The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties.(Book Review)

The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties. J. Hoberman. New York: The New Press, 2003.

In J. Hoberman's cultural history of the 1960s, the movies do more than reflect the dissonant currents in American life; they merge with them, becoming both representational and formative forces in their own right. In this way, the dream life of the nation becomes a reality--defining interest groups, explaining values, and justifying policy. This view of the decade owes much to the arguments of contemporaries such as Norman Mailer and Daniel Boorstin, who saw the language of ideals replaced by the language of images, and lamented that the fantasy of film colonized the discourse of the nation. What makes Hoberman's commentary so useful is that he is able to draw on his wealth of insights into American film to make a coherent alternative to conventional narratives of the 1960s. In Hoberman's vision, the forces of The Alamo (1960) face those of Easy Rider (1969) for the hearts and minds of the country. He extends his analysis well into the 1970s, and can thus chart the post-Watergate paranoia of films like Blow Out (1981) and The Parallax View (1974).

As the long-established film critic for The Village Voice, Hoberman has impeccable credentials for cultural analysis and liberal perspective. His usual fare is independent movies, but in this book, he takes on the major wide-distribution movies (and the indies that became major and widely seen). He does look at a few lesser-known films, such as the hugely influential Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song (1971), but his focus is on the high-profile movies that film critic Pauline Kael saw as articulating ideas that audiences had scarcely felt. He provides insightful and often hilarious readings of the pantheon of 1960s movies, and never lets his liberal leanings influence his judgment. Easy Rider is cunningly ...