).

The MPAA rating systems, with some modifications, is still in place today. Before release in theaters,
films are submitted to the MPAA board for a screening, during which advisers decide on the most
apropriate rating based on the film’s content. However, studios are not required to have the MPAA
screen releases ahead of time—some studios release films without the MPAA rating at all.
Commercially, less restrictive ratings are generally more beneficial, particularly in the case of adult-
themed films that have the potential to earn the most restrictive rating, the NC-17. Some movie theaters
will not screen a movie that is rated NC-17. When filmmakers get a more restrictive rating than they
were hoping for, they may resubmit the film for review after editing out objectionable scenes.Kirby
Dick, interview by Terry Gross, Fresh Air, NPR, September 13, 2006,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6068009.
The New War Film: Cynicism and Anxiety

Unlike the patriotic war films of the World War II era, many of the films about U.S. involvement in
Vietnam reflected strong antiwar sentiment, criticizing American political policy and portraying war’s
damaging effects on those who survived it. Films like Dr. Strangelove (1964), M*A*S*H (1970), The
Deer Hunter (1978), and Apocalypse Now (1979) portray the military establishment in a negative light
and dissolve clear-cut distinctions, such as the “us versus them” mentality, of earlier war films. These,
and the dozens of Vietnam War films that were produced in the 1970s and 1980s—Oliver Stone’s
Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987),
for example—reflect the sense of defeat and lack of closure Americans felt after the Vietnam War and
the emotional and psychological scars it left on the nation’s psyche.Tim Dirks, “1980s Film History,”
Filmsite, 2010, http://www.filmsite.org; Michael Anderegg, introduction to Inventing Vietnam: The
War in Film and Television, ed. Michael Anderegg (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 6–8.
A spate of military and politically themed films emerged during the 1980s as America recoverd from
defeat in Vietnam, while at the same time facing anxieties about the ongoing Cold War with the Soviet
Union.

Fears about the possibility of nuclear war were very real during the 1980s, and some film critics argue
that these anxieties were reflected not only in overtly political films of the time but also in the
popularity of horror films, like Halloween and Friday the 13th, which feature a mysterious and
unkillable monster, and in the popularity of the fantastic in films like E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,
Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Star Wars, which offer imaginative escapes.Robin Wood, Hollywood from
Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 168.

Movies Shape Culture

Just as movies reflect the anxieties, beliefs, and values of the cultures that produce them, they also help
to shape and solidify a culture’s beliefs. Sometimes the influence is trivial, as in the case of fashion
trends or figures of speech. After the release of Flashdance in 1983, for instance, torn T-shirts and leg
warmers became hallmarks of the fashion of the 1980s.Diana Pemberton-Sikes, “15 Movies That
Inspired Fashion Trends,” The Clothing Chronicles, March 3, 2006,
http://www.theclothingchronicles.com/archives/217-03032006.htm. However, sometimes the impact
can be profound, leading to social or political reform, or the shaping of ideologies.

Film and the Rise of Mass Culture

During the 1890s and up until about 1920, American culture experienced a period of rapid
industrialization. As people moved from farms to centers of industrial production, urban areas began to
hold larger and larger concentrations of the population. At the same time, film and other methods of
mass communication (advertising and radio) developed, whose messages concerning tastes, desires,
customs, speech, and behavior spread from these population centers to outlying areas across the
country. The effect of early mass-communication media was to wear away regional differences and
create a more homogenized, standardized culture.

Film played a key role in this development, as viewers began to imitate the speech, dress, and behavior
of their common heroes on the silver screen.Steven Mintz, “The Formation of Modern American Mass
Culture,” Digital History, 2007, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?
HHID=455. In 1911, the Vitagraph company began publishing The Motion Picture Magazine, America’s
first fan magazine. Originally conceived as a marketing tool to keep audiences interested in Vitagraph’s
pictures and major actors, The Motion Picture Magazine helped create the concept of the film star in
the American imagination. Fans became obsessed with the off-screen lives of their favorite celebrities,
like Pearl White, Florence Lawrence, and Mary Pickford.Jack Doyle, “A Star is Born: 1910s,” Pop
History Dig, 2008, http://www.pophistorydig.com/?tag=film-stars-mass-culture.

