Netflix has a documentary about the year 1975. It posits an irruption in the culture coming with the end of the Vietnam War that year, Nixon’s resignation a year earlier, and Ford’s pardon of Nixon almost immediately thereafter (think Polis pardoning Tina Clarke, but on a national scale). In Hollywood, John Wayne and “Hollywood” movies were box office poison (one of the most interesting segments is the 1975 Academy Awards, hosted by Wayne and Sinatra and all if “old Hollywood.” Dustin Hoffman critiqued the Awards in an interview, which Sinatra responded to on stage. Shortly after, he had to go back on stage and disavow such comments on behalf of the Academy.
Now, 1975 was the year “Taxi Driver” came out. And “Network.” “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.” “All The President’s Men.” “The Parallax View.” “The Stepford Wives.” “Three Days of the Condor.” “Jaws.”
And it was the year the Church Committee started, and taught us all to say “COINTELPRO.” And proved all the paranoid radicals and war protesters and civil rights marchers right: their government was spying on them.
The themes of those movies, per the documentary, were: alienation; corporate news control; life from the woman’s point of view; the evil of control; the corruption of the government; the evil of tech; you aren’t paranoid enough about the government. Themes, it was argued, that would never get into major Hollywood movies before 1975; and wouldn’t again after “Jaws.” The first blockbuster, which won the Academy Award. And two years later: “Star Wars.” As Patton Oswald summarized “Cuckoo:” Let’s go see a movie about a child molester in a mental asylum who befriends a shy kid with a hooker. The kid ends up killing himself in shame, the main character is lobotomized, and the Native American inmate escapes to become a fugitive. It’ll be fun!”
Nobody wants to see movies like that anymore. Well, maybe on streaming….
The movies reflected the times: post-Watergate, post Nixon resignation and pardon. The shameful end of the shameful Vietnam war. Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts in 1975. Political violence was so common by that year it was almost unremarkable.
And everyone thought the government was corrupt (it was), and spying on us (it was), that corporations controlled the news (they did), and technology was going to be used against us. All the movies mentioned above had those themes. Oh, and there were dangerous characters, “incels” alienated from society, who only lacked the internet to connect with each other.
Sound familiar?
The reigning political and cultural theory of the day was that the American Experiment was at an end. Racist tensions from the civil rights movement were still high. Political violence moved from the government opposing war protesters and civil rights marchers, to radical leftists disgusted by what hadn’t been accomplished. People were alienated from each other, or hell bent on controlling others at all costs.
The funny thing, to me, are the Redford films. “President” ends before Ford’s pardon, the intrepid reporters having made democracy safe for the world (but doing nothing to stop Ford). “Condor” ends with Redford taking the story of the “CIA within the CIA” to the New York Times, because we shall know the truth, and the truth will make us free. As if. Shamelessly naive. “Network” knew better. “Cuckoo “ knew better. So did “Taxi Driver..” “Stepford,.” “The Parallax View.”
We really won’t see their like again; not as major movies. We will see 1975 again, because history at least rhymes. But like seeing Homer reflected in Gulliver’s Travels, will we recognize it? Or will we think it’s sui generis, and could never possibly have happened before?
Like the goose, who supposedly wakes up every day to a brand new world. Or so it is thinks.
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