Cinema and the American Malaise.

In keeping with the policy of the Humanist to accommodate the diverse cultural, social, political, and philosophical viewpoints of its readers, this occasional feature allows for the expression of alternative, dissenting, or opposing views on issues previously broached within these pages.

Editor's note:

Do violent Hollywood movies create a dangerous social atmosphere? And do they divert the public from meaningful efforts at challenging the injustices of the status quo? Or is movie mayhem really an updated expression of those long-standing cultural values that form a necessary basis for our developed sense of right and wrong? In the following dialogue, cinema is interpreted first through the lens of propaganda analysis and then through that of established mythic and literary archetypes.

THE LIGHTS COME UP, the image fades, and the gaggle of moviegoers begins to adjust its eyes to reality. Two hours of fantasy, replete with special effects and carefully choreographed action heroes, have given them a welcomed respite from the taxes, the humdrum of work, and the din of their rather mechanical existence. Movies are special because the hero and villain are clearly defined and the outcome is rarely in doubt. Movies are unique in their efficacy at pacifying audiences and reinforcing attitudes that promote American values.

Mel Gibson's The Patriot (2000), for example, portrays a hard-working, eighteenth-century colonial who battles the British and vanquishes an enemy that is carefully chosen to suit the provincial tastes of the audience. In working to engender a monolithically pleasing scenario that is so important to most moviegoers, the film ensures that Gibson's character owns no slaves, fathers only adorable children, and is immaculately honest. Because it is easy for people in the United states to distrust and hate the British, producers make them the butt of jokes and the evil oppressors.

Was there actually slavery in this colonial era? What about misogyny? Religious oppression? Of course there was, but movies don't illuminate or deal in honesty. Rather, they dole out pleasing images of the people and ideas with which their audience most closely identifies. In doing so, they massage a tired audience and help it forget the real injustices and inadequacies that surround them.

This desire to mislead and massage is hardly new and has become the foundation upon which cinema in the United States thrives. Images that generate doubt or meaningful introspection are supplanted with films that offer pleasing escape commingled with a reinforcement of established cultural values. While Hollywood hyped The Patriot by promising realistic depictions of U.S. history Oust as it did with the May 2001 release of Pearl Harbor), it delivered a distorted tale that carefully omitted slavery, religious bigotry, and U.S. culpability --anything that could be invidious about the established culture--thus reinforcing the status quo.

And, of course, it was hardly unique in doing so. Indeed, cinema in the United States enjoys a dubious heritage of being an organ of conventional wisdom and simplistic, feel-good entertainment. It perpetuates this pattern and thus has a deleterious effect on a population that is becoming increasingly apathetic and programmed.

Guns, Violence, and Going to the Movies

Perhaps what is most insidious about Hollywood cinema is its efficacy at obfuscating the reality of the nation by reveling in its fabricated glory. In an industry where guns become the virtual appendage of most heroes, it is chilling to note the reality that seems omitted or subordinated. The United States today is in a free fall from the deluge of gun violence, and yet movies continue to mete out depictions that are surreal and illusory. Whether the icon is Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Wayne, or Clint Eastwood, the images of violence are almost certain to romanticize the use of high-powered firearms. And so, while schools become killing fields, movies portray guns--usually machine guns--as solutions and benign instruments of the American way.

Few people would argue that Gibson's character in The Patriot needed a gun to Protect himself from the sadistic actions of the British, but there is still the question of how guns are portrayed in the film. Gibson's character has a home literally filled with muskets and handguns, leading audiences to believe that guns were, in fact, an endemic part of the frontier family. When the British burn his home and murder his son, Gibson's character is quick to reach for his artillery and begin the heroic journey to save the day, tossing muskets to his younger boys with the admonition to "shoot small, miss small."

