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Introduction: Political Memory and Popular Media
Rebellious long haired youths decked out in psychedelic blouses and bell bottoms
smoking pot, dropping acid, and plotting to overthrow the government (or even American
society itself) through whatever means necessary in the name of power to the people. A
dangerous, uncertain time when tried and true national values were challenged by
emergent groups who consciously perceived themselves as operating counter to the
dominant culture. Long hot summers populated by enraged urban rioters, bourgeoisie
babies who unexplainedly rejected daddy’s law firm for the streets of San Francisco, and
idealistic hipsters out to save the world through free love and rock music.
Such are the popular images of the people and period of the 1960’s which are
most quickly and vividly conceived of by the contemporary American mind as
representative of that generation. Moreover, as is the case with all memories, these
public and contested recollections of times just recently past cannot be remembered in a
moral vacuum. Instead they are (sometimes heavily) shaded by contemporary (if
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persistent) socio-political concerns over issues ranging from illicit drug use to ‘overly’
liberal social policies and cultural mores to the goodness and righteousness of the
American nation-state. At the same time our perceived memories of this politically
usable past can often have very real consequences for the present day, especially in cases
where the era of the 1960’s has been portrayed as equal parts destructive and anomalous
in opposition to more pleasantly remembered times of peace, prosperity, and ‘traditional’
values which bookend this memorially problematic period. In the years since Vietnam,
racial strife, and fundamental value contestation polarized the nation, culturally sensitive
politicians ranging from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich have made
careers, captured national attention, and garnered high office by rhetorically constructing
this period (and the myriad of different protest strands which fostered such conflict with
the mainstream) as wholly negative, unredeemable, and (for the sake of our children)
something which must never be repeated. At the same time these politicians often play
upon popular nostalgic notions of a happier, safer, friendlier, and generally better prior
period of American history, contrasting the perceived social ills of the Sixties (and
especially those of today which are painted as dire legacies of that dark era) with this
idealistically imagined past in order to condemn the counterculture.
For much of the twentieth century Americans have had a kind of love affair with
the notion of cultural decline, even in the midst of unprecedented material advancements,
persistently providing savvy politicians with exploitable images of the past. While the
experience and recognition of feelings of nostalgia “had been commonplace among
soldiers who served in the Revolution and the Civil War,” according to Michael
Kammen, it was the drive for “normalcy” in the 1920’s which “marked the genesis of
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nostalgia” as popularly understood today, as a yearning “for some earlier time
sentimentalized as a golden age.”1 For mainstream late 20th century American culture
that perceived golden age is the period of the 1950’s, remembered as a time of social
cohesion and fulfilling family life in contrast to the current and ongoing degeneration of
culture and home that began in the Sixties. Often phrased in the politically potent
terminology of a “decline of the family,” this line of argument (a favorite among modern
conservative value pundits) suggests that very real current social problems such as
poverty, drug addiction, and teen pregnancy are fundamentally the result of a breakdown
of ‘traditional’ nuclear family structures prompted, in large part, by the women’s
movement and the Sixties counterculture generally. Yet, as Stephanie Coontz points out,
this nostalgic model of traditional families is in reality “an ahistorical amalgam of
structures, values, and behaviors that never coexisted,” and the purported movement
downward from this high ideal little more than a politically useful memorial
construction.2 Yet if American families, culture, and life of the pre-Sixties era never
truly approximated the idealized state in which they have been remembered, the question
remains as to why this (false?) image of a Paradise Lost remains so prominent and
powerful within the contemporary culture?
In a media saturated society in which the collective culture most shared and most
public is that which appears on screen, the answer lies in cinematic and television
representations of this idealized time which function largely as a mythology of the recent
American past. Whereas Fifties era self representations, especially television programs
1
Michael Kammen. Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture
(Vintage Books, New York 1991), 533.
2
Stephanie Coontz. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (Basic Books,
New York 1992), 9.
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such as “Father Knows Best” and “Leave It To Beaver,” helped to first establish this
vision, it is mostly through continuing contemporary representations of just such a past
(in which, by way of the narrative, an idealized Fifties era often can be easily and
immediately contrasted to the turmoil of the 1960’s) that the modern mainstream receives
its (mis)information concerning these issues. This should come as little surprise if, as
Bruce Chadwick suggests, within modern American society it is film which holds “the
power to generate myths that will affect the collective memory”3 of the general public.
