Page 112 - A Handbook Genre Studies in Mass Media

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

again, disillusioned by the reemergence within the counterculture of adult
hypocrisy and uncertain about the viability of the communal ideal. Arlo’s
shift from hope and despair was a microcosm of broader cultural tensions
of the period. The Viet Nam War was a turning point in American history,
in which traditional institutions, such as the family, government, and
education, were explicitly questioned—in fact, these institutions, which
had been the means of protecting the young, were now openly identified
as agents of destruction. These tensions in many ways defined the 1960s
as a period during which new communities of love were created, in part,
out of nightmares of apocalypse.
Alice’s Restaurant is ambivalent about whether adults can be trusted
and whether the young can get along without them. However, far from
advocating a return to traditional standards, the film subjects the status
quo to unrelenting caricature and critique, offering at least the possibility
of personal liberation from traditional institutional molds. In its rejec-
tion of the established order and affirmation, however tentative, of the
counterculture, Alice’s breaks with the repudiation the youth culture and
call for restoration of adult authority found in Rebel.
Nonetheless, significant continuities exist between the youth films
of the 1950s and 1960s. Like all youth culture films, they criticize the
hypocrisy and corruption of adults and propose that adults can learn from
the moral innocence and resolve of the young. In addition, the “high ex-
pectation” films carry some hope for a future in which, either by social
restoration or transformation, generational conflict might be reconciled,
permitting adults and young people to “stand together.”

Saturday Night Fever: Shrinking Opportunity
and Declining Expectations in the 1970s

Stayin’ Alive
—The BeeGees

This segment of the postwar period—indeed, perhaps, the postwar era
itself—ended abruptly in the 1970s with defeat in Viet Nam and the onset
of economic stagnation. Nineteen seventy-three has been described as
“the last good year,” at least as far as economic conditions are concerned.
Median family income peaked in that year at just over $28,000 and did
not return to that level until 1986. Expanding opportunities were replaced
by falling expectations; faith in the future, the sense of historical connect-

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