The American Dream- Hollywood

The American Dream

The term " The American Dream " was coined by a historian, who defined it as the idea of a " better, richer, and happier life for all citizens ". Now a days it means anyone can have anything they want if they want it bad enough.

Intro

Intro

Hollywood is perceived as a bastion of liberalism with a wide variety of progressive causes. The great irony is that the celebrity on which it turns is among the most conservative social forces at play in shaping public attitudes about class and social mobility. There's nothing wrong with the dream, except that it so rarely results in such spectacular reality. (The Bieber Effect)

Quote 1

Quote 1

“One might say that the difference between this dream and that of upward mobility is more quantitative than qualitative. After all, there are few americans who object to the idea of getting rich, and the rising value of a home is one of the things that contributes to the sense of security that inheres it” page 160---

Quote 2

Quote 2

“Its less about accumulating riches than about living off their fruits, and its symbolic location is not the bank but the beach” page 160---meaning they wanted the fame and success more than the money.

Quote 3

Quote 3

“For most Americans, however, sudden stardom through music or sports are just dreams. The hopes for the vast majority of Americans are in education.”

Quote 5

Quote 5

“The dream of freedom and opportunity is what fueled the immigration that built America: what are we but a country of immigrants?” Werner Herzog’s Stroszek (1977) portrays the modern immigrant experience through a story of a street musician and an outcast which moved from Berlin to Wisconsin. What begins as a trailer home utopia in the rural plains of the American Midwest turns into destruction and poverty in the final act. It is photographed with an earthy power. It is a bitter portrait of the American Dream destroyed.

Quote 4

Quote 4

“Where the first decade of the Elvis phenomenon is about music and stardom, it takes a turn into greed (driven in large part of Colonel Tom Parker) and excess. Charles Ferguson’s Academy Award-winning exposé Inside Job(2010) is as damning an indictment of the “greed is good” mantra of Michael Douglas’ Wall Street financial pirate Gordon Gekko as you’ll find. It investigates the story behind the financial crisis and the failures of both government and industry to put measures into place to prevent a similar abuse of the system that wiped out the savings of millions of Americans.”

Conclusion

Conclusion

The version of the American Dream that dominates our own time--what Cullen calls "the Dream of the Coast"--is one of personal fulfillment, of fame and fortune all the more alluring if achieved without obvious effort, which finds its most insidious expression in the culture of Hollywood. Hollywood is the most recent version of " The American Dream " to where it shows that the real American Dream or the most reasonable understanding of it is the achievement of the american dream is acquired by doing nothing at all.

Citations

Citations

Kubincanek, Emily. “How Old Hollywood Made America Believe It Was The American Dream Factory.” Film School Rejects, 5 July 2017, filmschoolrejects.com/old-hollywood-made-america-believe-american-dream-factory/.

Axmaker, Sean. “Elvis and the Death of the American Dream, Through Movies.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/elvis-and-the-death-of-the-american-dream-through-movies/.

Cullen, Jim. The American Dream: a Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation. Oxford University Press, 2006.