Film and Politics Since 1945

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction:

This course examines post-World War II popular culture in order to discover the cultural forms (ideas, images, characters, and narratives) that have legitimated and challenged the distribution of power in America since the middle of the Twentieth Century. Students should come away from this course having learned how what has happened in America since World War II has shaped the present in which they live. Additionally, students will be equipped to think both theoretically and historically about the complicated relationships among film as a corporate-produced, mass-mediated form of entertainment, the events and ideas that constitute social life, and viewers. Finally, since this course is designated “writing intensive,” students will work on their writing through a series of structured exercises.

Texts:

All course texts are available at the East Bank bookstore in Williamson Hall.

• William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Required

• Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (New York: Basic Books, 19995). Required

The Rigors of a 4-week Summer Session Course:

In a 4-week summer session course, each class period is the equivalent of a week of semester course classes. This fact has important consequences. First, students must expect to work at a much faster pace than in courses scheduled for Fall or Spring. You will be asked to read from 70 to 100 pages between each class and to write a short paper each week. With such an intensive schedule, students who fall behind in reading or writing almost always fail to meet their goals for the course. Please consider carefully whether you will be able to meet the workload or not. Second, students who are absent for even one class period will miss a significant portion of the course. Students who miss more than one class should expect to have their final grade lowered to reflect their absence. Except under extraordinary circumstances, no provisions can be made for late papers. Under no circumstances will I provide make-up screenings of films. No “extra-credit” or “make-up” assignments will be accepted.

With that said, I want to see students succeed in this class. To be clear, my definition of “success in the class” is not “to get an A.” I define success as passing the class, becoming grounded in the fundamentals of the topic, and developing intellectual skills such as reading, writing, interpretation, explanation, and presenting ideas. I will gladly meet with students to help plan strategies for managing the workload, to discuss or clarify lectures, readings, or films, or for one on one lessons in writing. If you feel unduly stressed by the class, visit me promptly.

Written Assignments:

Daily reading quizzes. Best 10 will be averaged and weighted at 30% of the final grade.

Three Seed Papers, each weighted at 10% of the final grade.

One Final Paper, weighted at 40% of the final grade.

Seed Papers:

Seed papers are 3 page short essays that transform the insights you generated from your reading into interpretive statements about what these narratives (whether historical or cinematic) have to say about the historical moment(s) in which they were produced. Like everything else you write this quarter, they should have interpretive titles, clear focuses, and a strategic pattern of development. Remember these seed papers are not drafts. Each paper should be a “finished” paper, and will be graded as such.

These seed papers are opportunities to develop your thinking about the ideas that you are encountering in the course readings and screenings, to commit your ideas to paper, and to test them for their soundness in a public forum. Your job in these seed papers is not to evaluate the author’s findings, nor to “agree” or “disagree” with them. You are not writing a “critique” of the readings or a review of the films. Instead you should comb these readings and films to discover a sense of what it might have been like to have lived in the United States in the permanent flux of social changes from just after World War II until the end of the 1980s. Use your imagination, tempered by historical discipline, to think about how an individual might have been affected by the changes that these writers engage.

As you develop this more personal link to the history you’re studying, think about how the different periods from World War II to the 1980s function as “usable pasts” in contemporary society. What kinds of stories do we “remember” about these times? How do we tell the story of these pasts when we narrate them to ourselves? In other words, try to generate a theory about the meaning the second half of the twentieth century for the present.

Because the readings are long and these seed papers are short, you cannot hope to summarize the contents of any particular text completely. Instead, you must think about what particular aspect of the topic is most relevant for the view of the past that you’re constructing. Then you need to decide how best to convey a sense of that past to the reader. What does s/he need to know in order to get a glimpse of your past? What kind of guidance does s/he need in order to see it in the way that you do? How does the sense of the past you’re digging up in these narratives differ from the past that’s commonly remembered?