American Myths and Traditions

American identity in mass society is built around certain commonly held beliefs, or myths about shared
experiences, and these American myths are often disseminated through or reinforced by film. One
example of a popular American myth, one that dates back to the writings of Thomas Jefferson and
other founders, is an emphasis on individualism—a celebration of the common man or woman as a
hero or reformer. With the rise of mass culture, the myth of the individual became increasingly
appealing because it provided people with a sense of autonomy and individuality in the face of an
increasingly homogenized culture. The hero myth finds embodiment in the Western, a film genre that
was popular from the silent era through the 1960s, in which the lone cowboy, a seminomadic wanderer
makes his way in a lawless, and often dangerous, frontier. An example is 1952’s High Noon. From 1926
until 1967, Westerns accounted for nearly a quarter of all films produced. In other films, like Frank
Capra’s 1946 movie It’s a Wonderful Life, the individual triumphs by standing up to injustice,
reinforcing the belief that one person can make a difference in the world.John Belton, introduction to
Movies and Mass Culture, ed. John Belton, 12. And in more recent films, hero figures such as Indiana
Jones, Luke Skywalker (Star Wars), and Neo (The Matrix) have continued to emphasize individualism.

Social Issues in Film

As D. W. Griffith recognized nearly a century ago, film has enormous power as a medium to influence
public opinion. Ever since Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation sparked strong public reactions in 1915,
filmmakers have been producing movies that address social issues, sometimes subtly, and sometimes
very directly. More recently, films like Hotel Rwanda (2004), about the 1994 Rwandan genocide, or
The Kite Runner (2007), a story that takes place in the midst of a war-torn Afghanistan, have captured
audience imaginations by telling stories that raise social awareness about world events. And a number
of documentary films directed at social issues have had a strong influence on cultural attitudes and
have brought about significant change.

In the 2000s, documentaries, particularly those of an activist nature, were met with greater interest
than ever before. Films like Super Size Me (2004), which documents the effects of excessive fast-food
consumption and criticizes the fast-food industry for promoting unhealthy eating habits for profit, and
Food, Inc. (2009), which examines corporate farming practices and points to the negative impact these
practices can have on human health and the environment, have brought about important changes in
American food culture.Kim Severson, “Eat, Drink, Think, Change,” New York Times, June 3, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/movies/07seve.html. Just 6 weeks after the release of Super
Size Me, McDonald’s took the supersize option off its menu and since 2004 has introduced a number of
healthy food options in its restaurants.Suemedha Sood, “Weighing the Impact of ‘Super Size Me,’”
Wiretap, June 29, 2004. http://www.wiretapmag.org/stories/19059/. Other fast-food chains have
made similar changes.Suemedha Sood, “Weighing the Impact of ‘Super Size Me,’” Wiretap, June 29,
2004. http://www.wiretapmag.org/stories/19059/.

Other documentaries intended to influence cultural attitudes and inspire change include those made by
director Michael Moore. Moore’s films present a liberal stance on social and political issues such as
health care, globalization, and gun control. His 2002 film Bowling for Columbine, for example,
addressed the Columbine High School shootings of 1999, presenting a critical examination of American
gun culture. While some critics have accused Moore of producing propagandistic material under the
label of documentary because of his films’ strong biases, his films have been popular with audiences,
with four of his documentaries ranking among the highest grossing documentaries of all time.
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), which criticized the second Bush administration and its involvement in the
Iraq War, earned $119 million at the box office, making it the most successful documentary of all
time.Tim Dirks, “Film History of the 2000s,” Filmsite; Washington Post, “The 10 Highest-Grossing
Documentaries,” July 31, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/graphic/2006/07/31/GR2006073100027.html.

K E Y TA K E AWAY S

As products of mass culture, movies reflect cultural attitudes, trends, and concerns:

1. D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation, presenting a racist perspective on the

U.S. Civil War and its aftermath, reflected racist concerns of the era in which it
was produced.
2. During World War II, films reflected the patriotic, prowar sentiments of the time.
3. In the 1960s and 1970s with the rise of an antiestablishment youth culture,
movies adopted more liberal stances toward sexuality and violence and
displayed a cynicism toward established social structures.

After the failure of the Vietnam War, films reflected a more ambivalent attitude toward war.
 The MPAA rating system, established in 1968, gave filmmakers greater freedom in the
content they were able to portray on screen.
Movies shape cultural attitudes and customs, as audiences adopt the attitudes and styles of
the characters they watch on screen. Filmmakers may use their movies to influence cultural
attitudes toward certain social issues, as in Fahrenheit 9/11 and Super Size Me.

EXERCISES

1. Consider three films you have watched in the last year. In what ways have these films
reflected current concerns, trends, or attitudes? Of these movies, which do you think have
the most potential to shape cultural attitudes or bring about social change? How do you
think these movies might bring about this change?
2. Locate a film that has been remade and watch the original and remade versions. Besides
the obvious changes in fashion and technology, what other differences do you notice that
reflect the cultural attitudes, trends, and events in which each film was produced?

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