[lbo-talk] Star Wars and the death of American cinema

[Marv Gandall]

John Wight, writing in Counterpunch, sees Star Wars and other contemporary shallow fare as cultural expressions of the neoliberal zeitgeist, a reaction to the more creative and critical culture of the rebellious 60’s. 

This rings true insofar as today’s heightened competitive individualism, job insecurity, indebtedness, stress, despair and anomie provoke a more frantic search for various forms of escape, including through childhood comic book superhero and terror fantasies spectacularly reproduced on film. 

Wight neglected to mention on his list of 60’s productions one of my great favourites, Peter Weiss’ The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, staged in 1964 and filmed in 1967. Nothing of such depth and imagination has appeared since. 

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/30/star-wars-and-the-death-of-american-cinema/