In watching The Patriot, then, one is left with the belief that guns are quintessentially American and their heritage in the homes of yesteryear was virtually certain. In fact, as history tells us, many nuclear families of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries didn't own guns and had little interest in their use. Despite the mendacity and misinformation of the National Rifle Association--which promulgates the fantasy that guns are as American as apple pie--the fact is there were fewer guns in the formative years of our nation, and communities clearly benefited from this benign absence.

"Gun ownership was exceptional even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, even on the frontiers," writes historian Michael Bellesiles. He further notes that when Secretary of War Henry Knox conducted the first official inventory of U.S. arms in 1793, he found that "37 percent of the 44,442 muskets owned by the government were unusable, and an additional 25 percent were either archaic or in serious need of repair and cleaning." Later, Secretary of War Henry Dearborn conducted a more precise census of the militia and its arms, only to find that 4.9 percent of the population were armed or 23.7 percent of its adult white males. By 1830, the lack of guns and the population's apathy toward them was causing some to be concerned. Secretary of War J. H. Eaton found that there were only enough guns for 3 percent of the population or 12.5 percent of adult white males.

Clearly, the United States was not a vista of gun-owning pioneers. Rather, it was a nation of farmers and ranchers who cared little about guns or the military machismo that so permeates Hollywood. And while such revelations might not work congruently into the action-hero myth so scrupulously fashioned by the film industry, it seems close to the reality of the time.

Today, the United States is being decimated by guns and the twisted mentality that they somehow stop crime rather than perpetuate it. After the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, U.S. Representative Bob Barr of Georgia, a long-time shill for the gun lobby, suggested that posting the Ten Commandments in high schools would somehow blunt the spate of gun violence in the country. Such suggestions belie the fact that in 1996 the FBI reported there were 9,390 handgun murders in the Unites States. It makes a joke out of the epidemic of violence that is killing children of all colors in ever increasing numbers. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that guns kept in the home are twenty-two times more likely to be used against someone familiar than in defense. And ABCNEWS. corn reports, "Guns kill 34,000 Americans every year, 393 senior citizens every month, 13 children every day."

And yet, in the cavalcade of movies that rivet millions of people each month, little is ever seen that exposes the truth about guns in the real world. There is precious little about the boy who shot his classmate in their kindergarten class or another boy who shot his school teacher, and never a film that hints at the carnage wrought at a post office or family restaurant. Little, in fact, is ever mentioned about the generally perilous character of the gun in general.

Perhaps it would be bizarre to include a boy getting killed by the misuse of a firearm, and maybe it is straining credulity to believe that Clint Eastwood would ever shoot himself in the foot while mowing down the bad guys. However, the image produced by movies is equally as fantastic and unreal. Guns don't solve problems or protect people nearly as much as they kill and maim them. And while people continue to be haunted by the reality of guns all around them, our film industry reduces this grim image to a flashy statement by Eastwood, as he challenges one victim to "make his day."

Icon John Wayne wielded guns in each hand as he fought his nemesis in True Grit (1969), again placing the gun as the clear and powerful answer to problems. In an earlier film, it is rather intriguing to watch Wayne and friends pick off the bad guys in Chisum (1970), in which Wayne's character tames his nemesis and all challengers through colorful shootouts. It is difficult, in short, to underestimate the way Hollywood has historically distorted the image of guns and their place in U.S. pop culture. While thousands become their victims in the mean streets of reality, movies continue to adorn action heroes with bigger guns and place them in more sensational scenarios.

Much of this fantasy, it is important to remember, was spawned on a distorted and carefully cultivated image of the cowboy. Wayne and Eastwood gained their film stature because of their ability to personify the intrepid cowboy who using a gun conquered the West and all of its evil elements. But in fact, the cowboy was a major cause of some of the most disquieting homicide rates of the late nineteenth century. After the Civil War, and with greater expansion west, people became more interested in guns and their ability to protect them as they conquered rattlesnakes, native Americans, and gun-wielding adversaries. And with the rise in gun possession after the Civil War came a concomitant elevation in homicide violence.

