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The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties

The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties film’s faute de mieux protagonist, is thus not merely the butt of the Coens’ sophisticated humor (in an unforgettable scene she delivers a Sunday School lecture to a barely articulate primitive); she is also “associated with deeply buried desires for safety and nurturance, infantile wishes that must be cloaked in humor” (35). Grace’s essay interestingly and richly parallels a line of interpretation developed earlier by Hilary Radner (whose essay on Marge as “New Hollywood Woman” is not referenced, though it is included in the select bibliography). Sharrett finds the film a “critique of American civilization, particularly the late twentieth-century family and community” (55). But he does not find this critique altogether pleasing, since it seems “to have partaken fully of a particularly noxious current of postmodern liberal sensibility, namely a need to affirm what is simultaneously belittled” (56). This, at least, is Sharrett’s take on the heavily ironized binary at the heart of the film, its juxtaposition of the terrifyingly extraordinary and the banal everyday in the manner of bourgeois neo-noir thrillers, which Foster Hirsch identified as “melodramas of mischance.” Sharrett’s essay, however, is richer and wider ranging than such a brief summary suggests, since it attempts to http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Film Quarterly University of California Press

The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties

Film Quarterly , Volume 58 (4) – Jul 1, 2005

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Publisher
University of California Press
Copyright
Copyright © by the University of California Press
ISSN
0015-1386
eISSN
1533-8630
DOI
10.1525/fq.2005.58.4.58
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

film’s faute de mieux protagonist, is thus not merely the butt of the Coens’ sophisticated humor (in an unforgettable scene she delivers a Sunday School lecture to a barely articulate primitive); she is also “associated with deeply buried desires for safety and nurturance, infantile wishes that must be cloaked in humor” (35). Grace’s essay interestingly and richly parallels a line of interpretation developed earlier by Hilary Radner (whose essay on Marge as “New Hollywood Woman” is not referenced, though it is included in the select bibliography). Sharrett finds the film a “critique of American civilization, particularly the late twentieth-century family and community” (55). But he does not find this critique altogether pleasing, since it seems “to have partaken fully of a particularly noxious current of postmodern liberal sensibility, namely a need to affirm what is simultaneously belittled” (56). This, at least, is Sharrett’s take on the heavily ironized binary at the heart of the film, its juxtaposition of the terrifyingly extraordinary and the banal everyday in the manner of bourgeois neo-noir thrillers, which Foster Hirsch identified as “melodramas of mischance.” Sharrett’s essay, however, is richer and wider ranging than such a brief summary suggests, since it attempts to

Journal

Film QuarterlyUniversity of California Press

Published: Jul 1, 2005

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