Indeed, while personal memories of real lived experiences during the 1960’s doubtless
continue to inform popular perceptions of that era, for those born after this period (as well
as many who lived through it themselves) the central repository of public memory
regarding the Sixties era is that ever enlarging body of historical cinemas depicting,
interpreting, and (often implicitly) judging this period. Moreover, while television
doubtless serves a similar function, certain consequences of the consumer character of
contemporary cinema (as well as peculiarities of form and structure) tend to make it both
more suitable for analysis and more significant for the way in which present day
Americans remember and make political use of that period.
In the first place market pressures dictate that the prime directive underlying the
production of all Hollywood films is ultimately the profit motive. Moreover, aside from
OAH forums, graduate seminars, and History Channel exposes, the question of
‘accuracy’ concerning the portrayal of the past in these films is generally ignored, let
alone the complex, reciprocal relationship between modern day socio-political concerns
and popular on-screen historical representations of the post-war period. Indeed, starting
3
Bruce Chadwick. The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film (Alfred A. Knopf, New York
2001), 5.
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from the premise that Hollywood filmmakers’ primary concern is always with
constructing a profitable picture of the past, regardless of how this portrayal may distort
historical reality in the interests of contemporary sensibilities, one can begin to discern
how so many Americans retain such an idealized image of their recent history while
simultaneously glimpsing a method of utilizing these economic aspects of cinematic
mythology to better explore the meanings and motivations of the underlying culture. .
It is no subtle insight that consumers tend to purchase products they enjoy over
those which they find distasteful. Moreover, basic economic logic suggests that over
time producers will learn the tastes and habits of their consuming public and better adapt
their products to suite the needs of the mass market. Indeed, it is by just such a process
that historical cinema representations of the past are crafted in order to satiate the cultural
pangs of the mainstream. Above all else, in order to be economically successful, a
Hollywood film must please its viewers, which in this case necessitates the crafting of
visions of American history in line with the predominant memorial desires of the
consuming culture. They must “provide a level of content which will guarantee the
widest possible acceptance by the largest possible audience” who “will simply not go to
see a movie that it has heard is ‘difficult’ or that deals with unpopular themes.”4
Moreover, and perhaps most importantly in the specific case of mass media
reconstructions of the 1960’s era, movie going audiences tend to shun films (like, for
example, Born on the 4th of July, which was a simultaneous critical success and
commercial failure) that portray familiar themes or events from this period in potentially
problematic ways. At the same time that it partially explains the cultural logic behind
4
Garth Jowett and James M. Linton. Movies as Mass Communication (Sage Publications, London 1980),
74.
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cinematic historical misrepresentation, the unabashedly consumer character of such films
makes it possible to close read such films as a means of discerning how the consuming
culture construes its recent history. Indeed (though one should not fully discount those
films whose Hollywood ‘buzz,’ mass publicized critical successes, or underground ‘cult’
status have cemented them as cultural icons), by this logic, those films that are most
successful at the box office should be those whose historical imagination of recent
America most closely matches that of the mainstream public. Thus perhaps even more
than being a potential shaper of public opinion regarding the past, popular Hollywood
cinema (especially those box office blockbusters whose vision of history has received
widespread public validation) can act as a mirror of broader societal self-conceptions.
A similar reciprocal relationship between politicians and the public has long been
recognized by historians, political scientists, and other scientists of society, though the
question of to what degree powerfully placed individuals shape rather than merely tap
into the public mind remains open to debate (*** find a reference****). What can be
perhaps said for certain is that politicians often pay close attention to public opinion,
casting votes, crafting messages, and generally operating as a representative of their
constituencies, if sometimes only to ensure re-election. At the same time, by ‘making an
issue’ out of what are sometimes deep underlying social concerns (some of which, like
persistent apprehensions regarding race, can be fruitfully cultivated only if done so with
great rhetorical care) politicians can often direct public focus and, through the use of ever
more mass media, articulate these shared concerns, and their conceived solutions, in
particular and sometimes consequential ways. This is especially true in the case of
certain rhetorical representations of the Sixties era by conservative politicians which
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single out certain strands of the counterculture (most often free love and illicit drug use)
for outright condemnation on contemporary cultural grounds. In addition to firmly
placing the blame for current social problems (including but not limited to AIDS, crack
and other drug pandemics, persistent inner city poverty, teenage pregnancy, and the
‘breakdown of the family’) on these collective past transgressions, such modes of
political argument also function to discredit the radical political and cultural aspects the
movement by collapsing distinctions between multi-varied aspects of a complicated
counterculture. Moreover, as Republican rhetoricians have made careful note (and
opportunistic political use) of, though mainstream late 20th century American society as a
whole may not be wholly willing to discount appealing ideas about individual identity
and power to the people, they will work and vote to overthrow policies of a liberal past
that can be effectively blamed for the problems of the present. Yet this collapsing of
distinctions between counterculture elements enabling the condemnation of an entire
body of alternative socio-political thought and action through consensus contemporary
disapproval of certain specific personal, ‘immoral’ actions does not take place only
during campaign seasons or on Sunday morning political roundtables. It occurs just as
often, with perhaps more significant consequences for mainstream public memory, in the
medium of historical cinema.
