It’s an interesting question. Which films have caught, if not the essential nature of America, at least the zeitgeist of America at a particular time.
There are some odd selections among these ten, including some mediocre-to-poor films, and films that say absolutely nothing accurate about America.
I’ve always argued that Casablanca is the film that best reflects what we want to be, and Idiocracy is the one that portrays what we really are.
I would include, as a joint entry of films that accurately portray America as I knew it in the time of my youth and childhood, two comedies by Bob Clark: Porky’s and A Christmas Story.
Idiocracy
Dave.
What is your reasoning?
To me, it’s about how the U.S. government has lost its way. A simple citizen with a big heart was able to make a big impact as the most powerful man in the world. He really wanted to do what was right and what was best for the country, unlike the career politicians who craved money and position (and extramarital sex). And of course, he brought in his accountant to help balance the budget because everything was a mess.
I’d like to think that America can go back to do what’s more or less right, rather than trying to defeat the other political party at all costs.
As a Canadian, am I allowed to comment? It is hard for one movie to sum up the complexity and diversity of the USA (which I have visited often and lived in for 3 years). My first thought, however, is Stand By Me. A lot of good, common purpose (even if somewhat muddled), and positive human spirit, but with some bad and an undercurrent of violence.
As a Canadian I am going to comment anyways.
The definite American movie is Observe and Report.
I would also like to note that Idiocracy is NOT representative of America. I still haven’t seen this silly thing and I am still aware of how wrong people are about this movie. In Idiocracy the idiots look for someone smart to fix their problems. In America they elected Reagan, Dubya and Trump. That’s not looking for someone smart to fix their problems.
PS To be completely fair the best movie ever made (Army of Darkness) is an American production.
I see your point, but to be fair, all three of those guys probably had higher IQs than Biden. Dubya, for example, was actually pretty damn smart, hard though it is to believe. His pre-1973 SAT scores were just below the level accepted by MENSA.
To continue your point, when we did turn to smart guys, it didn’t always work out that well. Ivy League university president Woodrow Wilson was a virulent racist; Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton lacked a moral compass; Jimmy Carter, schooled in nuclear physics, was utterly feckless; gifted student Richard Nixon was everything bad about the American character.
(I guess it’s not fair to link Clinton with those guys. Although amoral, he had a pretty solid run in the Oval.)
Biden’s just smart enough to know how dumb he is. I’d put Dubya in the same category. Reagan and Trump not so much.
America votes for comfortable lies. That’s still not Idiocracy.
I don’t even know what these defined standards of intelligence are supposed to be. Wisdom is a continuum, and an IQ test recognizing patterns (or SAT/ACT/etc) are just one off tests. Everyone has genetic limitations on what they can accomplish, but most people can learn anything given a proper framework and structure. Not only that, but acquiring credentials doesn’t necessarily mean someone is objectively more intelligent.
Then there’s concepts like Nobel syndrome, Dunning-Kruger effect, and the Peter principal that in different ways show that individuals go outside their expertise to make claims and over-exaggerate what they know outside of their specialized field. There was a pretty notorious early cancer PhD researcher who flat out became an AIDS denier.
I don’t know what defines general intelligence, but results of a single test are most certainly not it. I would say building fundamentals over a wide variety of areas and recognizing you can’t know everything, and the ability to either research credible information to fill gaps or delegating to actual established experts is probably the biggest sign of intelligence. There’s a lot of PhD’s out there who end up becoming grifters or making credulous claims in areas they have no expertise in.
Biden just got old and confused; dumbth isn’t something I associate with him. Nobody thought much about him while he competently did his job for decades. His presidency came at a point when he was no longer able to tell his ass from a hole in the ground, or shit from Shinola.
Trump trumps them all in stupidity by so far a margin that he makes Nicki Minaj look like a genius. The man goes from capitalizing random letters in his sentences and holding Bibles upside down, to fomenting deadly insurrections because his ego gets bruised when he loses. Any conversation with him comes down to flattering him, or he loses focus and becomes angry. Idiots on that scale are hard to find. One-celled amoeba.
That’s not accurate. People always thought Biden was dumb. He was always just gool ol’ Joe, saying clueless things, but meaning well. While many respected Biden’s political experience, work ethic as a senator, and willingness to cross the aisle, most viewed him as a an intellectual lightweight prone to wacky verbal gaffes, wild exaggeration, and plagiarism. While he did earn some university degrees, it was just barely. He was at the bottom of his classes, despite his work ethic.
There’s an anecdote about Biden and his academics. He finished near the bottom of his class but in spite of that one of his prof’s said he’d go far in life.
He appears to be an excellent glad handler. I know one person who actually met him and thought he was very personable even though she was aware and disapproves of his past positions,
I’m not a psychologist, so you can ignore this diagnosis, but I don’t think Trump is dumb. He is, I believe, a pathological narcissist. People with that condition are often indistinguishable from people with learning disabilities. Neither group learns efficiently. People with learning disabilities don’t learn because they can’t. Pathological narcissists don’t learn because they won’t. They believe they already know more than other people, even when the others are learned in their fields.
