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It struck me recently that there are some very 50s films about - most notably 'Down With Love', but also arguably others, in the more subtle sense that they are pat, satisfying, morally clear, sexually unambiguous (and uninteresting and sometimes uninterested), almost puritanical movies.
Then I saw some articles in the press suggesting that fashion was heading the same way.
And finally it occurs to me - not originally or very profoundly, I fear - that there are some basic similarities between the War On Terror and the McCarthyite period in terms of the somewhat rageful and hysterical denunciations and criminalisations flying around in the press and in government, and the gleeful suspension of civil rights and the deployment of 'Patriotism' as a means of getting around Rights issues which have little or nothing to do with Security.
So is the comparison useful, spurious, or misleading?
And are arts and media an indicator, or a cause, or both? And if the former, how can we read them clearly enough to know?
I've asked this question regarding the specific issues of Fashion and Film in the appropriate fora, but I'd like to get the more general and critical views here. |
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