Leaving aside, for the moment, the issue of what relationship and influences
might exist between these publicly expressed contemporary political concerns and
historical cinematic remembrances of the Sixties era, let us briefly examine those aspects
of the popular cinematic convention which function to encourage such a representation of
the past. The fact that the form, perhaps even more than the content, of these
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constructions is predicated on the consuming tastes of a mass public seeking primarily to
be entertained dictates that on screen remembrances of the past be presented in the form
of a coherent narrative. It is precisely this need for narrative coherence as a general
prerequisite for commercial cinematic success that prompts the collapsing of
countercultural distinctions in these films, since the sort of subtle sub-cultural analysis of
the Sixties era one might expect to find in scholarly monographs just doesn’t make good
viewing. The image of one coherent counterculture, whose members uniformly called for
social revolt, burned their draft cards or bras, and enjoyed innumerable consequence-free
sexual encounters while stoned out of their minds is simply easier to present on screen,
and, perhaps, easier for a memorially politicized public to accept. This collective vision
also allows for blanket (if often implicit) condemnation of the entire counterculture
through representations of personal ruin and cultural collapse caused by illicit drug use
cum, inevitably, abuse. Indeed, in this thesis I will argue that depictions of illegal drug
use in 1990’s era historical cinematic representations of the recent past fall into
recognizable categories corresponding to mainstream contemporary societal viewpoints,
and media portrayals, of drug use while functioning to implicitly discredit the political
and cultural contributions of the counterculture through explicit moralistic condemnation
of illicit substances and their patrons. Moreover, I will attempt to show that this process
is inextricably, if indirectly, linked to contemporary political images and arguments about
drugs, resulting in a cinematic rewriting of the American past largely in terms of present
day politicized drug prevention visual media messages.
This proposed link between political concerns about and media representations of
drugs serves as the final leg of a “Silver Triangle” of historical memory outlining the
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process of interaction among current political concerns and conceptions regarding drugs,
historical media representations of the 1960’s, and mainstream public opinion about that
much debated decade which generates and supports this form of politicized mass memory
in contemporary American culture. Arguments concerning the reciprocal if asymmetrical
relations comprising the first two legs (those existing between historical media and the
mainstream cultural conception of the past on one hand, and this public mental image and
present day political rhetoric about social issues prefigured as legacies of the
counterculture on the other) of this triangle being extent in the social science literature,
and already briefly summarized earlier in this section, we shall now briefly turn to
explore the precise means by which political media messages regarding drugs infiltrate
popular cinematic historical remembrances of the counterculture. While no secret cabal
of anti-drug propagandists forces Hollywood directors by gunpoint to represent the past
in certain politically consequential ways, there remain very good reasons why popular
historical cinemas should ‘choose’ to do so.
In the first place, any depiction of drug use in contemporary cinema (even those
set in an historical past which shared very different views on such issues) must not
overtly challenge the contemporary socio-political consensus on this hot button issue.
This mainstream conception prefigures drugs as a uniquely dire threat to the (always
politically useful) next generation and, most importantly, in the wake of the “Just Say
No” campaign of the 1980’s, an issue on which only one viewpoint is considered
legitimate. To present any alternative depiction (even one set thirty years in the past) is
to risk public condemnation for presenting ‘mixed messages’ to children. Positive
economic motivations also work alongside these possible negative consequences to
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encourage such politicized popular portrayals of the past. While the degree of success of
the Reagan-Bush anti-drug media campaign in keeping youngsters off illicit substances
remains open to debate, it seems likely that the parents of those children at whom the
blitz was aimed (who themselves comprised the cultural consensus of concerned citizens
pushing for such preventative measures) took to heart the distinctly unmixed media
messages being presented on video screens in arcades, stadiums, and living rooms across
America. Through its role collective consumer demanding images in line with its own
(now) preconceived notions concerning drugs, this politicized public in turn prompted
Hollywood to create similar such representations on the silver screen. These cinematic
representations of contemporary society served to further reinforce the extent mainstream
message about drugs while simultaneously establishing the precise contemporary terms
and categories in which the drug-filled countercultural past would soon be cinematically
represented. Indeed, as we shall see, post-Reagan era historical film representations of
the Sixties tend to create images, themes, and morals about drugs which mirror those
appearing in 1990’s contemporary societal depictions while diverging sharply from the
cinematic constructions of the counterculture which appeared on-screen at the time.
