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

this “new sense of community” envisioned by the counterculture was often juxtaposed to a nostalgia for “the community,” with the working class serving as the defenders of an imagined past that seemed to downplay or simply ignore the inherent inequities that existed in “the community” prior to the counterculture movements.

On several occasions I also use the term “privileged” in reference to a particular demographic. This is not my term but the term that was often used by members of the working class or those who purported to be acting in the interest of the working class to refer to the economic upper-middle and upper classes. Historically, the term has been used to refer to those who came to America in its infancy and acquired wealth and power during the past three or four centuries, but that is not how I am using the term here. Here it is defined more narrowly. For my purposes, the term primarily refers to those who were perceived to have enough influence, power, or money to avoid service in Vietnam while the sons of the working class principally fought that war. The term was most often used by members of the working class to characterize not only the students who protested the Vietnam War on college campuses and in the streets but also their families. Films like Getting Straight (1970) and Zabriskie Point (1970), for example, spotlighted college-aged characters who would have been viewed as “privileged” by members of the working class. The term is not meant as a pejorative by me, although it clearly was by those who used it at the time.

Finally, there is an irony to the role that Hollywood played in the 1970s in helping to define both the working class and the counterculture. Whereas many on the right chastise Hollywood for espousing and reinforcing a liberal and secular vision of America, it was Hollywood’s portrayal of the white working class and the counterculture in films of the counterculture era that helped to form, reinforce, and harden the identities of both groups going forward. By portraying the working class— particularly white males—as the oppressed and forgotten, these films effectively identified the working class as the victim of the “other,” represented by the various iterations of the “counterculture” noted earlier, particularly African Americans and liberated women. Far right critics,