The Working Class in American Film: The Creation of Image and Cu ...

and latter parts of the decade. To reach that audience, however, it often simplified complex social conflicts to simple binary opposition between the “working class” and the “counterculture.” Although the depiction of this binary probably reached its popular apex in the mid-1970s, the binary of the counterculture, often represented by college youths, versus the dominant culture, just as often represented by the white working class, first came to the big screen in the late 1960s. This binary took different forms over time, culminating with the privileging of the working class in later films of the era. In the following chapters we will explore this “counterculture moment” in our cinematic history to examine how and why its competing voices continue to be echoed today. While, as noted, virtually every film critic or theorist agrees that the 1970s were a high-water mark for American film—Thomas Elsaesser, Alexander Horwath, and Noel King fittingly titled their book on the era The Last Great American Picture Show—the films of that era have been explored primarily as products of the Hollywood Renaissance, or the New Hollywood, an epoch that lasted for less than a decade and was underscored by an explosion of creativity by a new generation of filmmakers. Here, however, for the first time we will look at how the films of the counterculture era have helped to shape the discourse of today by helping to shape the identity of the white working class.

In American Literature and the Culture Wars, Gregory S. Jay describes a common scenario that has often led to the sudden collapse of nations. He writes,

While I am not suggesting that America is on the verge of collapse, I am arguing that America is going through something akin to the scenario