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The economic and political changes of the 1960s and 1970s reshaped the United States as a whole. After World War II, America had major economic growth, leading to the rise of the Sunbelt, mass suburbanization, and a new national unity with a decline in regional separation. As Freeman explains, this postwar boom “transformed a country once defined by its regional character into a uniform and cohesive power and set the stage for the United States’ rise to global dominance.” This created new opportunities and helped fuel America's global leadership, but it also brought deep social and political challenges.

During this time, civil rights and labor movements pushed to expand democracy and equality. These efforts led to important reforms, like the Great Society programs, which tried to fight poverty and racial injustice. However, not everyone supported these changes. As social movements grew stronger, political divisions widened. Freeman writes about the “profound tragedy that has shaped the path of American civic life,” noting that “the civil rights and labor movements worked for decades to enlarge the rights of millions of Americans, only to watch power ultimately slip from individual citizens to private corporations.” This shows how the hopes for a more equal democracy were often blocked by the growing influence of corporate power.

In the end, the postwar era was a time of both progress and backlash. Economic changes supported national growth, but they also helped spark political realignments that weakened unions and led to conservative victories. The tension between the promise of democracy and the reality of economic control continues to shape American life today.

Movies that develop this lens

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Bonnie and Clyde

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JSTOR: Beowulf to Batman: The Epic Hero and Pop Culture

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JSTOR: Beowulf to Batman: The Epic Hero and Pop Culture

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American movies from World War II to 2025 have helped show and shape how Americans think and feel. They reflect the values, fears, and goals of the country. In the 1960s, Batman: The Movie shows how people wanted to believe in simple good versus evil during a time of Cold War tension. In the article “Beowulf, Batman, and the Epic Tradition,” Roger Rollin says that Batman is like an epic hero who “stands for order in a world full of chaos.” This connects to how Americans in the 1960s were afraid of threats like nuclear war or communism, and looked to heroes like Batman for a sense of safety and control. The movie’s clear lines between right and wrong helped people feel like good would always win, even when the real world was more confusing.

On the other hand, To Kill a Mockingbird shows a more realistic and emotional kind of heroism. Instead of action, it focuses on moral courage and fairness. The character of Atticus Finch fights racism and defends an innocent man, even when most of his town is against him. Rollin explains that “the epic hero’s moral code may become problematic in a world of shifting values.” This fits with how Atticus doesn’t fit the usual idea of a hero, but he still stands up for what’s right. The film shows that American values were changing: people started thinking more about justice, equality, and personal responsibility. Together, these two films show how movies from the 1960s reflected different sides of American culture, helping the country deal with change and imagine a better future.

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JSTOR: Consuming Subjects: Making Sense of Post–World War II Westerns (1940s-1950s)

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JSTOR: Consuming Subjects: Making Sense of Post–World War II Westerns (1940s-1950s)

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13110/narrcult.2.1.0071

The Western film genre rose to its "Golden Age" during the mid-20th century. Films like Buffalo Bill (1944) and High Noon" (1952) were not only entertainment but also ideological reflections of America's shifting self-perception, specifically during World War II and its emergence as a global superpower.

Buffalo Bill is an excellent example of the way that postwar Westerns mythologized American history. What the American Film Institute calls a nostalgic, "mythic" West, and a "nostalgia-laden simulacrum of the 'Wild West". This means the Westerns of this era referenced real people and places but stripped them of their historical problematic parts. While the films portray heroic, romanticized frontier life, for example Buffalo Bill, showing the life of this famous cowboy, it omits any reference to the capitalist expansionism underlying the era, including the Eastern-controlled corporate enterprises that were shaping the consumerist America emerging in the 1940s. It portrays the social mobility of the cowboy Cody, which hunted buffalo for the Kansas Pacific Railroad work crews, and then earned his nickname “Buffalo Bill” and his reputation as an expert killer. The next year, he was employed by the U.S. Army as a civilian scout and guide for the Fifth Cavalry. Not only is this a clear reflection of American patriotism and opportunism, but also a continuation of older values of the nation.

This myth-making is both a reflection of the continuation of wartime American values like heroism, freedom, individualism, while also expressing the cultural force of aspiration, which was present since Manifest Destiny era, which also fueled American exceptionalism. As one JSTOR critic says, "the narrative acts out Manifest Destiny," and the cowboy is a symbolic resource "through which the body politic could renew, replenish, and reenergize." Cowboy westerns belong to what the article refers to as "bourgeois myth," in which "the silent and ongoing incursion of the present into what should be an inviolate past" fabricates the past in terms of present ideological American needs.