Suggested Seed Paper Topics:

Seed Paper One: Two prominent themes suggest themselves from the readings and viewings of the first week. The first is the notion of the “return to normalcy” after World War II. What did this phrase mean for different groups of people? How did the idea of a return to normalcy serve the privileged and the powerful in postwar American culture? How do you explain the contrast between the rhetoric of a return to normalcy and the establishment of a permanent war economy in the postwar years?

The second prominent theme is the way Americans’ wartime experiences, both at home and abroad, changed the dynamics of race, class, and gender. How did postwar Americans from particular groups cope with these changes? What economic, political, and cultural opportunities and obstacles did postwar Americans face?

In either case, don’t make broad generalizations. Write specifically, for example, about white middle-class married women, returning soldiers whether working-class or African-American.

Seed Paper Two: In the second week, the films suggest that something is fundamentally wrong with 1950s America and the sense of virtue, justice, and innocence that Engelhardt suggests has long been thought to be at the heart of the American national identity. What exactly do these films suggest is wrong? What relationship do these films bear to the cultural, political, or economic events that Chafe and Engelhardt posit as fundamental to our understanding of the 1950s?

Seed Paper Three: The films of the third week address the plight of white men faced with the waning of their authority in the wake of economic, political, and cultural challenges by African-Americans, women, and a generation of privileged but disaffected youths. What ideas, symbols, and narratives supported white patriarchy in the postwar era? What counter-ideas, counter-symbols, and counter-narratives arose to challenge them? In what ways did white patriarchy respond (discuss more than one)?

The Final Paper:

The final paper will be a revision and/or extension of your seed papers. 10 double-spaced pages.

Grades:

Please read the following grading scale carefully.

F…......You turned in the assignment but did not fulfill the requirements, or you did not turn in the assignment.

D…......You attempted to fulfill the requirements, but did not meet basic standards in content, clarity, and/or insight.

C…......You completed the assignment and satisfied all requirements.

B…......You completed the assignment and satisfied all requirements. Furthermore, your paper is mechanically sound, and you developed and supported an argument, generating new insights.

A…......You completed the assignment and satisfied all requirements. Your paper is mechanically perfect, and you expressed your ideas with particular elegance, style, and/or wit. Finally, you developed and supported an argument with exceptional skill, generating new insights, and placing them in a meaningful context.

Acts of scholastic dishonesty may result in an F for the course and additional disciplinary action.

Course-Grade Breakdown

Avg. of Reading Quizzes @ 30%, 3 Seed Papers @ 10% each, 1 Final Paper @ 40%

All grades in this course will be given in letter form but convert to the following numbers on a twelve-point scale. The following grades are available:

The formula I use to calculate your final grade is:

(G₁ x .30) + (G₂ x .10) + (G₃ x .10) + (G₄ x .10) + (G₅ x .40) = Final Grade

where G₁ = the average of your best 10 reading quizzes, G_2-4 = the seed papers, and G₅ = the final paper.

Your final letter grade is assigned based on the result of this calculation (figures are rounded to one decimal place) minus proportionate reductions for absences.

Incompletes will not be given. If you do not complete an assignment you will receive no credit for that assignment and your course grade will reflect this.

Course Schedule:

Readings must be completed before class on the day scheduled. All films will be screened in class. I will make every effort to fit screenings into the allotted time. But students are expected to stay through the end of the film if it runs over. In no case will I keep students more than five minutes past the end of class. In order to keep to the schedule, the reading quizzes will be given at the stroke of 9:05 and the films will begin at 9:10.

