American Cinema of the 2000s: Themes and Variations

2000

2000 Movies, Anti-Climaxes, and Disenchantments NORA ALTER When North Americans awoke on 1 January after a night of partying and celebration to usher in the new millennium, there was an almost audible sigh of relief as they drank their coffee, cleared their foggy (and in some cases pounding) heads, and turned on their computers. Home pages reflecting the accurate date and time opened, records and documents were accessible, the Internet operated smoothly—in short, everything was the same as the day before. The anxiety-producing, long-anticipated supervirus , Y2K, which had threatened to shut down all digital and electronic systems and fling the population back to the Ice Age, had not brought the digital world to a halt. Nor did Millennium apocalyptic predictions that forecast the battle of Armageddon and the end of the world materialize. Instead, the new century appeared to be much like the old one, and the anxieties of dramatic change much overblown. Americans continued to enjoy unprecedented levels of prosperity, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing at 11,722.98 on 14 January, and the NASDAQ peaking at 5132.52 later in the year. Unemployment was at the all-time low of 4 percent. The United States posted a $237 billion surplus at the end of the fiscal year in September, and “experts” forecast that in the next decade the surplus would reach nearly $5 trillion! There were several significant mega-corporate mergers, including Phillip Morris (Kraft) with Nabisco and the Tribune Company with Times Mirror. Evidence of the expanding purview of the Internet was the purchase of TimeWarner by America Online on 10 January. The launch of the MP3 file format and the popularity of computer games such as Pokemon Stadium, Nintendo, and PlayStation continued to grow as the nature of activities entertainment, and the very concept of leisure, fundamentally changed. However, the hyper-growth in this market placed a palpable stress on cinema that emerges in several films. The events of 1989 that had brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War were 19 undoubtedly significant. Even more important for the triumphant capitalism of the United States was the dot.com revolution. It seemed that good old-fashioned American ingenuity had once again led the way. Emerging out the slump of the 1980s, the full implementation and integration of a digital way of life helped to reestablish the United States as a world leader in the realm of electronic communication. Technological global dominance combined with the massive wealth produced by the deregulation of the banking and finance industries (that began in the 1980s) promised to ensure a long period of U.S. wealth and prosperity. Yet those not wearing rose-tinted glasses could detect cracks in the system, and a number of movies forecast, in radically different ways, a future when the bubble would burst. This was also the year of several noteworthy lawsuits. While the Internet provided the public with an unprecedented accessibility to information and vast possibilities for downloading amounts of data, including music and films, the legal profession tried to keep up. A whole array of new legislation was drafted to protect the commercial interests of corporations. Metallica, the heavy metal band, filed suit against Napster, virtually shutting it down. Microsoft lost its first of numerous antitrust lawsuits. There was also a series of tobacco lawsuits in Florida, resulting in the tobacco industry’s being ordered to pay $144.8 billion (the largest fine to date) in punitive damages. Early in the year, female employees of the U.S. Information Agency won a $508 million class-action suit against the agency for discrimination. Vermont became the first state in the nation to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples. Women and people of color moved into prominent positions : Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected senator from New York, and Ruth J. Simmons was hired by Brown University to serve as the first African American president of an Ivy League university. Incidents such as the outbreak of mad cow disease in England, the discovery of black sludge in the Mississippi River, and studies indicating the melting of the North Pole icecap brought into focus the need for closer scrutiny of agriculture and the environment. Many films affirmed that even in a sea of corruption a grander spirit of idealism would triumph. Yet, for Americans, the single most important political event of the year was the controversial presidential election. It would set the course for...