![]() ![]() With films like Rebel without a Cause and Bigger than Life, the aforementioned Ray exposed the cursory illusion of these promises, suggesting the emotional toll of always reaching for more. In the 1950s, it still seemed possible that the American dream could lift any hard worker from poverty into a comfortable middle-class life. While adolescent desires never quite change (getting paid and getting laid are still the highest priorities), the culture surrounding them does. When Arnie goes from nerd to greaser, he comes to embody a masculine ideal from a previous era. The identity of America in the latter half of the twentieth century, in many ways, works as a direct rebellion of the ideological and industrial height of the country in the post-war period. As the film opens with the title card “born in 1957,” referring to a car, viewers can understand this story’s origin came before the protagonists were even born. Brightly lit and saturated, the movie takes the rose colored 1950s glasses that perverts old-school idealism. ![]() The film even has that old Hollywood look, especially scenes featuring Christine. With obvious allusions to James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, from the red jacket to the overbearing parents, his invocation of Nicholas Ray’s melodramas diffuses the silliness of a serial killer car. Carpenter brings restraint to the absurdism by drawing on classical Hollywood. ![]()
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