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

daughters of the “privileged,” those who received draft deferments and protested the war from the green lawns of college campuses were to blame, not the government that waged the war. Bodnar, citing Benjamin Barber, notes that “when the demand for rights becomes privatized,” the notion of community suffers, as does the concept of “participating in political life” (xxxi). More than three decades later, the anger that initially arose when segments of the white working class in the 1970s reacted to government efforts to provide a more even playing field for minorities and women today boils over among members of the working class, ignited at least in part by another recession.

That is not to say that the anger directed at the government by the working class in the 1970s was equal to the discontent expressed by some on the margins of political discourse in the 2010s. It must be noted that the working class had a complicated relationship with the government in the 1960s and 1970s, a mere two decades after World War II, a war in which middle-aged, working-class fathers had fought. While many in the working class were angry with a government it perceived to be giving special considerations to minority interests, they also felt a strong allegiance to a government that found itself under attack from the left. Although many in the working class resented sending their sons to fight a war that others could avoid through draft deferments, they often misdirected their anger towards left-wing groups that actually shared their disdain for the war. Many in the working and middle classes saw these attacks from the left, particularly those involving the antiwar movement, as unpatriotic and disrespectful of fallen soldiers whose body counts were broadcast nightly on the evening news. Working-class views were being shaped in significant ways by news reports and films of the era, which often provided simplistic narratives for the complex issues facing the nation. These narratives, based on the false binary of the working class/counterculture noted earlier, made it easier for many in the working class to direct their anger towards “hard-left” groups like the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, and the Students for a Democratic Society; towards “hippies,” predominantly middle-class youth who were dropping out of traditional society to form new communities and were