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Introduction to Part Two This part deals first with flying saucers and a trailer-trash family in Kansas, then with a billionaire aviation tycoon and his conflict with a U.S. senator, and finally with four potty-mouthed children from Colorado. Thus, at first sight its unity may not be entirely obvious, especially when compared with the other parts of the book, one of which deals with a single genre (the Western ), another with a single figure (Edgar Ulmer), and the last with a single historical moment (9/11 and its aftermath). Nevertheless, the chapters in this part go right to the heart of this book’s subject: the tradition of challenging authority in America and championing free individuals—in short, the American conception of the hero as maverick. The term maverick comes out of the American West, where it referred to unbranded cattle, and one of the most successful television Westerns was named Maverick. The archetypal American hero has roots in the Western frontier and is distinguished by his maverick qualities—his determination to go his own way and his unwillingness to play by the conventional rules. As we saw in discussing Gene Roddenberry in chapter 2, the spirit of the Western has a way of migrating into other pop culture genres. We should not be surprised to find it resurface in a science fiction movie that begins with a cattle stampede (Mars Attacks!), or in the story of an authentic American hero in The Aviator (after all, we call Howard Hughes an aviation pioneer), or even in a cartoon (South Park provides a comic counterpart of Deadwood, with the same spirit of anarchy and flouting of authority, as well as the amazing ability of its children to match the likes of Al Swearengen curse word for curse word). Despite many differences, the three works I discuss here have much in common, especially a kind of transposed frontier spirit and a focus on rejecting and rebelling against the establishment. South Park is, of course, antiestablishment at its core and has drawn fire from educational, moral, and religious authorities of all stripes. Mars Attacks! takes the side of ordinary Americans against the Washington establishment, which patronizes them and tries to run their lives for them. At first glance, the Howard Hughes of The Aviator would seem to be an establishment figure himself. Rich and 131 132 Maverick Creators and Maverick Heroes powerful, in command of a business empire, he appears to be the kind of big man who pushes little people around. But in the manner of a typical Martin Scorsese film, The Aviator focuses on Hughes as a perpetual underdog, fighting first the Hollywood establishment, then the aviation industry establishment , and finally the biggest establishment of them all, the U.S. government. Without getting too biographical in approach, it would be easy to see affinities between the maverick creators of these works and the maverick heroes they champion. Martin Scorsese is one of the most fiercely independent spirits ever to work in the American film industry, and one of the most creative. He is legendary for his artistic integrity, and he has made some of the most original films in Hollywood history. Tim Burton is also one of the rare directors who has put the stamp of his individual genius on all his films, and like Scorsese he has often had to fight the Hollywood establishment in order to do so. The creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, would probably not be classed by media historians in the same league as Scorsese and Burton. Yet in many respects they fit the model of the auteur and might even be called the Orson Welles or the Charlie Chaplin of the cartoon world. They created South Park on their own, write the scripts, supervise the production process for each episode, compose some of the songs, and even voice many of the characters themselves. In terms of language and subject matter, they have pushed the envelope in television as much as anyone who has ever worked in the medium, and have had to struggle with network executives to achieve their creative freedom. Scorsese, Burton, and Parker and Stone constitute solid evidence that American popular culture should not be judged by its lowest common denominator. They have shown that Hollywood rules, however rigid they may appear, are made to be broken. To be sure, all four have had to compromiseat various pointsintheircareers,andhave hadto accept the interference of their corporate...

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