In an essay "Movies as Mirror on Society", San Francisco film critic Mick LaSalle writes about current movies reflecting a lack of faith in both individuals and institutions:
If anything, American movies are more cynical and despairing than before. Their implicit message: People are garbage and the world is terrifying.
I buy into the somewhat different Fourth Turning historical doctrine where we are near the end of an unraveling era ("third turning") , where people hold institutions in low esteem but view themselves with high esteem:
Wars are fought with moral fervor but without consensus or follow-through. Eventually, cynical alienation hardens into a brooding pessimism... During an Unraveling, an obliging society serves purposeful individuals, and even good people find it hard to connect with their community.
LaSalle also links post-World War II film noir with Charles Ives:
I see noir as a despairing response to conformity, depicting the individual's lone wail and his subsequent submersion. Or to put it another way, noir is the cinema's equivalent of composer Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question."
From which I'll conclude The Unanswered Question is not really speaking to us now, 60 years into the battle of overcoming conformity. I still like the work, though, as does Kenneth Walton in the Scotsman:
Not for nothing was his [Ives] best-known piece called The Unanswered Question - a startling contradiction of musical styles written in 1906 that somehow achieves penetrating unity through its unconventional diversity. Ives, in his personal and musical life, was such a paradox.
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