American cinema of the 1990s: themes and variations 9780813543659, 9780813543666, 9780813545783

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Acknowledgments (page vii)
Timeline: The 1990s (page ix)
Introduction: Movies and the 1990s (CHRIS HOLMLUND, page 1)
1990 Movies and the Off-White Gangster (LINDA MIZEJEWSKI, page 24)
1991 Movies and Wayward Images (SHARON WILLIS, page 45)
1992 Movies and the Politics of Authorship (AMY VILLAREJO, page 70)
1993 Movies and the New Economics of Blockbusters and Indies (CHUCK KLEINHANS, page 91)
1994 Movies and the Partisan Politics (DIANE WALDMAN, page 115)
1995 Movies, Teens, Tots, and Tech (TIMOTHY SHARY, page 137)
1996 Movies and Homeland Insecurity (DEBRA WHITE-STANLEY AND CARYL FLINN, page 157)
1997 Movies and the Usable Past (JOSÉ B. CAPINO, page 180)
1998 Movies, Dying Fathers, and a Few Survivors (KRIN GABBARD, page 203)
1999 Movies and Millennial Masculinity (CHRIS HOLMLUND, page 225)
Select Academy Awards, 1990-1999 (page 249)
Works Cited and Consulted (page 255)
Contributors (page 271)
Index (page 273)

Citation preview

American Cinema of the 1990s

te AMERICAN CULTURE / AMERICAN CINEMA

Each volume in the Screen Decades: American Culture/American Cinema series presents a group of original essays analyzing the impact of cultural issues on the cin-

ema and the impact of the cinema in American society. Because every chapter explores a spectrum of particularly significant motion pictures and the broad range of historical events in one year, readers will gain a continuing sense of the decade as | it came to be depicted on movie screens across the continent. The integration of his- | torical and cultural events with the sprawling progression of American cinema illuminates the pervasive themes and the essential movies that define an era. Our series represents one among many possible ways of confronting the past; we hope that these books will offer a better understanding of the connections between American culture and film history. LESTER D. FRIEDMAN AND MURRAY POMERANCE SERIES EDITORS

Ina Rae Hark, editor, American Cinema of the 1930s: Themes and Variations

Wheeler Winston Dixon, editor, American Cinema of the 1940s: Themes and Variations

Murray Pomerance, editor, American Cinema of the 1950s: Themes and Variations Barry Keith Grant, editor, American Cinema of the 1960s: Themes and Variations Lester D. Friedman, editor, American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations Stephen Prince, editor, American Cinema of the 1980s: Themes and Variations Chris Holmlund, editor, American Cinema of the 1990s: Themes and Variations

Themes and Variations ~ EDITED BY

CHRIS HOLMLUND

@® RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS

“me = NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON

For my dearest dad

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

American cinema of the 1990s : themes and variations / edited by Chris Holmlund.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8135-4365-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-—0-8135-4366—-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures—United States—History. 2. Motion pictures—United States—Plots,

themes, etc. I. Holmlund, Chris. PN1993.5.U6A8579 2008 791.430973'09049—dc22

Library. : : , 2007051728

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British This collection copyright © 2008 by Rutgers, The State University

All rights reserved | Individual chapters copyright © 2008 in the names of their authors

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu -~ Manufactured in the United States of America

Acknowledgments vii Timeline: The 1990s ix Introduction: Movies and the 1990s | CHRIS HOLMLUND

1990 Movies and the Off-White Gangster 24 LINDA MIZEJEWSKI

1991 Movies and Wayward Images 45 SHARON WILLIS

1992 Movies and the Politics of Authorship 70 AMY VILLAREJO

and Indies 9 |

1993 Movies and the New Economics of Blockbusters CHUCK KLEINHANS

1994 Movies and Partisan Politics , 115 DIANE WALDMAN

1995 Movies, Teens, Tots, and Tech | 37 TIMOTHY SHARY

1996 Movies and Homeland Insecurity [57 DEBRA WHITE-STANLEY AND CARYL FLINN

1997 Movies and the Usable Past 180 ) JOSE B. CAPINO

1998 Movies, Dying Fathers, and a Few Survivors 203 KRIN GABBARD

1999 Movies and Millennial Masculinity 225 CHRIS HOLMLUND

Select Academy Awards, 1990-1999 249

Index 273

Works Cited and Consulted 255

Contributors 27!

BLANK PAGE

Ts

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

From start to finish this anthology has been a collective endeavor, even though I have held primary responsibility as editor. Together the essayists

and I have discussed how best to showcase key films among the many from the 1990s we find intriguing. We have tried to make our individual essays dovetail with each other, in order to provide a more complex picture of the cultural, political, and technological shifts that affected both Hollywood and U.S. independent films during this decade. We have also tried to highlight how and why the U.S. film industry was connected to other film industries and multinational corporations. And we have made a point of mentioning other films and authors we think you will appreciate in our essays as well as in the bibliography.

