Screewriting

American Cinema of the 1970s

A Failure or The Golden Age

How do we define failure and success ? Failure is not achieving the desired end . It is the condition of being inefficient and insufficient On the other hand , Success is achieving what is desired . The standards of failure and success are always subjective and relative to the person or group who is judging an idea or an event . It is never objective The word desire in itself is very subjective . We have different desires . We differ in what we value and what

we deem as important Some may contest by saying that their opinion or verdict is based on facts and is purely impartial . But to say that someone is unbiased is in effect saying that the person is inhuman . The fact that a subject was chosen to be studied is somehow biased . It goes to show that the subject is of importance or is interesting to the person to merit his time and effort in studying it . The way that some events or ideas are emphasized and some are downplayed is based on personal preference

Using the framework of subjectivity in any kind of analysis will be very useful in the discourse on the American Cinema in the 1970s . I am now faced with two opposing views . On one side are the proponents of the American 1970s Cinema as a failure . On the other side is the group who refers to this period as the Golden Age of Cinema . Both may have their own valid points and both may have their weaknesses . In the analysis of the American Cinema in the 70s , both groups could have focused on different aspects of the Industry . Each group could have their own set of ideals on what Cinema should be . It is possible that these ideals may be opposing or they could also share some ideals but may be clashing in some

Let us start with a background of the social , political and economic situation of the United States in the 1970s . The 70s saw the worst recession after 40years . Richard Nixon was forced to resign as President due to impeachment charges relating to the Watergate scandal Social movements , specifically the anti-war demonstrations increased because of US involvement in the Vietnam War . An event directly connected with anti-war demonstrations is the Kent State University tragedy where four students were killed by National Guardsmen when they open fired on demonstrators . The Supreme Court released a decision to legalize abortion . These are just some of the important events in the 1970s

The economic and socio-political climate of the 70s greatly affected the Film Industry . The sale of tickets went down due to bad economy People considered movie-going as a leisure activity and thus made it a least priority . They also considered watching movies as one of those non-worthy activities . They felt that movies are a distraction to more important activities or to issues that are greatly affecting the country and its people

Another noteworthy...