Chapter 8
The 1960s: From Mainstream to Counterculture
The purpose of this chapter is to show how popular film responded to the cultural and
political upheaval of the 1960s. Invoked by the memory if not the actual record of the
first television-era president, John F. Kennedy—his youth, his camera-ready good
looks—the spirit of the 1960s embraced liberal values in rejection of the conformity and
moderate politics of the previous era. As the country changed, the movies at first lagged
behind with falling economic fortunes leading to industrial innovation and
reorganization. Eventually American cinema caught up to the spirit of their times in the
dissolution of the Production Code Administration and a coterie of new directors and
greater awareness of a younger audience.
Objectives for Chapter 8:
1. Trace the transition from the cultural conformity of the 1950s to the emancipatory
social movements of the 1960s as reflected, fantastically displaced, and portrayed in
the films of the day.
2. Note the significance of producer Stanley Kramer, his liberal sensibility, and his
political films of the 1960s that addressed issues of political significance but not the
process itself. Messaging: tolerance, stand up for the rights of others.
3. Describe and analyze two early 1960s movies addressing the political process:
Advise and Consent (1961) and The Best Man (1964). In these films women and
gays are ignored or slandered, often included only as seamy secrets besmirching the
real focus of political power: straight white men.
4. Outline the consistent features and political messaging of the incipient genre, the
political thriller. Examples presented include The Manchurian Candidate (1962),
Seven Days in May (1964), and Fail Safe (1964).
5. Describe and analyze Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb (1964).
6. Describe and analyze one of the only 1960s films to address the Vietnam War, the
John Wayne throwback to WWII-era combat films, The Green Berets (1968).
7. Describe and analyze the career of Sidney Poitier in the context of racially alert
filmmaking.
8. Note the increase in films about Native Americans in which they are not mere
caricatured clichés.
9. Present the turn in Hollywood to films aimed at younger moviegoers in the spirit of
the counterculture, beginning with 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate.
Discussion Questions for Chapter 8:
1. Why is John F. Kennedy significant to this era in Hollywood?
2. What industrial conditions were changing in this period?
3. What were early iterations of the political thriller like? What are a few of this genre
from today? How are they different and alike? What accounts for this difference
between political thrillers of the 1960s and 2010s?
4. How do Easy Rider and Medium Cool compare and contrast?
5. Why is The Green Berets such an aberration in the presentation of the war in
Vietnam in popular American films?
6. Can you identify any such kinds of films from the current wars? (The Lone Survivor
perhaps?) What ideological function do films like this serve in times of war?
7. What picture of youth emerges from the films made to appeal to a younger
audience? What did Hollywood think of this segment of the audience as reflected in
the movies and how did the directors of these films relate to them?
8. Who are the new politically intentioned directors of this period? How do their films
compare to the politically active directors of the past?
9. Does the radicalism of the end of the period still seem fresh and radical or are these
dated images of what it means to engage in political resistance or countercultural
activities?
Assignments for Chapter 8:
1. Keeping in mind P.T. 109 (1963), an action movie about the World War II exploits of
John Kennedy, research a recent president’s pre-presidential life and write a 2–3
page description of a film that might be based on what you decide is a critical event
in that president’s life. Write a page at the end explaining why you think this is a
movie-worthy episode in this president’s life and argue what political thrust such a
story endorses or registers. In the case of Kennedy, for example, proving that the
young man had a heroic association with war mitigated the idea he was too
inexperienced for office. It also suggested his allegiance to 1950s values of “god and
country” so that the film did not appear as a radical break from the pro-war strand
of WWII combat films.
2. In a similar vein, research a recent social movement (Occupy Wall Street, civil rights
protest in Ferguson Missouri, Moral Mondays in Charlotte, North Carolina, Code
Pink protests at various Congressional hearings) and present a 2–3 page idea for a
screenplay based on or inspired by these events and cultural protests. Attach a one-
page explanation of the political message your film would transmit: does it take the
side of the police or the protestors in Ferguson, and why that side?