> For example Reagan's stark partitioning of the world between light and
> dark, good and bad was typical of the period's movies. While that can
> be easily seen in westerns with white and black hats, these melodramas
> had rather direct and concrete equivalents in the social, economic,
> and cultural life of Los Angeles itself. Everybody with white hats
> lived in the suburbs, brushed their teeth, were bashful with women,
> did honest plain work during the week, and went to church on
> Sunday. Meanwhile everybody with black hats lived in the dark, dirty,
> nightmares of city life, its industrial and social sewers, and
> performed only criminal activities and called that work. Of course the
> former were all nice looking, well behaved, white people, and the
> latter were not white, not nice looking and not well behaved.
This is not limited to Reagan's Hollywood milieu -- it's the basic, two-valued way human beings look at the world when they can't be bothered to think. "Everyone like me = good; everyone else = bad." Westerns, etc., were translations of that world view to the silver screen.
> The sole reason Reagan was popular was exactly because he enacted
> familiar scripts, `classics' from the American western storybook of
> history. Since those scripts are still running around in the US public
> mind....
Right -- but not just the American Western storybook. The storybook of the human race.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)