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A vast array of working-class types moved across the Hollywood screen in the half-century after 1930. In every decade, the American cinema constructed plebeian figures that allowed audiences to think about vital issues of their times and explore a range of possible identities and fates. It is true that these films almost never celebrated the labor radical or the power of the militant union, and it took Hollywood too long to break free of the hold of white supremacy that marred American society and to explore aspects of the social and emotional condition of African Americans . But at no time would terms like pro-capitalist, anti-labor, or even white racist have been an accurate way to describe the ideological orientation of these characters or the films in which they appeared. Eschewing both dogmatic coherence and utopian projections when it came to telling stories about lower-class life, the proletarian images studied here represent a complex assortment of people and beliefs. In various decades gangsters, poor women, and boxers revealed a faith in liberal capitalism . Miners, mill hands, and soldiers tempered personal dreams and fought for democracy in their lives and in the world. Brutes, cab drivers, vets, and small-time hoods were often intent on taking away opportunities and rights from others, exhibiting almost no interest in either liberalism or democracy. At times individual striving worked as a solution to deprivation and frustration. Often it did not. Narrative resolution upheld moral behavior and sometimes implied that such standards of conduct were impossible to achieve. Working people could be imagined as proud patriots, fervently devoted to their country, or they could be pictured as trapped in a corner of American society with no prospects for a better life. Contradictions abounded; mood swings were pervasive in this fictive world of melodrama and “realism.” 219 LIBERALISM AT THE MOVIES A Conclusion At one level this diversity of meaning might be explained by the existence of varying interests that had a stake in the final product that appeared on the screen. Certainly, studios were run by corporate leaders who viewed unions with some disfavor. These men were also intent on affirming their loyalty to American traditions; consequently, they rallied eagerly to the crusades against fascism and communism. Directors too exercised an enormous influence in the shaping of film, and the outlooks of men like Frank Capra or Martin Scorsese definitely affected the way common people were portrayed in their stories. During and just after World War II, the government joined the effort to alter film content. For a long time moral authorities in American life like the church wielded enormous power and worked assiduously to uphold a specific set of standards designed to constrain the expression and realization of human desire. And although their leverage is difficult to assess, there can be no doubt that audience expectations also mattered a good deal. The attention paid to female desire was perhaps the greatest verification of this. Clearly, the representation of common people emanated from a very broad discussion in society that crossed class, gender, political, and racial lines. It involved understandings and debates about many issues, but the immense scope of its content and the wide variety of people and institutions that took part in its production, consumption, and evaluation suggests that something broader than the simple expression of the interests of any one studio, class, or political group was ultimately at work here. To ask the question another way: What were all these people talking about? I would suggest that, amidst the unending assertion of financial, emotional , and political concerns, these films—and much of American mass culture—were continually inscribed by the powerful current of liberalism and (to a lesser extent) democracy that flowed through the American imagination. In 1955 Louis Hartz made a widely circulated argument that America was essentially a liberal society bereft of any meaningful alternative political ideologies throughout its history. Hartz saw in American history a story of the rejection of an old European feudal order that had rested on the sovereign power of kings and the inordinate influence of clerics. He argued that influential conservative or socialist parties (in the European sense) never took root in the United States because there was never a need to defend or overthrow an old order as there had been in Europe. Consequently, for him, the ideals of liberalism and the liberty of the individual became so strong that they appeared...

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