The American Dream is the promise of opportunity to pursue a better life. It is an idea, an ideal and an ideology through which this nation has historically defined itself, often in direct contrast to some other political power, such as the British monarchy or Soviet communism, to cite just two examples. Although the term was first coined in the depths of the Great Depression, the Dream has existed as a concept since the first English settlement in the Americas. In its earliest incarnation, it represented the Puritans’ hope for what they believed could be an ideal society, one that promised a better life for their children if not themselves. In the New World, they were free to pursue and ultimately attain success as they defined it. For them, as with the Quakers that soon followed, this meant living in accordance to their interpretation of the Bible, unshackled from the corrupt institutions of their homeland.
For many Europeans who crossed the Atlantic throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, the Dream represented hope for a different kind of success. Optimistic entrepreneurs and adventurers with nothing else to lose dreamt of fast riches through the exploitation of the continent’s vast resources. America was heralded as a land of opportunity, but as these early settlers quickly learned, hard work was also an implicit component of the Dream. As political scientist Cal Jillson notes, “If they came as adventurers in search of quick wealth, they were almost invariably disappointed. Most died anonymously or returned home without leaving much of a trace” (16).
In elementary school, you may have learned about the Jamestown colony, which is often referred to as the first permanent English settlement in North America, where John Smith said, "This looks nice. I'll take it!" What your teacher probably didn't mention is that those first few years included such highlights as communicable disease, starvation and cannibalism, during which time over eighty percent of the original settlers died. In fact, the only thing that saved the Jamestown settlement was when they brought in slaves from Africa to do all the physical labor for them. I'm guessing your elementary teacher left that part out, too.
And so the Dream persisted, aided in no small part by the slave trade that allowed landowners to reap the bounty of the earth without the investment of their own labor. An added dimension to the American Dream therefore indicated that while hard work was indeed a virtue, it may in fact be trumped (or Drumpfed, if you prefer) by the power to delegate such labor to other hands. That is to say that the Dream has historically been afforded to some through the exclusion and exploitation of others.
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| Finally, we can burn us some witches. |
For many Europeans who crossed the Atlantic throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, the Dream represented hope for a different kind of success. Optimistic entrepreneurs and adventurers with nothing else to lose dreamt of fast riches through the exploitation of the continent’s vast resources. America was heralded as a land of opportunity, but as these early settlers quickly learned, hard work was also an implicit component of the Dream. As political scientist Cal Jillson notes, “If they came as adventurers in search of quick wealth, they were almost invariably disappointed. Most died anonymously or returned home without leaving much of a trace” (16).
In elementary school, you may have learned about the Jamestown colony, which is often referred to as the first permanent English settlement in North America, where John Smith said, "This looks nice. I'll take it!" What your teacher probably didn't mention is that those first few years included such highlights as communicable disease, starvation and cannibalism, during which time over eighty percent of the original settlers died. In fact, the only thing that saved the Jamestown settlement was when they brought in slaves from Africa to do all the physical labor for them. I'm guessing your elementary teacher left that part out, too.
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| Slaves were counted as 3/5 of human beings for census reasons. |
The American Dream is the proverbial carrot on a stick that incentivizes us to move forward. It is the creed of the middle class. According to Cullen, “Ambiguity is the very source of its mythic power, nowhere more so than among those striving for, but unsure whether they will reach, their goals” (7). It is precisely this ambiguity that has allowed the Dream to readily adapt to changing cultural contexts, taking on new meanings for different times while maintaining the core principles that make it so resilient.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the American Dream came to represent the glorified aspirations of the common man, as figures such as Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln helped expand the idea of the Dream within the public imagination to include the prospect of upward mobility through their mythologized representations of this ideal. These were "ordinary" men who earned their way to the presidency through virtue and perseverance. The United States was celebrated as a place where with enough hard work, any landowning Protestant white man could achieve greatness.
That said, I should probably also note that Andrew Jackson was a lunatic by most people's standards, and many historians suspect that he was also illiterate. Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, was a notorious procrastinator, exemplified by the fact that he only finished writing the Gettysburg Address while on the train to Gettysburg. For that matter, Thomas Jefferson was terrified of public speaking and the only two speeches that he ever gave as President were his inaugural addresses. These are, of course, just a few examples of the often vast differences between reality and myth as they exist in the public imagination. With that in mind, I think it's a good practice to routinely question the things that you take for granted. Besides, if you truly analyze these things objectively and conclude that the numbers all match, it will only reaffirm your beliefs, so the only thing you have to lose are the things that weren't really true in the first place.