Despite what Hollywood would have us believe about ruggedly handsome cowboys bursting into a town and rescuing its citizens, the facts are much more grim. According to author and historian David Courtwright, the increase in gun possession paralleled a distressing increase in gun homicides. In Texas, where guns were pervasive, the homicide rate was thirty-two per 100,000 in the decade after the Civil War. Indeed, the prevalence of guns in western states made them the most dangerous regions of the country in which to live. Despite the mantra of the NRA that guns make people safer, the truth is, as Courtwright notes, that "someone living in a Kansas cattle town was ten times more likely to be murdered as a person living in an eastern city or in a midwestern farming county." And yet little of this sordid truth is ever revealed as audiences get their seasonal dose of formulaic gunslinglers on the open frontier.

The outcome of all of this misrepresentation is unmistakable. Over the years, political propaganda and a deluge of motion pictures have convinced Americans that they have a heritage with the gun--that it is quintessentially part of their culture and protected by the Second Amendment. Today the NRA has become more emboldened specifically because of the propagation of the myth concerning gun ownership. As Bellesiles laments:

   We are familiar with the manifestations of American gun culture; the
   sincere love and affection with which our society views its weapons pours
   forth daily from the television and movie screens.... Every form of the
   media reinforces the notion that the solution to your problem can be held
   in your hand and provide immediate gratification.

Still, as Henry Giroux points out in Fugitive Cultures:

   Close to 12 U.S. children aged 19 and under die from gun fire each day.
   According to the National Center for Health Statistics, "Firearm homicide
   is the leading cause of death of African-American boys and the second
   leading cause of death of high school age children in the United States
   [today].

Why, some might ask, is the United States so enamored by something that seems so closely tied to its demise? The answer has much to do with the collective sense of helplessness many of its citizens feel. With an economy designed to serve the rich minority--and with government offering few real choices to problems of affordable prescription drugs or safe schools--many find guns and movies to be two symbols of freedom and empowerment. Indeed, it is at the movies, under the cover of dark excitement, that the disempowered hoards live vicariously through omnipotent action heroes. Again, the significance of the gun becomes paramount, since it is the gun and the fearless character the protagonist displays that is part of this catharsis.

Charles Bronson perhaps best epitomizes this scenario in his portrayal of the vigilante in the series of Death Wish movies that began in 1974. Many who feel disenfranchised and socially impotent find incredible satisfaction in watching Bronson walk into the dark, shadowy parts of the city and vanquish the people and images they have long mistrusted. Hollywood is very shrewd in presenting Bronson as the average citizen, characterizing him in the first Death Wish as a "bleeding heart liberal" who feels an explicit sympathy for the urban blight and the social pathologies that cause it. However, after his wife is killed in her apartment by thugs, Bronson's character, Paul Kersey, becomes the reluctant New York City vigilante, lying in wait for predators as they stalk the vulnerable.

For Kersey, the transition from peaceful liberal to methodical killer is easy, since virtually everywhere he goes in the movie people are besieged by violence and criminal blight. Later, Kersey makes use of a gun given to him by a business associate from Arizona and is soon making the streets safe with cathartic killing scenes--a panacea for many who have ever felt bullied or subjugated.

And, of course, this is the kind of visceral picture that was clearly intended by movie producers. While statistics show that an abundance of guns has made the United States the most dangerous industrialized nation in the world, the film industry peddles an image that makes the gun the hero, the answer to emasculation, the force that is needed for the average citizen. Kersey's transition to hero is in many ways incomplete until he receives the gun.

For Joe Don Baker's character in Walking Tall (1973), the phenomenon is similar. As with Bronson, Baker becomes a citizen hero--this time as a police chief who protects the vulnerable from the exploitation and corruption of government workers who conspire with businesses to allow prostitution, gambling, and nepotism. In the process, Baker's character is able to help disaffected African Americans and others who have suffered under the heel of ensconced government graft and dishonesty. Like Kersey, Baker's character is able to rise from humble beginnings, fostering the idea that success is attainable by all. While there is little to be gained in the real world from his Herculean accomplishments, the two-hour movie experience has made the audience's lives a bit more tolerable, especially with Vietnam, Watergate, and the Iran hostage crisis leaving them with a need for heroes who conquer carefully chosen foes.

