Instructor: Walter Metz

Reaganite Cinema (American Cinema in the 1980s)

As Robin Wood argues in his essay, "Papering the Cracks: Fantasy and Ideology in the Reagan Era," the roots of the neo-conservative revolution (the "Reagan Revolution") lie in the cultural discontent brewing in the late 1970s. The failures of the otherwise well-meaning Carter Administration (the hostage crisis, a stagnant economy, etc.) rendered the American political landscape susceptible to a reductionistic demagoguery that advocated simplistic solutions to complex social problems. Thus, the neo-conservative revolution would advocate lesser taxation (and hence smaller government) to solve increasingly larger problems, a military build-up so that the forces of good (the West) could defeat the "Evil Empire" (the Soviet Union), and a return to the simplistic values of the 1950s to undue the social revolutions of the 1960s (an undermining of Affirmative Action, the direct legacy of the Civil Rights movement; a backlash against the gay and women’s liberation movements, etc.). We can see the groundwork for neo-conservatism’s rise in the feel-good fantasy films of the late 1970s, what Wood labels the "Lucas-Spielberg Syndrome." In Star Wars, a reductionistic tale of good vs. evil is presented, where we are emotionally manipulated to root for the glorious rebellion (the American Revolution?) over quite literally an Evil Empire. In Close Encounters, we follow a man’s escape from the tainted world of the 1970s, ruined by the 1960s, to a glorious outer space controlled by benevolent visitors from another world (why worry about our social problems when aliens will take care of them?).

In his book, Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan, from which "Papering the Cracks" is excerpted, Wood pushes pretty hard against the proto-Reaganite (late 1970s) and the Reaganite cinema, which he argues simplifies the American political landscape. For example, he rails against the infantilization of both American cinema and politics produced by the neo-conservative revolution. For example, Star Wars delivers pleasure to an increasingly younger audience (the teenager is the target audience member in the New Hollywood) because it tells a simplistic fairy tale about a young boy’s coming of age under the advice of two different yet traditionally masculine tutors (Hans Solo, the body, and Obi-War Kenobi, the mind). The film works so well because it is in keeping with how we are socially constructed under dominant ideology: we seek simplistic solutions to complex social problems because it makes us feel as if they can be readily fixed.

Robin Wood’s Definition of Reaganite Cinema

Thus, for Wood, what makes proto-Reaganite and Reaganite cinema so successful is its ability to reassure an otherwise frightened and discontented American populace.   According to Wood, "Reaganite entertainment" provides reassurance in a number of ways.

1. A Reassuring Nostalgia for the 1950s:  A film like Rocky (1976) provides a return home to racism, sexism, capitalism. The film returns us to a moment when working-class white Americans were the privileged point of identification. Affirmative action and other liberal projects of the 1960s have decentered the white male. Rocky becomes a case study in how the white male’s power can be reclaimed from the well-supported upwardly-mobile African-American male (Apollo Creed). Rocky is supported by a passive, waiting woman ("Yo, Adrian"). Despite their conflict, Apollo and Rocky both support capitalism’s American Dream, the ability to move upward out of empoverishment.
2. Special Effects as Reassuring Magic: There are two levels of magic in Reaganite cinema:  diegetic (films about all-powerful beings that can solve our problems:   ET, Close Encounters) and meta-textual (the glorious special effects of the New Hollywood cinema that can achieve any representation). Both forms of magic envision a world where complex social problems will be magically solved by some external source. ET the character cures Eliot's dysfunctional family, for instance.
3. Reassurance about Nuclear Anxiety:  Reaganite Films construct us as children so that we are reassured against the threat of armageddon that Reaganite foreign policy made all the more likely.  For example, Reaganite films feature plots about good guys winning possession of the armageddon weapon (STII, Raiders of the Lost Arc, the Force in Star Wars).
4. The Reassuring Restoration of the Great White Father:  The identity politics of Reaganite cinema are geared to "fixing" the problems created by the 1960s. The films have to beat down ethnic and gendered others (who became politicized in the 1960s), while restoring the power of the white, patriarchal father.  First, the ethnic and gendered others need to be contained.  For example, Reaganite films undermine the liberated woman.  The films feature the return of women to traditional gender roles, or feature their complete elimination. For example, in Kramer vs. Kramer, men make the best mothers.  Or, in Ordinary People, the mother is banished from the narrative.

   CLIP #1: Ordinary People (Robert Redford, 1980): the mother is banished from the film

   Second, Reaganite films restore the power of the white male.  The resurrection of the potent white male is, at the national level, complicit with the restoration of the national manhood.  Rambo's line at the beginning of Rambo: First Blood Part II, "do we get to win this time?" perfectly expresses this.

A Case Study of an Archetypal Reaganite Film: Identity Politics in Conan the Barbarian

1. Woman killed and mythologized

CLIP #2: Valeria’s return

2. Gay bashing

CLIP #3: gay bashing

3. African-American svengali the threat to the established white male power structure

CLIP #5: Conan punishes transgressive African-American by chopping off his head

All the hypnotized hippies return to their homes. Is this an ad for the Klan or a Hollywood film? Does this film advocate a return to The Birth of a Nation? The film represents the failure of liberalism: Oliver Stone wrote the script!

A Case Study of Reaganite Comedy

In the 1980s, the comedy film became the dominant American film genre. This makes sense, since a cinema advocating simplistic solutions would naturally gravitate to a genre encouraging escapism and reassuring, happy endings.

The Definition of Reaganism Applied to Comedy Films

1. Identity Politics: White male privileged

CLIP #7: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Ferris’s musical spectacular

2. Nostalgia for the 1950s

CLIP #8: Back to the Future: The Enchantment Under the Sea dance

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This page was last updated on May 30, 2001

Questions or Comments?  Please phone me at (406) 994-6403 or send e-mail to:  metz@montana.edu

Walter Metz, Department of Media and Theatre Arts, Montana State University--Bozeman