After the Civil War, notions of equality regarding race, religion and gender increasingly became a part of our national discourse as more people vocalized concern over just whose American Dream this was. Reconstruction was, by any account, a disgraceful period in American history, an ugly contradiction between ideals written to law and the blatant disregard of those laws. Meanwhile, the Statue of Liberty promised "a golden door... to the tired, poor and huddled masses... yearning to breathe free," but for many immigrants who passed through Ellis Island, the opportunities to pursue a better life simply did not exist.
Of course, there were always exceptions, individuals who exemplified the ideals of the American Dream. These included people like Andrew Carnegie and, of course, Superman, as well as many of the pioneers of early Hollywood, who did in fact achieve astonishing success in this country despite their humble beginnings in other lands. Even though this was by no means the norm, the Horatio Alger story was perceived to be a reality for enough Americans that the mythology of the Dream lived on. Ironically, Alger himself died in poverty and relative anonymity.
That said, I should probably also note that Andrew Jackson was a lunatic by most people's standards, and many historians suspect that he was also illiterate. Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, was a notorious procrastinator, exemplified by the fact that he only finished writing the Gettysburg Address while on the train to Gettysburg. For that matter, Thomas Jefferson was terrified of public speaking and the only two speeches that he ever gave as President were his inaugural addresses. These are, of course, just a few examples of the often vast differences between reality and myth as they exist in the public imagination. With that in mind, I think it's a good practice to routinely question the things that you take for granted. Besides, if you truly analyze these things objectively and conclude that the numbers all match, it will only reaffirm your beliefs, so the only thing you have to lose are the things that weren't really true in the first place.
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| It was probably a lot like this. |
Of course, there were always exceptions, individuals who exemplified the ideals of the American Dream. These included people like Andrew Carnegie and, of course, Superman, as well as many of the pioneers of early Hollywood, who did in fact achieve astonishing success in this country despite their humble beginnings in other lands. Even though this was by no means the norm, the Horatio Alger story was perceived to be a reality for enough Americans that the mythology of the Dream lived on. Ironically, Alger himself died in poverty and relative anonymity.
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| Just for fun, look up the robber baron J.P. Morgan. See if you can notice the resemblance. |
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| Here's to you, future generations. Thanks for the good times. |
When confidence in the abstract values of stocks plummeted, the American economy crashed. Millions of people lost their jobs, while the very wealthiest Americans saw only moderate declines in their incomes, if at all. Endemic unemployment erased the imaginary boundaries between the lower and middle class as their circumstances grew increasingly similar, and once their ideologies were aligned enough to form a coalition, they had enough push within our political system to force institutional change. Throughout the Depression, the government created programs that renovated and upgraded our nation's infrastructure while also putting millions of Americans back to work. One program in particular, the Civilian Conservation Corps, planted about three billion trees, as well as the grass seeds that effectively ended the Dust Bowl. During this period, Americans united to agree upon new sets of values. In this sense, the Great Depression brought people together, just as our subsequent involvement in World War II promoted a unified national identity.
The United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower for the first time in our nation's history, and the Truman Doctrine declared us to be the defenders of democracy throughout the world. The twilight of the British empire marked the dawn of the American Way®. Having sustained the fewest measurable losses in the war, the United States was well poised to help rebuild Europe in its own image. The Marshall Plan offered high interest loans to the nations of Europe that had been destroyed by war, which made the U.S. banks that serviced those loans ridiculous amounts of money. The Marshall Plan also made it easier for American businesses to set up shop in foreign countries, many of which had maintained resolutely isolationist positions in terms of trade before the war. For what it's worth, for strategic reasons, the U.S. had also bombed the hell out of German and Japanese auto plants, just as the Germans had bombed British car factories. This put American auto manufacturers in an ideal position to dominate the world market after the war, even though most of these cars were tremendous turds that were only designed to last for a few years at best. The term for this is planned obsolescence, and it has since become a standard component of modern capitalism.
After the war, keeping up with the Joneses became a national pastime. In order to maintain full employment and not sink into another financial depression as troops acclimated back to civilian life, production at U.S. manufacturing plants had to maintain similar levels to what they had during the war. This meant that Americans also had to consume more in order to maintain demand for American products, and so in order to generate a demand for things that people don't really need, we entered the modern age of ubiquitous advertising. As we have discussed, these representations also served to promote specific gender roles.