For the record, Trump was a C+ to B student at Fordham. That’s not bad, because it was in the days before grade inflation. I suppose he was approximately in the middle of his class. That’s a fact established by his fellow commuters when they all shared their report cards. Going beyond the facts, the rumor is that he did very poorly on examinations, but pulled up his grades with excellent home assignments. Was somebody doing his papers for him? That has been alleged, by his niece for example, and it seems like a reasonable possibility, but I’m not inclined to trust her because some of her other claims are obviously incorrect, and all of her info is second- or third-hand.
That seems like a good choice to me!
Jaws
It even takes place during the Fourth of July
Explain your case.
One: It takes place on a beach during the Fourth of July
Two: The mayor refuses to close the beach, despite the danger, a scenario we saw play out during COVID
Three: Look at Hooper, Brady, and Quint… Can you get much more American than those three?
As with everything the NYT does, that list is complete and utter pretentious trash.
The answer to this question is Forrest Gump. It spans some of the most important events that shaped America in the 1950s – 1980s. It’s about hope for a better future. It’s about a common man who rises above challenges to do great things. It shows that through hard work and a little luck, anyone can become successful here. It has war, love, music, protesting, and Bubba. It’s a perfect microcosm of life in America, and what we hope to be.
Other non-pretentious answers could’ve included Back to the Future (1 or 3), American Pie, Indiana Jones (Raiders or Last Crusade), Shawshank, Stand By Me, Apollo 13, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Top Gun, Rocky (I or IV), Magnificent Seven, Independence Day……… I mean, it’s almost as if all of the writers they spoke to didn’t understand the assignment.
I think Forest Gump is an excellent answer, and you made a good case.
I’d say this is very good, but it shows the limits of the media — movies are a lot more limited in temporal space than in geographic space. Everything is — nobody reads Jakob Burkhardt anymore, or Henry James. But movies have about a 30 year window before they start looking very quaint.
Female beauty isn’t that different. Barnum’s Circassian beauties don’t have the same appeal as say, Rachel Cook. Gibson Girls doesn’t translate well. Lets’ not go into Reuben.
Movies being a new medium, only about 120 years old, so it’s hard to say if any of them can last centuries. But we are always stealing from the old ones, and making old scenes look new.
It’s great boomer propaganda, even though I like the movie for its silliness and pop culture references, it’s unrealistic bullshit about how having a good heart and trying hard just makes everything magically work out. Just keep your head down, don’t question anything, and you’ll lie the American dream! Meanwhile, if you become rebellious like Jenny, you’ll get abused by your father, end up with HIV, and die a painful death.
Pretty much frames everything in the most unrealistic way possible to be used as any sort of framework of reality. Gump was pretty damn functional to be disabled, lucky not to be blown up in war and a hundred other things in the movie, fell ass backwards into an ‘investment’ he didn’t realize, etc, etc. Your “a little luck” equivalence is about the same chance of going to the Blackjack table and bankrupting MGM Grand. People work their asses off for peanuts so people like Bezos or the Walton family can have infinite resources in this country, and that’s those without a disability, and absolutely no health or other emergency issues popping up.
It’s a nice fantasy with some funny moments, and in an era of the 90s with the economy booming with the internet and personal computing before it was all controlled and manipulated by whatever this era is.
True enough, Forrest Gump reflects us as we hope to be, ala Casablanca, but the nation’s hopes are part of what we are.
Or WERE.
I love it when people use the word “pretentious”.
They think they’re using a big important word to make them appear smart. Meanwhile they likely displayed a lack of understanding about what they’ve watched and in this particular case the poster is attacking one of his conservative allies because he doesn’t like them.
Seriously, Dazed and Confused is pretentious?
There are pretentious movies on the list. Dazed and Confused is not one of them.
To be fair, sometimes it can seem that the creator is being pretentious when he is actually just being clueless.
I am apparently one of the few people in the world – my wife is another – who did not find Forrest Gump to be interesting or enjoyable. We both actually fell asleep about 2/3 of the way through, and based on what we had seen up to that point, we were not tempted to see it again to catch the last part. I found it to be facile and dull. It certainly would not be my pick as the film that best represents the USA.
Not a movie, but Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Its not an accurate example of America, but its what it should stand for. And what I though of as a child in the greater Pittsburgh area.
The Original Bad News Bears. It’s about baseball, lawfare, different people from different places figuring it out, and in the end second place sucks but hey whaddya gonna do?
Shooting from the hip – Blazing Saddles and Patton.
What we think we are: Mr Smith Goes to Washington
What we actually are: Network
Currently we are All the President’s Men. But with a huge difference. Nixon tried to hide all the criminal acts of his administration, while Trump perpetrates them openly and even brags.
Remember the Titans
You’ve got the racism, the underdog story, family, small town America. etc
A good selection, and a good movie.
In serious discussions, we tend to cast aside sports movies, but America’s obsession with sports is an important part of our definition. True stories about sports, like Remember the Titans and Hoosiers, really reveal a great deal about who we are. And the fact that so many people relate to those movies tells us even more. It means that the films are connecting to something within us.