Is 'Revolutionary Road' Totally Unrepresentative, Disingenuous and Easy for Them to Say?

posted by Gareth Higgins

Jett and I discuss ‘Revolutionary Road’ on the next episode of TFT – and it perhaps should go without saying that we have responded differently.  The film’s getting a lot of coverage for what some see as its piercing evaluation of US suburban life in the immediate post-war period; the suggestion being that conformity is the worst thing a human being can concede to. A letter from Cathy Hansen, on Roger Ebert’s website, suggests a sharp alternative; I’m still not quite sure what to make of this film; some liberal quotations from the letter follow (in maybe both senses of the word):

“Given their inane post 1960′s bigotry’s, stereotyping, and worn cliches it would be a plus if baby boomer elite’s quit reviewing movies. Your equating mid-1950 Eisenhower (& Elvis) so-called conformity as synonymous with “emptiness of suburban life” “unrewarding work” “domestic servitude” “a cell door closing”–not to mention “the only creative outlet left to people who have given up all hope” i.e. booze and adultery (“an expression of deep despair) — is delusional and dishonest. So what is the post 60s generation’s excuse? By the way, most people STILL work 9 to 5 conventional–BORING jobs. (We can’t all be movie critics.)

Reality check: In Gallup and BBC reported polling the proportion of people who say they are “very happy” has dropped from 52% in 1957 to just 36% today. Polls in America and Britain concur that the decline in the “happiness factor” has been consistently DROPPING since the 1950s. In fact, polled adults of the 1950s v.s. the 2000s expressed themselves as having been more content in their marriages, their sex lives, work, religion, and as having greater emotionally stability…

It’s one thing to say that RR depicted DUDs and their marriages. It’s another for the phony “Camelot generation” to patronize hypocritically that the marriages exposed in “RR” defined the “Life of Despair” of the Eisenhower decade–as opposed to the glories of “Flower Child” generation that followed.”

- – -

I don’t know if I’m happier today than I would have been if I’d been born thirty or forty years earlier. I do know that watching ‘Revolutionary Road’ made me feel very depressed.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 11:57 am. It is filed under Adaptations, Blog, Character Actors, Drama, Gareth Higgins, Notes on Podcasted Shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.