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| Fun fact: Schlitz was named after the sound it makes coming out of you, as was Blatz. |
Before World War II, the U.S. never had anything near the standing military that it does now. Ever since the First World War, when the armed forces needed recruits and didn't have enough, college-aged kids were drafted. This is a practice that has not been eliminated, per se, but merely suspended, which is why men have to register for the Selective Service when they turn eighteen. Incidentally, according to the U.S. Constitution, there was never any intention for our nation to maintain a full military when not at war, which is why precisely why they included the right to bear arms and form militias. The intent wasn't in case the need arose to revolt against the U.S. military; rather, it's that these armed militias were the U.S. military in times of foreign conflict.
Throughout the 1950s and early sixties, the perpetual threat of communist infiltration and nuclear warfare fostered a mindset of conformity that, ironically, centered on the concept of the nuclear family. The American Dream thus emphasized ideals of family, home ownership and limitless consumption in direct contrast to the second-world propaganda of the Soviet Union. Consumerism came to be seen as the ultimate expression of freedom, and this version of the American Dream was increasingly marketed to the working- and middle-class as an equal-opportunity enterprise: a journey of self-improvement. It was a storyline made for Hollywood. For many, the Dream came to mean that America was a place where anybody could accumulate vast wealth and achieve happiness through consumption. Success was increasingly viewed as a relative term; the grass was always greener behind somebody else's white picket fence.
This era also marked the first time that the concept of the American Dream achieved relative consensus in the public imagination, where it came to mean more or less the same thing to everybody. This was also due in large part to media representations, and this was particularly true as more people came to own televisions -- in a time when there were usually only between one and three channels available, so just about everybody was tuned into the same thing. Every evening, the husband, wife and 2.3 kids would bask in the glow of the electricity, courtesy of that show's commercial sponsor. To many, this Leave it to Beaver version of the Dream would also seem to validate all that made this country exceptional as the United States redefined its role in world affairs. Television and mainstream cinema projected an "ideal" America, both to ourselves and to the rest of the world.
Throughout the Cold War, the American way of life was being pitched as nothing less than the greatest achievement of human civilization. According to cultural historian Donald Pease, “After World War II, the U.S. government propagated the belief that America was the fulfillment of the world’s aspiration for the ‘Nation of Nations’ by constructing the threat to the attainment of that ideal in the image of the Soviet Empire” (20). Freedom meant the freedom to buy things, and in the most robust economic climate that this nation had seen in thirty years, accompanied by the vast proliferation of the middle class, the Dream was indeed a reality for more Americans than ever before. Throughout this era, the American Dream was fundamentally about being a part of the booming middle class, complete with a home in the suburbs and a family, where the husband won bread and the wife stayed home with the kids, and everybody lived happily ever after.
As suggested on week eleven, in the early 1960s, the Dream changed shape to where it was more about personal fulfillment. It's a good Dream, but what's in it for me? And will it make me happy right now, just in case the world ends tomorrow? This was also a time when more people began to question just whose Dream this actually was. Race and gender increasingly became part of this discourse, as figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. articulated the ideals of equality. His Dream was the American Dream.
As the counterculture movement of the sixties gained momentum, it swelled into the mainstream. Despite the advice that Kennedy had offered this generation in his inaugural address, growing numbers of people were asking neither what their country could do for them nor what they could do for their country, but rather, what they could do for themselves. Freedom meant the freedom to do your own thing, man.
By the end of the seventies, our public institutions were visibly corrupt, and the inability to achieve any sustainable version of the Dream had nurtured a deep cynicism in many. Meanwhile, the combination of stagnant wages and inflated commodity prices, particularly in the energy sector, were killing the middle class. This also changed the dynamics of the nuclear family as more women entered the workforce than ever before, in part because of the need for two incomes in order to maintain a household's standard of living. The women's liberation movement also achieved some legislative victories during this period, including gaining women access to contraceptives and abortions, which granted them the freedom to decide when and if to have children. Furthermore, throughout the seventies, nearly all states adopted no-fault divorce laws, which allowed women to get out of bad marriages without having to prove any specific wrongdoing on the part of the husband.
Combined, these factors led to what many perceived to be a crisis of the American family in the early eighties. When divorce rates peaked in 1981 at 24.3 married women over the age of fifteen per thousand, many Americans thought that the nuclear family was in rapid decay. This is almost certainly why there were so many sitcoms and comedic films from this era that centered on dads raising a family without the mom. As we have been discussing throughout the semester, mass media (and comedy films in particular) often tap into dominant cultural anxieties, which is one of the primary factors in finding resonance with broad audiences. These movies were popular at this time because people were in a panic about the changing role of women within their gendered conception of the American Dream.