In these acknowledgments, therefore, I want first and foremost to , thank my ten co-authors for their great insights, good humor, and warm support over the several years it has taken to finish this project. I’m so pleased to count you as friends! Many thanks, too—and on behalf of my colleagues as well—to our students. You may not always realize it, but we learn a lot from you. Every essay included here draws on our teaching experiences, not just on our research. My work on the volume has benefited immensely from testing my ideas and those of others in this collection in classes on U.S. cinema of the 1990s and American independent film. Profound thanks to my students in these classes in particular for your feedback and suggestions. Working with Rutgers University Press has been great: special thanks to Leslie Mitchner and Rachel Friedman for their help, as well as to Marilyn Campbell and Eric Schramm. Thanks, too, to series editors Les Friedman and Murray Pomerance. I really appreciate how readily and cheerfully you pitched in each time I needed you! I also want to thank the skilled staff at the University of Tennessee library and the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick library for help with archival sources. And I thank the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures, the Office of Research, and the Humanities Initiative at the University of Tennessee for funding the cost of the cover image and indexing. Last and not least, warm thanks to my friends and family in the United States, Sweden, and elsewhere. Special hugs to Diane Waldman for many wonderful hikes and discussions over the years; “tack sa mycket” to Karin Vil

Vill ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Bark, my oldest friend; “tack ocksa” to my beloved aunt Gunnel Kallgren. And Dad: “tusen tack” for being such a terrific father and role model, and for becoming one of my very best friends.

eS LLrrrlrrr—“‘“‘“‘(COCOCOCOC#

The 1990s |O JANUARY Time Inc. and Warner Communications Inc. merge to form Time Warner.

|| FEBRUARY Anti-apartheid activist and African National Congress (ANC) leader Nelson Mandela is released from prison in South Africa

| after being incarcerated for more than twenty-seven years on charges of “terrorism.”

I5 APRIL Glamorous, beautiful, and reclusive Swedish screen star Greta Garbo (Grand Hotel [1932], Queen Christina [1933]) dies. 2 AUGUST Iraq invades and conquers Kuwait. 7 AUGUST Operation Desert Shield begins, and the first U.S. forces—F-16 Eagle fighters from Langley Air Force Base, Virginia—arrive in Saudi Arabia.

3 OCTOBER Germany is reunited for the first time since the end of World War II, less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall. 13 NOVEMBER The first known web page is written.

16 JANUARY The U.S. government authorizes the use of military force to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s invasion. Operation Desert Storm and the first Persian Gulf War begin on 17 January with air attacks on Iraq.

3 MARCH Amateur video captures the beating of taxi driver Rodney King by four Los Angeles police officers after King is stopped for a traffic violation. |3 AUGUST The Super Nintendo entertainment system is released in the United States. 3 SEPTEMBER Beloved American director Frank Capra (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939], Meet John Doe [1941], It’s a Wonderful Life [1946]) dies.

[5 OCTOBER Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court is confirmed after bitter Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in which former employee Anita Hill accuses Thomas of sexual harassment. Ix

x TIMELINE — THE 1990s 25 DECEMBER Soviet president Mikhail S. Gorbachev resigns, ending seventyfour years of communist reign. On 31 December the Soviet Union officially ceases to exist.

16 JANUARY El Salvador officials and rebel leaders sign a pact in Mexico City, ending a twelve-year civil war that killed at least 75,000.

29 APRIL Violence and looting erupt in Los Angeles after four white police officers are acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. Fifty-eight people are killed with nearly $1 billion in damages within five days.

22 MAY Johnny Carson retires from “The Tonight Show” after thirty years as its host. 24-28 AUGUST Called the costliest storm ever in the United States, Hurricane Andrew devastates south Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. 3 NOVEMBER Arkansas governor Bill Clinton defeats incumbent President George H.W. Bush and independent H. Ross Perot in the U.S. presidential election.

i §8$1993 26 FEBRUARY Terrorists connected to Osama bin Laden park a van containing a bomb below the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Six

| blast.

people are killed and more than a thousand are injured in the

27 FEBRUARY Screen legend Lillian Gish (Birth of a Nation [1915], Broken Blossoms [1919], Night of the Hunter [1955], Whales of August [1987]) dies.

28 FEBRUARY The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raids the compound of the Branch Davidian religious sect near Waco, Texas, with arrest warrants for cult leader David Koresh on federal firearms violations. An exchange of gunfire results in the deaths of four agents and six Branch Davidians. A fifty-one-day siege by the Federal Bureau of Investigation follows. Attorney General Janet Reno orders a final FBI assault on 19 April. A fire set by sect members destroys the complex, and seventy-six

people, including women and children, perish. 25 MARCH The final episode of the popular television show “Cheers” airs. 30 APRIL The World Wide Web is born in Geneva at the Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire (CERN). 9 SEPTEMBER Viacom acquires Paramount Communications for $10 billion.

