|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Escapism Is Back
| Article
# : |
18516 |
|
|
Section : |
THE ARTS
|
| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1991 |
1,660 Words |
| Author
: |
Richard Grenier
Richard Grenier's latest book is Capturing the Culture. |
Debate in financial circles might be heated as to how deep the current recession will be or how long it will last, but for Hollywood the message has come crashing through. The Depression mentality is already upon us, with the stunning return of that primary indicator of economic anxiety: escapism.
For child star Shirley Temple--by far the biggest attraction of Depression-era Hollywood--read Macaulay Culkin. And if the name is still unfamiliar, get used to it, for ten-year-old Culkin's starring vehicle, Home Alone, released in mid-November, in only six weeks passed all other films to win the 1990 box office sweepstakes going away. And it still has many months to run.
In times of anxiety the world of the child is singularly appealing, and movies centered around child stars (Mickey Rooney, Deanna Durbin, Jane Withers, Bonita Granville, Jackie Cooper, Freddie Bartholomew, Margaret O'Brien, the fourteen-year-old Judy Garland) were among the genres most castigated by Depression-era intellectuals as "escapist"--the words escapist and escapism being prime terms of denigration of the period's popular entertainment.
Without exception, every one of the big winners of 1990 represented represented one aspect or another of the once scorned escapist mode. The year's No.2 film, Ghost, which in earlier times would have been called a "woman's" movie, concerns a thoroughly dead boyfriend who returns to earth to protect his lady love, departing at movie's end in the direction of heaven where he will await her amid the clouds. For the afterlife is also back.
From Beyond the Grave
The 1930s movies in which figures from beyond the grave intervene in earthly events in favor of loved ones or other worthy persons are legion. In the hugely successful Topper series (for there were sequels before they started giving them roman numerals) a fashionable couple killed in an automobile crash (Cary Grant and Constance Bennett in the first Topper) return to earth to make amends for their earlier frivolous existence by doing a variety of good deeds. Other major examples are, all in the Depression era: Outward Bound (Leslie Howard, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), Berkeley Square (again Leslie Howard), The Ghost Goes West (Robert Donat), and On Borrowed Time (Lionel Barrymore); with the further anxieties brought by Pearl Harbor, this "afterlife" class of film was to have an afterlife of its own with I Married An Angel (Nelson Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald), A Guy Named Joe (Spencer Tracy,
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