Of course, even well after the dawn of Reagan's "Morning in America," the nuclear family and the white picket fence were still factors in one's attainment of the American Dream, and there was no shortage of mythologizing the fifties during this era, likely due to the aforementioned changes that undoubtedly made some people long for the "good old days." The focal point of the Dream, however, became the fast accumulation of personal wealth. Reagan told America that the government he led was the problem, while evangelizing the neoliberal creed which suggested that the "free market" is the answer for everything. Personal fulfillment came to be thought of in terms of individual wealth and status. According to this logic, the richer you get, the better you are, while the inverse only demonized the poor.
Although this idea is still very much a part of our national ethos, the Dream has since come to mean other things as well. Case in point: in the late nineteen nineties, the Writer's Guild of America went on strike, demanding better residual pay for TV writers. Television producers responded by giving us shows that are ostensibly not written. This is when we saw the rise of reality television and the return of primetime gameshows. This influenced our perception of the American Dream as it became increasingly focused on the idea of instant wealth and fame... even if you're only famous for being famous and rich because you were either born that way or got lucky. There's that damn postmodernism again. It's like it's everywhere and nowhere all at once, like some kind of specter of the real.
To quote one of my favorite lyricists: "If you want to see the future, go stare into a cloud." As I hope I have been able to illustrate in this lecture, the American Dream is also a nebulous intangible thing that is constantly changing shape, but it also maintains certain constants over time. That said, if you were to ask a hundred people what the American Dream means to them, they might all tell you something a little different, but I think you'd also find certain commonalities, particularly among those who are within the same age groups. At the same time, I think many would more or less describe the American Dream as the freedom to pursue your ambitions without the hindrances of discrimination. At its core, that's kind of what this country has always been about.
In spite of this, over the past two hundred and forty years, we have still not created a society in which every citizen is treated equally. This is both a tragedy and a farce. For that matter, it's been over a hundred and fifty years since Lincoln called for a more perfect union in his inaugural address, and it seems like we've still got a long way to go. The only thing we've perfected at this point is condiments.
And now, three thousand, one hundred and twenty-seven words into my lecture, this is where the comedy comes in. You knew I'd get us here, right? (Full disclosure: this week's lecture is essentially an overview of my dissertation in lecture form, so naturally, it's something that I can go on and on about. That said, I hope you find this stuff as interesting as I do.)
Comedy, as we have seen, is often used to point out the incongruities between the way things are versus the way we think they should be. As we have discussed, since a person's perspective is influenced by the ideologies to which he or she subscribes, comedy that is used to connect with this point-of-view may be either reactionary for progressive. As we have also discussed, humor may be used to pull people toward one end of this spectrum or the other. For about as long as western civilization has existed, there have been people who thought that things used to be better, while other people thought that things could be better still, and our politics, as well as our art (including comedy) has pulled in these two general directions ever since.
Keep these factors in mind as you are watching this week's films, as they are all fundamentally about the pursuit of the American Dream. They are The Jerk, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Hudsucker Proxy. Consider these films through some of the lenses that we have discussed throughout the semester (incongruity theory, steam valve theory, superiority theory, ideological analysis, parody, satire, narrative theory, postmodernism, psychoanalytic theory, generational theory, gender studies, feminism, race studies, etc.). After you have watched at least one of these movies and read the online PDF The Great American Joke, by Louis D. Rubin, please answer the following screening question:
How does the film you chose to watch characterize the American Dream?
Think of it this way: if you lived in another country and all you knew about the United States was what you saw in this film, how would you describe your understanding of the American Dream?
I look forward to reading your responses. Please note that there are no more blog posts assigned this semester, as you should all be working on your final projects, which are due no later than 6:00 pm on Wednesday, May 4. I hope to have all grading up-to-date by the end of this week. Email me if you have any questions.
Throughout the Cold War, the American way of life was being pitched as nothing less than the greatest achievement of human civilization. According to cultural historian Donald Pease, “After World War II, the U.S. government propagated the belief that America was the fulfillment of the world’s aspiration for the ‘Nation of Nations’ by constructing the threat to the attainment of that ideal in the image of the Soviet Empire” (20). Freedom meant the freedom to buy things, and in the most robust economic climate that this nation had seen in thirty years, accompanied by the vast proliferation of the middle class, the Dream was indeed a reality for more Americans than ever before. Throughout this era, the American Dream was fundamentally about being a part of the booming middle class, complete with a home in the suburbs and a family, where the husband won bread and the wife stayed home with the kids, and everybody lived happily ever after.