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest reflects the social and political struggles of the 1960s-70s by showing the fight for freedom against controlling institutions. The mental hospital represents society, with the nurse symbolizing the strict, unchanging authority and McMurphy as a symbol of rebellion and personal freedom.

The film shows how people who tried to bring change like McMurphy were often punished, just like how real-life movements for civil rights and freedom faced backlash during that time. McMurphy’s fun activities with the patients, like basketball and a fishing trip, represent efforts to bring freedom and joy, but they’re shut down by the system.

One analysis explains that Nurse Ratched stays in power because people are too afraid to speak up. She represents leaders who use control and the fear of change to keep power, even when reform is needed.

It shows the conflict between growing demands for equality and the strong resistance from those in power during this period in American history.

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 Connection to American Empire Video explanation - The Goonies (1980s-1990s)

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 Connection to American Empire Video explanation - The Goonies (1980s-1990s)

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American Empire 1980s-1990s (The Goonies)

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Chapter 14 & 15: The Reagan Revolution and the Corporate Revolution (pgs 343-367)

Notes:

During the early 1980s, American businesses faced recession, inflation, and growing international competition. This led to bankruptcies among many businesses, including mega-corporations.

Businesses had less freedom of action due to increased government regulations and unionized worker involvement. These changes stemmed from widespread criticism of capitalism in the previous decade.

The steel industry declined as alternative materials and increased imports surged. The automobile industry also suffered due to high interest rates and gas prices.

Companies slashed managerial and white-collar jobs and relocated south to avoid worker unions.

Corporate raiders, who would take over companies and reorganize them, caused businesses to be viewed as commodities.

Companies like Walmart grew by leveraging their size to pressure wholesale suppliers into lowering prices, then passing these savings to consumers.

Reagan became the pinnacle of conservatism in America, increasingly mixing his Christian beliefs with his government strategies. White opposition to civil rights was one of the key supports for the conservative movement that helped Reagan win.

Reaganism opposed Carter's austere governmental policy, with Reagan's inaugural celebration being an unashamed display of wealth. His economic policy, Reaganomics, focused on tax cuts for the rich. Government deregulation also led to greater benefits for corporations and the upper class.

Reagan helped shape the ideological sphere in the USA, with his ideas of freedom carrying a subtle hostile undertone toward the poor. He celebrated the possibility of economic and social mobility only for those who could achieve it, and changed people's attitudes about the government rather than the other way around.

Connection to Movie Lens: REFER TO

BACK TO THE FUTURE AUDIO

WOLF OF WALL STREET VIDEO AND EXPLANATION

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JSTOR: 2000s-2010s + Video Explanation The Enduring Strength of Hollywood: The “Imperial Adventure” Genre and Avatar

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JSTOR: 2000s-2010s + Video Explanation The Enduring Strength of Hollywood: The “Imperial Adventure” Genre and Avatar

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv65sxh2.9

Notes:

The U.S. produced 67.9% of global blockbusters (2000s–2010s)

Non-Western films (Bollywood) rarely achieved global reach outside their country.

"Seven Sisters" studios (Disney, Warner, Paramount, etc.) dominated, leveraging commercial strategies: Tested films on U.S. audiences before release.

Prioritized special effects over storytelling.

Hollywood blockbusters often reproduced Western-centric narratives, rooted in colonial-era stories

Films like Avatar (2009) recycled "imperial adventure" clichés:

"Virgin land" exploration: Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves.

Primitive natives: Blue-skinned Na’vi mirrored stereotypical portrayals of Indigenous peoples. (Avatar). Additionally, focus on ethnocentric casting: White protagonists as "saviors" --> Jake Sully in Avatar.

Intercultural Encounter Films: Religious epics (The Passion of the Christ) reinforced Judeo-Christian values.

Colonial adventures (Pirates of the Caribbean) romanticized expansionism values.

Sci-fi/fantasy (Star Wars, Avatar) projected U.S. militarism and "white savior" tropes onto alien worlds.

Post-9/11 Movies: War films (Black Hawk Down) and spy thrillers (James Bond) showed U.S. foreign policy anxieties.