Misplacing Blame and Diverting Attention

It is in the question of fairness that people are most egregiously misled by Hollywood. Like a drug that presents life through a colorful prism, the movies allow their audiences to be duped into believing that their political parties actually represent their best interests. Clearly this is a myth that has little place in reality.

After eight years of the Reagan administration--when the rich received tax breaks and the middle class continued to be squeezed--the United States needed a movie that deified national values and reiterated the myth of opportunity. Rather than call attention to the fact that the margin separating the rich from the poor was increasing, Hollywood produced a series of sequels to the movie Rocky (1976), where a poor and beaten boxer is able to lift himself to national prominence and fight for the heavyweight title. Accompanying Rocky was Sylvester Stallone's Rambo movies, a series of violent films about a Vietnam War veteran who is able to save prisoners of war and exact revenge on the Vietnamese. In both film series, audiences are able to live vicariously through two protagonists who are besieged and beleaguered. Instead of targeting the inequities of a president, who would later sell arms to the Iranians and show contempt toward U.S. policy in Nicaragua--Hollywood invited audiences to redirect their anger toward foreign sources that were reminders of their impotence. Little of substance was solved, but patriotism flourished during much of the Reagan era.

And why not? With the working poor in the country on the verge of revolution over an economic policy that allowed the very rich to enjoy unprecedented benefits while the remainder trickled down, a movie that diverted attention and resurrected patriotism was clearly in order. Thus, just as we witnessed the attempt to make ketchup a vegetable for the hungry poor in schools, millions of audiences were able to redirect their simmering anger and resentment toward the Vietnamese and communists while watching Rambo.

Media expert Herbert Schiller has suggested that the United States has long depended on myths to sustain itself and protect the power of the ruling rich. One of these myths, Schiller suggests, is that the United States is a beacon of opportunity and egalitarianism--that is, the epicenter for justice and freedom. However, during the Reagan administration, it became increasingly difficult to sustain the idea that opportunity was a possibility. According to David Driver in Defending the Left, four years after Reagan's supply-side economics was introduced, "total federal taxes paid by the bottom 20 percent of all households had increased by a whopping 26 percent, while federal taxes paid by corporations fell from 21 percent to 6.2." With the poor being ostracized by the nation's most powerful leader and rewards being heaped on those already privileged, it was time to devise a way to redirect anger away from inequities at home.

And this is where Rambo, Rocky, and other films of their ilk come into play. Like the movies that undermine accurate understanding of the gun issue, these fantasies of retribution offer people a way to purge their anger at a phony enemy. Instead of addressing a system that was creating a generation of poor and hungry children, moviegoers were riveted by a communist threat in Vietnam that had no place in reality. Equally important, their ability to remedy the unfair government actions of Reagan were blunted because of their preoccupation with phony wars fought against imaginary communists.

In examining the Rambo movies, one can quickly see the effect. First Blood (1982) begins with an alienated soldier who has spent the years since the war drifting aimlessly. Played by Stallone, Rambo is a nomad, having been unable to assimilate into society since his military discharge. Much of his discontent, we are told, emanates from his certainty that he and many of his fellow soldiers had been abandoned by the U.S. government in its attempt to win the war. When the police try to arrest Rambo for trivial charges involving his peripatetic existence, he unleashes his immense military prowess, laying waste to much of the police force that opposes him.

Embedded in this story is much of the raw anger and discontent that came to define the Reagan era. Rambo is a quiet, unassuming man, a victim of big government that failed to support him in the war until he is challenged by arrogant and belligerent police. Then, when he is forced into combat, he fights with the passion and seething anger that is indicative of a people who feel betrayed and in need of a target for their vitriol.