TIMELINE — THE 1990s xi 17 NOVEMBER After a bruising political battle, the United States ratifies the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), allowing for free trade between Canada, the United States, and Mexico, thereby forming the largest free-trade area in the world.

iim 861994 7 MARCH The Supreme Court rules in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music that

parodies of an original work are generally covered by the

: doctrine of fair use.

7 APRIL Rwanda erupts in genocidal ethnic strife. In the next 100 days, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsis are killed by Hutu militants. [2 JUNE Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman are murdered outside O. J. Simpson’s home in Los Angeles. | SEPTEMBER The Independent Film Channel (IFC) begins broadcasting unedited, uncensored, and commercial-free independent films to an initial audience of one million satellite and cable viewers. |4 OCTOBER Pulp Fiction is released by Miramax. Aided by the studio’s skillful marketing campaign, Quentin Tarantino’s provocative writing

-and directing, and a talented cast, the $8 million movie grosses over $200 million worldwide. 8 NOVEMBER Led by Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich, soon to become Speaker of the House, the Republicans win control of both houses of Congress for the first time in forty years.

|9 DECEMBER An investigation into the real estate dealings of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their associates in the Whitewater Development Agency in the 1970s and 1980s begins.

|I9 APRIL Former U.S. Army veteran Timothy McVeigh and fellow militia member and friend Terry Nichols bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168. I5 JULY Amazon.com is launched. [6 OCTOBER The Million Man March, led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, brings hundreds of thousands to Washington, D.C. The event is designed to increase black participation in voting and to support welfare, Medicaid, housing programs, student aid programs, and education programs. 4 NOVEMBER After attending a peace rally, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is mortally wounded by a right-wing Israeli fanatic.

XII TIMELINE — THE 1990s , 2| NOVEMBER Toy Story, the first feature-length film created entirely using computer-generated imagery, is released.

29 FEBRUARY The Sundance television channel is launched. A film that had opened the 1995 Sundance Festival, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, is its first major feature.

3 APRIL The target of the most expensive manhunt in the FBI’s history, “Unabomber” suspect Theodore Kaczynski, is arrested for killing three people and injuring twenty-three others in sixteen bombings beginning in the 1970s. 5 JULY Dolly the sheep is the first mammal to be successfully cloned. 27 JULY A bomb explodes in Centennial Olympic Park during the Olympic Games in Atlanta. Two people are killed and over one hundred are wounded.

27 SEPTEMBER Moslem fundamentalist Taliban militia capture Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, and begin imposing Islamic law. 5 NOVEMBER Bill Clinton and Al Gore are reelected as president and vicepresident. The Republicans retain control of Congress. 26 DECEMBER Six-year-old beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey is found murdered in her family’s basement in Boulder, Colorado.

| JANUARY U.S. television networks adopt ratings systems for their programming similar to those used for motion pictures. [9 MARCH The first DVD titles are released in the United States.

| MAY Led by Tony Blair, the Labour Party routs the Tories in the British election, ending eighteen years of conservative rule. 30 JUNE The first book in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling is published. 4 JULY The Pathfinder space probe explores the surface of Mars. A webcast of the event is seen by over one million viewers. 3! AUGUST Diana, Princess of Wales, is killed in a Paris car crash together with her companion and lover Dodi Al-Fayed and their driver Henri Paul. Diana’s funeral on 6 September is viewed by over

| one billion people worldwide. |I9 DECEMBER James Cameron’s Titanic is released, starring Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet as star-crossed lovers. The film will set all-time box office records, raking in $7 billion in the U.S. and Canada alone.

TIMELINE — THE 1990s XII

27 MARCH The first drug treatment for male impotence, Viagra, is approved by the Food and Drug Administration. l4 APRIL The online DVD rental company Netflix begins U.S. operations. 7 AUGUST U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, are bombed by terrorists with links to Osama bin Laden, killing 224 people and wounding over 4,500. 7 SEPTEMBER Google is founded as a privately held corporation by two Stanford University Ph.D. students. 19 DECEMBER President Clinton is impeached in the House of Representatives for misleading the American public regarding his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

| JANUARY A common European currency, the euro, is introduced. 20 FEBRUARY Influential film critic Gene Siskel dies from complications during brain surgery.

20 APRIL Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris kill thirteen and wound two dozen before committing suicide at Colorado’s Columbine High School.

7 SEPTEMBER Viacom Inc. announces plans to acquire CBS Corporation for $36 billion in the largest media merger ever.

|2 OCTOBER The world population reaches six billion. 20 DECEMBER The Vermont Supreme Court legalizes same-sex unions.

31 DECEMBER Millennium celebrations begin worldwide (although technically the millennium starts in 2001, not 2000). Concerns of serious Y2K computer system failures are rife but little of note happens.

BLANK PAGE ,

American Cinema of the 1990s

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