Technology: 3D and CGI innovations (Avatar, Transformers) became Hollywood’s best feature.

Franchises and Sequels: Safe bets for global markets (Harry Potter, Marvel).

Scholars noted Hollywood’s reliance on Orientalism: Exoticizing Asia (Mulan, Kung Fu Panda).

Case Study: Avatar (2009)

Plot: Marines exploit Pandora’s resources, paralleling historical colonialism.

Tropes Recycled: "Noble savage" Na’vi: Native American and African tribal stereotypes.

Ecological utopia

Reflected post-Iraq War distrust of corporations.

Used familiar clichés to ensure cross-cultural resonance.

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Give me Liberty: Video Explanation (1940s-1950s) I Married a Communist and the Red Menace

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Give me Liberty: Video Explanation (1940s-1950s) I Married a Communist and the Red Menace

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 Give me liberty-Cold War Ideologies (1940s-1950s)

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 Give me liberty-Cold War Ideologies (1940s-1950s)

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Notes:
- Following World War II, America emerged as one of the two world superpowers, the other being the Soviet Union. The U.S.-USSR wartime collaboration soon turned sour due to increasing ideological differences. The U.S., protecting democracy and capitalism, had a new foreign policy objective: stopping the spread of communism, considered a threat to American survival and global stability.

-In the beginning, the United States attempted to maintain cooperative relations with the Soviet Union, but there were differences regarding postwar Europe and the Middle East that revealed hostilities. A turning point was reached with Kennan's "Long Telegram" (1946), which stated the Soviet Union was not only a shared enemy but an expansionist regime seeking to spread communism worldwide. This meant a stronger approach was needed.

This American stance was further strengthened after Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech (1946), which highlighted Soviet dominance over Eastern Europe. Almost immediately afterwards, President Truman enacted the Truman Doctrine (1947), stating that America would provide political, military, and economic assistance to nations resisting communist infiltration. This was the first official, public denunciation by the U.S. government of communism, outlining the Cold War as an ideological conflict.

To counter the appeal of communism, the U.S. passed the Marshall Plan (1948), an enormous economic aid plan to reconstruct ruined Western Europe. Through reviving economies, the plan aimed at suppressing communist movements that grew in misery and discontent. It also aimed at dispelling the idea that capitalism was failing, to counter the Soviet propaganda that the U.S. was an exploitative system that was failing.

Apart from economics, America fought cultural war in order to shape the opinions of the world. In programs like "Militant Liberty," national security agencies collaborated with Hollywood to produce anti-communist propaganda films, such as The Red Menace (1949) and I Married a Communist (1950). The films spread negative stereotypes of communism while spreading American values.

Simultaneously, the CIA funded cultural activities, like foreign magazines, scholarly meetings, and exhibitions of art, to put an end to America's reputation as a "cultural backwater." By bringing American intellectual and artistic achievements to light, these activities bolstered the reputation of the country internationally and boosted ideological confidence in the nation.

For Connection to Movie Lens, REFER TO:

Video Explanation: I Married a Communist and the Red Menace

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Claim: American movies from World War II to 2025 have served as a powerful reflection and driver of cultural change, illustrating how the nation's values, fears, and aspirations have evolved over time.

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Claim: American movies from World War II to 2025 have served as a powerful reflection and driver of cultural change, illustrating how the nation's values, fears, and aspirations have evolved over time.

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During the 1980s collapse of manufacturing sectors like steel and cars, a new economy of finance and corporate takeovers emerged. Movies like Wall Street (1987) represented this shift, with  Gordon Gekko’s famous quote “greed is good” during his address to Teldar paper, where he argued that greed was good for corporate success and represented the materialistic, self-serving culture of the 80’s. The main character, Bud Fox, admires corporate raider Gordon Gekko, and will do everything to climb the corporate ladder. The movie criticizes how businesses became a commodity and the moral decay of capitalism, which was a direct result of Reagan’s tax cuts and trickle down economics which only ended up benefiting the rich and growing the income gap.

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Wall Street (4/5) Movie CLIP - Greed Is Good (1987) HD

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Audio Explanation Back to the Future (1985)

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Audio Explanation Back to the Future (1985)

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Back to the Future Connection with American Empire

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Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Video Explanation

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Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Video Explanation