Many who witnessed the Rambo phenomenon in the 1980s came to see it as a clear reflection of the acrimony and consternation that average citizens were experiencing as they tried to unravel the rather bizarre and utterly self-serving policies of the Reagan revolution. Here a man, who was elected with great support of the middle class, was engineering a policy that would create a virtual plutocracy while aggressively attacking needed social programs for the poor. Even unions weren't immune from Reagan's threat. For the first time in decades, unions were being assailed by businesses and were victimized by various attempts to attenuate their influence, culminating in the mass firing by Reagan of air traffic controllers in 1981.

And so, as Rambo fought heroically against impossible odds--overwhelming an entire force of contenders--his audience lived vicariously through him, applauding each death, celebrating each explosion. For a few fleeting moments inside the cinema, they were able to take a swing back at the various inadequate part-time jobs, the lagging influence of their unions, and the general economic malaise they were feeling. For them, Rambo was therapeutic--hitting people they couldn't hit, laying waste to institutions too nebulous for them to know.

Perhaps what is most interesting about this phenomenon is the way it was ultimately manipulated. Certainly people wanted catharsis but not if it meant humiliating their president. Hollywood is first and foremost a moneymaking enterprise, so it knew that the nemesis Rambo would ultimately vanquish must be something foreign, something easily reviled by the masses. By the mid-1980s, Reagan was being hailed as an intrepid warrior who wasn't afraid to challenge the communists or combat the Iranian zealots. Hollywood, then, knew it needed to create a context for the venting of the public's acrimony while still protecting a president that many revered. With all of this considered, it was easy to target communism --whether it was Rocky sparring with a Soviet boxer in Rocky IV (1985) or Rambo saving MIAs from Vietnam captors in the second movie in the series (Rambo, 1985). In the end, people were able to feel patriotic and protect their president, while purging the anger he had surreptitiously created.

Herbert Marcuse has long suggested that nations are routinely manipulated and controlled in just such a way. With the media tailoring its messages to shape public opinion, average citizens are easily fashioned to become what they see on television and in the movies. In his book The One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse argues:

   The irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry
   with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and
   emotional reactions which bind the consumers more or less pleasantly to the
   producers and through the latter to the whole.

For Marcuse, then, Hollywood is a context for the perpetuation of the status quo--an ideal place to protect hegemony and shape public opinion. "Actually," writes Herbert Schiller in The Mind Managers, "there is an ideology implicit in every kind of fictional story. Fiction may be far more important than nonfiction in forming people's opinions."

Clearly, in looking at the effect and timing of films like Rocky IV and Rambo, one cannot dispute the appeal to the dispossessed: the fairy-tale-like plot, and the easy way that injustice is shrouded through scapegoating. It is easy to blame someone other than your elected officials for the unequal tax system or the special breaks for the rich when you are presented with a colorful, carefully delineated villain on the big screen. In this scenario, then, theater becomes the place where political dishonesty is couched in theatrical adventure, allowing the real miscreants to escape unscathed. Again, Marcuse addresses this, suggesting that what emerges is a "pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that by their content transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe."

And so we continue to rush to the movies, consuming the cultural attitudes and styles with little knowledge of their persuasive effects. Does the latest romance help us forget about the failure of the government to raise the minimum wage? Does a flick starring the latest action hero pacify our real need to pass meaningful gun control? During the first week of July 2000, moviegoers in the United States spent $120 million on the top twelve grossing films. During that same time period, Congress failed to pass a patients' bill of rights or to modify a policy that would make prescription drugs affordable for the poor and aged. And little was said and there was virtually no condemnation since people were being kept satisfied with happy endings, superheros, and a culture of movies that reproduced and glamorized the legitimacy of the status quo. Perhaps, in the end, this is the real goal of an industry that has much to gain from a society that is apathetic and detached.

Gregory Shafer holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Michigan and teaches at Mott College in Flint, Michigan.