A Cultural Study On Postwar American Dream Themes In American Movies

Although the term “American Dream” first appeared in the Epic of America by James Adams in 1931,throughout history,the concept of American Dream originated from the Puritans' colonial experience in North America.Over the centuries,American Dream,as the core value of American culture,has renewed again and again,and its connotation has continuously enriched and developed.American Dream is not only a concentrated expression of the themes of democracy,freedom,equality,individualism,achievements and wealth,but also a faithful reflection of the specific life practices of American people.Therefore,understanding American Dream is an important entry point for analyzing American culture.American movies are irreplaceable mass media to understand American Dream.On the one hand,by their technical means,movies present the conceptualized American Dream in an intuitive way,and interpret American Dream themes in the form of art or entertainment.On the other hand,by virtue of their commercial logic and mass communication power,movies have become sculptors and advocates of American Dream themes.And they encourage American people to pursue and achieve American Dream in real life through the exquisite film narrative.At present,there are few domestic researches on the cultural history of the development of American Dream.Most of the existing studies have focused on American Dream in single literary work or film work.They take literary or cultural criticism as the theoretical basis and the disillusionment of American Dream as the research problem,but fail to effectively investigate the cultural background and the themes evolution of American Dream from historical depth.In addition,there is less research on American Dream themes and its postwar cultural context.Firstly,the thesis takes the historical development of American Dream in the sense of cultural history as the baseline.In the context of American history,it systematically reviews the emergence of American Dream in the colonial years,the establishment of American Dream in the national years,the fluctuation of AmericanDream in the democratic years and the development of American Dream in the postwar years.Then,taking the movies that reflect postwar American society and culture as materials,the thesis focuses on the new connotation of classic American Dream themes,such as dream of equality and dream of freedom,as well as new American Dream themes,such as dream of home-ownership and dream of individuality in the context of major historical events,such as postwar abundant society,Cold War consciousness,radical social movements and globalization.The thesis systematically outlines the different forms of classic American Dream themes in different historical periods and the specific American Dream themes in the specific historical period through the analysis of perceptual and intuitive movies,which is a useful supplement to relevant domestic researches.