Chapters one and two of this thesis will lay the historical, political, and cinematic
groundwork for the specific case studies of politicized Hollywood portrayals of the past
that follow. In chapter one we will briefly survey the cultural conflict of the Sixties era,
paying careful attention to those distinctions among different elements of the
counterculture which will become so consequentially collapsed in later political rhetoric
and media representations regarding that period. Then, starting with Richard Nixon’s
effective mobilization of the “silent majority” at the very height of the movement in
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1968, we will survey how the counterculture and the Sixties era generally have been
politically remembered and utilized in the years since. Focusing especially on the
rhetorical reconstructions of Ronald Reagan and the 1994 “Contract with America”
Republicans this chapter shall examine how the perceived sins of the countercultural past
could come to be so effectively blamed by contemporary conservatives for precipitating
the problems of the present. Temporarily turning away from the politics of memory
surrounding the Sixties, chapter two will trace changing Hollywood cinematic depictions
of drugs from that period to the present, with an eye towards establishing competing
thematic types (of the 1960’s and 1990’s eras) to which the Hollywood historical films
can be constructively compared. Alongside this narrative (and interacting with it at
appropriate points of mass mediated convergence) shall run another examining
governmental policies concerning drugs during the same period with special emphasis on
the anti-drug political media messages of the Reagan-Bush era. In so doing this chapter
shall examine the precise process by which consciously political and publicly paid-for
anti-drug messages of the 1980’s came to permeate market driven media representations
of contemporary society (and then of recent history) in the 1990’s.
Having laid out the necessary media and memorial backgrounds, chapters three
and four shall focus on specific cases of drug-related cinematic historical revisionism in
an effort to understand the thematic trends, underlying cultural messages, and possible
consequences of these representations. Chapter three will examine three major thematic
sub-genre types prevalent among 1990’s era historical representations of the Sixties
(which, as might be expected, closely correspond to certain contemporary cinematic drug
categorizations), supplementing close textual analysis of one representative film from
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each category with supporting examples from a broader range of historical cinema. In
general these films either romanticize the past itself while downplaying or explicitly
condemning drug use (as in Almost Famous), create a clear distinction between the users
and consequences of marijuana and other drugs (as in Dazed and Confused), or tell tales
of inevitable personal ruin (as in Blow) precipitated by, at first always more or less
innocent, experimentation with drugs.
The final chapter shall examine the cultural meaning of Forrest Gump, analyzing
the historical cinematic phenomena that swept America by storm in the summer of 1994,
garnering multiple Academy Awards and cashing in to become the third highest grossing
film of all time. Following an in depth exploration into the thematic treatment of drugs
and the counterculture within this film, and the possible underlying political and cultural
consequences of such a representation, we shall compare it to two alternative pictures of
the past; the book of the same name on which it is ostensibly based (but which paints a
very different portrait concerning drugs) and the structurally similar but politically
antithetical Oliver Stone film Born on the 4th of July which offers a divergent
interpretation of the recent past. The incredible box office success of this film (along
with its appearance in the midst of a heated campaign season that often centered around
politicized memories of the counterculture) suggests it as a uniquely insightful (and
useful) reflection of contemporary American mainstream cultural attitudes toward and
understandings of the recent (and, for many, best forgotten) past. This work will
conclude with a short epilogue examining the political messages and cultural meanings of
the most recent spate of televised anti-drug propaganda which has appeared in the months
since the 2002 Super Bowl.
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While the question of validity remains omnipresent any time an historian attempts
to read broader culture from individual texts it is perhaps never more pressing than in the
case of television, film, and other visual mass media. Yet perhaps no other body of
modern technology impacts our lives more on a daily basis then the video screens which
provide countless hours of consumer choice and entertainment to hundreds of millions of
Americans everday. Moreover, while the degree of influence the images appearing on
these screens hold over those that view them remains open to debate, it seems likely that
nearly everyone in the contempoary United States is influenced by some of the media
some of the time. Yet in the case of public discourse concerning drugs and the
counterculture, where only one form of messsage is considered culturally legitimate, this
influence (whatever it’s degree) can only hope to shape views in one particular and
politically consequential style. Establishing exactly how this process works, what
precisely these consensus conceptions are, and what their continueing socio-political
results might be remains the paramount goal of the pages to follow.