As suggested on week eleven, in the early 1960s, the Dream changed shape to where it was more about personal fulfillment. It's a good Dream, but what's in it for me? And will it make me happy right now, just in case the world ends tomorrow? This was also a time when more people began to question just whose Dream this actually was. Race and gender increasingly became part of this discourse, as figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. articulated the ideals of equality. His Dream was the American Dream.
As the counterculture movement of the sixties gained momentum, it swelled into the mainstream. Despite the advice that Kennedy had offered this generation in his inaugural address, growing numbers of people were asking neither what their country could do for them nor what they could do for their country, but rather, what they could do for themselves. Freedom meant the freedom to do your own thing, man.
Combined, these factors led to what many perceived to be a crisis of the American family in the early eighties. When divorce rates peaked in 1981 at 24.3 married women over the age of fifteen per thousand, many Americans thought that the nuclear family was in rapid decay. This is almost certainly why there were so many sitcoms and comedic films from this era that centered on dads raising a family without the mom. As we have been discussing throughout the semester, mass media (and comedy films in particular) often tap into dominant cultural anxieties, which is one of the primary factors in finding resonance with broad audiences. These movies were popular at this time because people were in a panic about the changing role of women within their gendered conception of the American Dream.
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| Nineteen eighty-seven was the highest grossing year in film history up until this point, and this was the highest grossing movie of the year. Also, it was directed by Spock from Star Trek, and I dare you to try to make it more than twenty minutes through this thing. |
Although this idea is still very much a part of our national ethos, the Dream has since come to mean other things as well. Case in point: in the late nineteen nineties, the Writer's Guild of America went on strike, demanding better residual pay for TV writers. Television producers responded by giving us shows that are ostensibly not written. This is when we saw the rise of reality television and the return of primetime gameshows. This influenced our perception of the American Dream as it became increasingly focused on the idea of instant wealth and fame... even if you're only famous for being famous and rich because you were either born that way or got lucky. There's that damn postmodernism again. It's like it's everywhere and nowhere all at once, like some kind of specter of the real.
In spite of this, over the past two hundred and forty years, we have still not created a society in which every citizen is treated equally. This is both a tragedy and a farce. For that matter, it's been over a hundred and fifty years since Lincoln called for a more perfect union in his inaugural address, and it seems like we've still got a long way to go. The only thing we've perfected at this point is condiments.
And now, three thousand, one hundred and twenty-seven words into my lecture, this is where the comedy comes in. You knew I'd get us here, right? (Full disclosure: this week's lecture is essentially an overview of my dissertation in lecture form, so naturally, it's something that I can go on and on about. That said, I hope you find this stuff as interesting as I do.)
Comedy, as we have seen, is often used to point out the incongruities between the way things are versus the way we think they should be. As we have discussed, since a person's perspective is influenced by the ideologies to which he or she subscribes, comedy that is used to connect with this point-of-view may be either reactionary for progressive. As we have also discussed, humor may be used to pull people toward one end of this spectrum or the other. For about as long as western civilization has existed, there have been people who thought that things used to be better, while other people thought that things could be better still, and our politics, as well as our art (including comedy) has pulled in these two general directions ever since.
Keep these factors in mind as you are watching this week's films, as they are all fundamentally about the pursuit of the American Dream. They are The Jerk, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Hudsucker Proxy. Consider these films through some of the lenses that we have discussed throughout the semester (incongruity theory, steam valve theory, superiority theory, ideological analysis, parody, satire, narrative theory, postmodernism, psychoanalytic theory, generational theory, gender studies, feminism, race studies, etc.). After you have watched at least one of these movies and read the online PDF The Great American Joke, by Louis D. Rubin, please answer the following screening question:
How does the film you chose to watch characterize the American Dream?
Think of it this way: if you lived in another country and all you knew about the United States was what you saw in this film, how would you describe your understanding of the American Dream?
I look forward to reading your responses. Please note that there are no more blog posts assigned this semester, as you should all be working on your final projects, which are due no later than 6:00 pm on Wednesday, May 4. I hope to have all grading up-to-date by the end of this week. Email me if you have any questions.
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