16-08-2013, 05:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 16-08-2013, 05:35 PM by Albert Rossi.)
I would propose "Forrest Gump" as an allegory for what we are talking about -- probably an unwitting one, so consider what follows a deconstruction or a reading against the grain.
Theme: shit happens, you can't make sense of the 60s and early 70s, and most Americans walked through those events as if they were a feather blown on the wind; what was really needed was the long cross country run at the end of the 70s to put it all behind us and prepare ourselves for the 80s, where all that matters is having your Apple stock split 10 ten times and taking care of your kid (though I'm not sure even that matters any more). Why try to make sense of something that is without any larger significance (wait ... did McAdams write that film?). Besides, the coeur simple is morally superior to the thinker or the intellectual. Flaubert's irony is not for most Americans. So Run, Forrest, Run!
Withdrawal into the private sphere is what allowed the 80s and 90s to happen. It is personally depressing to me to think of 1968, and then fast forward to 1984, with Reagan winning by an 80% landslide. What happened to all those bodies on the streets? Did all the hippies become yuppies?
Of course, not all of this occurred "without help". The assassinations, cointelpro, and acts of sabotage and provocation like the murder of Hampton or Kent State, basically destroyed the active left, driving it back inside, into the confines of the university classroom, where it is much less threatening.
"And that's all I have to say about that ..."
Theme: shit happens, you can't make sense of the 60s and early 70s, and most Americans walked through those events as if they were a feather blown on the wind; what was really needed was the long cross country run at the end of the 70s to put it all behind us and prepare ourselves for the 80s, where all that matters is having your Apple stock split 10 ten times and taking care of your kid (though I'm not sure even that matters any more). Why try to make sense of something that is without any larger significance (wait ... did McAdams write that film?). Besides, the coeur simple is morally superior to the thinker or the intellectual. Flaubert's irony is not for most Americans. So Run, Forrest, Run!
Withdrawal into the private sphere is what allowed the 80s and 90s to happen. It is personally depressing to me to think of 1968, and then fast forward to 1984, with Reagan winning by an 80% landslide. What happened to all those bodies on the streets? Did all the hippies become yuppies?
Of course, not all of this occurred "without help". The assassinations, cointelpro, and acts of sabotage and provocation like the murder of Hampton or Kent State, basically destroyed the active left, driving it back inside, into the confines of the university classroom, where it is much less threatening.
"And that's all I have to say about that ..."