Nice. What I especially appreciate in this reply is the repeated combinations of smugly peremptory statements--
If you really knew anything about this film, you would know ..
In the same way, you don't know much about economic history or the history of the New Deal.
-- followed immediately by delusional revisionism and self-defeating blather.
Let's start with your first point. Yes, I also listened to the DVD commentary, so I also know that references to FDR's New Deal were not the director's original idea. Yet it is a rather blinkered point of view that assumes that point helps the OP's argument, rather than mine. The insertion of the New Deal references gave the film's ending more hope, but Wellman's vision was actually
bleaker, i.e., even
more of an outcry for the fact that these children were being allowed by society to fall between the cracks. How could that main message-- to put it bluntly, that "We as a society should be doing something to help these unfortunates!" message-- NOT be conveyed?! To borrow your own peremptory phrasing, if you really knew anything about Wellman's intentions for this film, you'd know that he set out to make a "forgotten man" film about "forgotten children." He actually used this phrase. What does that phrase convey to you? The government should not intervene and should just let economics naturally sort themselves out?! That is precisely the political ideology that this film is attacking from start to finish.
As for the rest of your post, well, you can spare me the black-is-white, up-was-actually-down, the-Civil-War-should-be-called-the-War-of-Northern-Aggression revisionism. Maybe you know folks who'll fall for that sort of stuff, but it doesn't fly with most educated people.
Your assertion that there were ups and downs before and after the Great Depression and that the New Deal didn't really change things is delusional in its apprehension of U.S. economic history. Before the New Deal, there were regular, cyclical
crashes and
panics that put the entire economy in jeopardy. After the New Deal, there was nothing comparable to these previous events for at least half a century. Why was that? Because of the protections put in place by the New Deal-- the insuring of banks, the strengthening of union protections, the employment of masses in public works programs, Social Security, welfare benefits, housing legislation to get rid of permanent slums, regulation of public transportation, workplace protections, aid to farmers, Yes, full recovery in all respects did not occur until the war, but the main source of the crisis-- unemployment-- was already well on its way to a steady recovery (in fact, by 1937, employment in manufacturing was beyond what it was in 1929). In particular (and this was mainly what I was talking about in my first post), the New Deal put in place regulations that stabilized the economy-- most obviously the stock market and the banking system-- and the stability that those regulations created brought, yes,
unprecedented, sustained prosperity for half a century.
It was only when that prosperity began to be taken for granted, when political forces in both industry and goverment began to erode our protections, that crisis became more and more inevitable. Yes, I would agree that some of the processes of erosion began in the late 70s, but then Reagan's policies switched this eroding process into overdrive (and I'd say that the Keating 5/Savings and Loan crisis of the late 80s was the first clear indicator of things to come, the true forerunner of the present crisis), and I'd say this process of erosion continued right through Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II.
So, while the OP is certainly correct that the Great Depression was far, far worse than the current recession, he is wrong in thinking there are no political analogies to be observed between the two crises. And he-- and apparently you-- are astonishingly oblivious when it comes to blocking out the overwhelmingly clear message of this film. To watch
Wild Boys of the Road and conclude that government should stay out of the way and let the economy sort itself out is akin to watching
Gandhi and praising the film's pro-violence stance.
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zacariah
15 years ago
Local Hero hit the nail on the head in answering that ignorant poster. "Prosperity" from the end of the Civil War until the Great Depression? Anyone with any knowledge of history can tell you about the 1870s, when Jay Cooke and Jay Gould and the other Gilded Age pirates put the country into a decade-long depression. The Panic of 1893 began a recession that lasted for five years. The Panic of 1907 was not as bad as the previous two, but it nevertheless caused substantial distress. Prior to the Second New Deal, the only social welfare legislation was state-created, and guess which states provided none (hint: they lost the Civil War). There was no workers compensation or unemployment compensation, and children as young as four labored in mines and factories under conditions worse than any prevailing in the Fourth World today. No FDIC existed, so if your bank failed, you were out of luck. I for one am sick of all the current pack of robber barons and their paid apologists who thought nothing of spending more than a trillion dollars so GWB could resolve his Oedipal issues in Iraq, yet attack as socialist any program that will actually help Americans. To all of you, I say what Elvis Costello said about Margaret Thatcher: When you die, I'll gladly stand on your grave and "tramp the dirt down."
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