Reading	Screening/Discussion	Assignment Due
	*Monday July 9*
Chafe, Preface and Ch. 1 Engelhardt, Pt. I, Chs. 1-2	The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
	*Tuesday July 10*
Chafe, Ch. 2 Engelhardt, Pt. I, Chs. 3-4	Mildred Pierce (1945)	Reading Quiz
	*Wednesday July 11*
Chafe, Ch. 3 Engelhardt, Pt. II, Chs. 1-2	Discussion	Reading Quiz
	*Thursday July 12*
Chafe, Chs. 4-5 Engelhardt, Pt. II, Ch. 3	Imitation of Life (1959)	Reading Quiz
	*Monday July 16*
Chafe, Ch. 6 Engelhardt, Pt. II, Ch. 4	Discussion	Reading Quiz Seed Paper One
	*Tuesday July 17*
Chafe, Ch. 7 Engelhardt, Pt. II, Ch. 5	Touch of Evil (1958)	Reading Quiz

	*Wednesday July 18*
Chafe, Ch. 8 Engelhardt, Pt. III, Chs 1-2	Compulsion (1959)	Reading Quiz
	*Thursday July 19*
Chafe, Ch. 9 Engelhardt, Pt. III, Ch 3	The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)	Reading Quiz
	*Monday July 23*
Chafe, Ch. 10 Engelhardt, Pt. III, Ch. 4	Discussion	Reading Quiz Seed Paper Two
	*Tuesday July 24*
Chafe, Ch. 11 Engelhardt, Pt. III, Ch. 5	Easy Rider (1969)	Reading Quiz
	*Wednesday July 25*
Chafe, Ch. 12 Engelhardt, Pt. III, Chs 6-7	Dirty Harry (1971)	Reading Quiz
	*Thursday July 26*
Chafe, Chs. 13-14 Engelhardt, Pt. III, Ch. 8	Platoon (1986)	Reading Quiz
	*Monday July 30*
Chafe, Ch. 15 Engelhardt, Pt. III, Ch. 9	Discussion	Reading Quiz Seed Paper Three
	*Tuesday July 31*
Chafe, Ch. 16 Engelhardt, Pt. III, Ch. 10	Blue Velvet (1986)	Reading Quiz
	*Wednesday August 1*
Engelhardt, Pt. III, Ch. 11 and Part IV “Afterlife”	Cocoon (1985)	Reading Quiz
	*Thursday August 2*
	Discussion
	*Monday August 6*
		Final Paper Due by 12 noon in instructor’s mailbox outside of Scott Hall 4. Late papers will not be accepted. Do not put papers under my office door. Keep a copy in case of accident.

Film Credits:

(* denotes Academy Award winner)

*Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Director: *William Wyler. Cast: *Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews, Virginia Mayo, *Harold Russell, Hoagy Charmichael, Gladys George. 170 mins.

Mildred Pierce (1945). Director: Michael Curtiz. Cast: *Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett. 109 mins.

Imitation of Life (1959). Director: Douglas Sirk. Cast: Lana Turner, John Gavin, Sandra Dee, Dan O’Herlihy, Susan Kohner, Robert Alda, Juanita Moore. 124 mins.

Touch of Evil (1958). Director: Orson Welles. Cast: Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, Akim Tamiroff, Joseph Calleia. 108 mins.

Compulsion (1959). Director: Richard Fleisher. Cast: Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell, Bradford Dillman, Diane Varsi, E. G. Marshall. 103 mins.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Director: John Ford. Cast: James Stewart, John Wayne, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Edmond O’Brien, Andy Devine, Jeannette Nolan. 122 mins.

Easy Rider (1969). Director: Dennis Hopper. Cast: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Karen Black. 94 mins.

Dirty Harry (1971). Director: Don Siegel. Cast: Clint Eastwood, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni. 102 mins.

*Platoon (1986). Director: *Oliver Stone. Cast: Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, Forrest Whitaker. 120 mins.

Blue Velvet (1986). Director: David Lynch. Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern, Hope Lange, Dean Stockwell. 120 mins.

Cocoon (1985). Director: Ron Howard. Cast: Steve Guttenberg, Brian Dennehy, *Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn, Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Gwen Verdon, Jack Gilford. 116 mins.

ERIC DROWN
Home	Curriculum Vitae	Dissertation Abstract	Publications	Book Project	Teaching Philosophy	Course Syllabi	Student Comments	Student Writings	For Current Students

Assignment Due