Rapid #: -15945540 CROSS REF ID: 1713291 LENDER: GZM :: EJournals BORROWER: AZS :: Main Library TYPE: Article CC:CCL JOURNAL TITLE: The Hedgehog review USER JOURNAL TITLE: The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture ARTICLE TITLE: The Apocalyptic Strain in Popular Culture: The American Nightmare Becomes the American Dream ARTICLE AUTHOR: Paul A. Cantor VOLUME: Summer ISSUE: MONTH: YEAR: 2013 PAGES: unknown ISSN: 1527-9677 OCLC #: Processed by RapidX: 3/23/2020 12:25:48 PM This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code) The Apocalyptic Strain in Popular Culture: The American Nightmare Becomes the American Dream Paul A. Cantor e seem to have survived the Mayan apocalypse predicted for December 21, 2012, but maybe we should not get too cocky. American popu- W lar culture is overflowing with doomsday prophecies and end-of- the-world scenarios. According to film and television, vampires, werewolves, and zombies are storming across our landscape, and alien invaders, asteroids, and air- borne toxic events threaten us from the skies. We might as well be living in the late Middle Ages. Our films and television shows seem locked into a perpetual and ever-more-frenzied Dance of Death. Whatever happened to the popular culture that used to offer up charming images of the American dream? Where are the happy households—the Andersons, the Nelsons, the Cleavers, the Pétries—when we need them? Film and television today are more likely to present images of the American nightmare: our entire civilization reduced to rubble and the few survivors forced to live a primitive existence in terror of monstrous forces unleashed throughout the land. Has the American nightmare paradoxically become the new American dream? Is there some weird kind of wish-fulfillment at work in all these visions of near-universal death and destruction? Paul A. Cantor is Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Virginia. His most recent book is The invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV (2012). 23 THE HEDGEHOG REVIEW / SUMMER 2013 The Dream, and the Nightmare To explore these questions, we need to examine one standard notion of the American dream. There are, of course, as many versions of the American dream as there are Americans, but by the middle of the twentieth century, one common pattern emerged. This dream was very much embodied in material terms—a family happily ensconced in a spacious house, preferably in the suburbs, with the most up-to-date appliances and two or three This vision of the American dream cars in the garage. This dream was founded on faith in modern science and technology, which was bound up with trust in seemed to be continually improving the human American institutions. condition. The path to achieving this American dream was clearly laid out. One got a good edu- cation in order to land a good job, which might or might not be fulfilling in itself but would in any case provide the financial means of buying all the material components that seemed essential to the American dream. As usually envisioned, the job—in order to pay enough—would be in one of the pro- fessions, chiefly law or medicine, or in some kind of business, probably a corporate position that would provide financial security. The notion of security was integral to this version of the American dream. One would find a job for life that included solid medical and retirement benefits. This model of happiness was often on view in film and television in the 1950s and 60s, supplying the framework for television situation comedies, for example, or providing the happy endings in many Hollywood movies. This vision of the American dream was bound up with trust in American institu- tions. The goal of long-term security rested on faith in financial institutions, such as banks, insurance companies, and the stock market. Medical institutions, such as hospi- tals, clinics, and the pharmaceutical industry, were supposed to keep extending our life expectancy. Americans also looked up to their educational institutions, from primary schools to universities. After all, they were relying on their schools to prepare them for the careers that would underwrite their financial prosperity. In short, Americans relied on their institutions to shape them properly in the first place; in many cases they looked forward to being employed by institutions such as corporations and the professions; and they trusted these institutions in turn to work for their benefit, providing, for example, health care and financial security. Overarching all these institutions was the grandest institution of them all, American government: local, state, and above all the federal government. Especially during the Cold War era, Americans looked up to the Washington establishment because it was protecting them from foreign and domestic enemies. Given the widespread faith in technical expertise after World War II, Americans generally trusted their government to regulate the economy and produce the prosperity that would make the American dream possible. In the second half of the twentieth century, the American government kept expanding its scope as a welfare state, with the goal of insuring the security of all aspects of its citizens' lives. Moreover, the federal government steadily increased its role in financially supporting and regulating the various institutions that were woven into 24 THE APOCALYPTIC STRAIN IN POPULAR CULTURE / CANTOR the fabric of the American dream, especially educational and medical institutions. In sum, for decades the American dream came boxed in an institutional framework, and most Americans, without thinking much about it, assumed that they could not realize their dreams without these institutions. But even at the peak of this conception of the American dream in the 1950s, this faith in institutions did not go unchallenged. Dissenting voices charged that Americans were being increasingly "institutionalized," sacrificing their freedom in their quest for comfort and security. Talk of the "organization man" (the title of a 1956 book by William Whyte) reflected fears that Americans were selling their souls to corporations, giving up their individuality and autonomy to work in bureaucratic organizations. Skeptics also voiced concerns that the standard conception of the American dream might be self-defeating. In the course of trying to provide material benefits to their fam- ilies, men—and later women—were losing touch with the very spouses and children they claimed to cherish. The notion of the happy, close-knit family was at the core of the American dream, and yet career values often seemed to conflict with family values. Working hard at the office left men—and later women—^with little or no time for their children. And everywhere institutions seemed to be coming between people, preventing them from interacting in face-to-face situations. The very institutions that Americans had turned to in order to achieve and secure their dreams seemed to have trapped them in a vast impersonal system that by its nature was inimical to personal fulfillment. These anxieties about the American dream sometimes surfaced in popular culture in the middle of the twentieth century. Movies such as the 1957 The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit portrayed corporate life as empty and stultifying. And the immense popu- larity of Westerns during this era signaled a dissatisfaction with comfortable suburban life. Dramas set in the Wild West provided an imaginative escape from the safe and bor- ing world of modern institutions—an image of a rugged, frontier existence, in which earlier Americans, especially men, were on their own and could act heroically in their struggle with hostile and dangerous environments. Disenchantment with the mid-twentieth-century formulation of the American dream gradually increased and became widespread at the turn of the twenty-first cen- tury, as people lost their confidence in American institutions. A series of bubbles and meltdowns led people to doubt the fundamental honesty and integrity of financial institutions, above all, their abilit)' to provide long-term economic security. Confidence in the competence and caring nature of the medical establishment began to erode, as witness the alternative medicine movement, the return to traditional home remedies, and skepticism about vaccination programs. Whether these doubts are scientifically justified is irrelevant to the larger cultural issue. The fact is that doctors and the medi- cal profession in general are no longer held in the high esteem they once enjoyed in America. Educational institutions are also being challenged on a wide range of fronts, with critics complaining that they fail to deliver on their promises and charge exor- bitant rates in the process. The home schooling movement offers concrete proof that many Americans have become disillusioned with the educational establishment. As for government institutions, with one "-gate" scandal after another, polling suggests that Americans' faith in institutions such as Congress and the Presidency is at an all-time 25 THE HEDGEHOG REVIEW / SUMMER 20K3 low. Looking at the world around them, Americans may be excused for concluding that the financial-medical-educational-government complex that was supposed to help them achieve their dreams has failed them. At this point, it becomes tempting for Americans to wish away their banks, their hospitals, their schools, and their government. Perhaps life might be easier and more fulfilling without them. Popular culture has stepped forward to offer Americans a chance to explore these possibilities imaginatively and to rethink the American dream. Films and television shows have allowed Americans to imagine what life would be like without all the insti- tutions they had been told they need, but which they now suspect may be thwarting their self-fulfillment. We are dealing with a wide variety of fantasies here, mainly in the horror or science fiction genres, but the pattern is quite consistent and striking, cut- ting across generic distinctions.