On
Wednesday 13th May, the Andrew
Hook Centre was delighted to welcome prolific journalist David Willis for
the 15th Annual Gordon Lecture in American Studies. The lecture
title was, “Hollywood and the American Dream”, which broadly discussed the
changing concept of the ‘American Dream’ from America’s colonial beginning to
the celebrity culture of the present day. Mr Willis has been the BBC
correspondent in Los Angeles for fifteen years and, in a journalistic career
spanning more than three decades, has covered events as wide-ranging as the
Iraq War, the election campaign of 2000, American reactions to 9/11 and the
Academy Awards. As a British journalist living and working in the United
States, Mr Willis offered a unique perspective on American Studies, informed by
his vast experience in translating American current events and issues to a
British audience.
Mr
Willis began his lively and engaging discussion with an anecdote concerning a
recent conversation with an African American taxi driver named Jamal. The
recent riots in Baltimore, Maryland was the topic of discussion, and, in
Jamal’s opinion, these riots were less to do with racism and more deeply
concerned with underlying issues of poverty and desperation in America’s inner
cities. More specifically, Jamal considered these ‘race riots’ to be a direct
response to the perceived disappointments of the Obama administration to make
visible inroads into racial poverty in the United States. To be sure, the protests
in Baltimore are only the most recent in a series of race protests arguably
beginning (on a national level) with the shooting of unarmed black teenager of
Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012, exacerbated by the judicial clearing of a
white police officer in the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in
2014, and culminating with the death of Freddie Gray in April 2015 following
injuries sustained during his arrest. Willis proffered that these recent events
could be seen as exemplifying the failure of the American Dream, at least among
the clearly discontented participants of protests and riots across America.
In
order to understand the failures of the ‘American dream’, Willis turned to its
origin point. Far from being an abstract term used to define the national
values of American citizens, Willis referenced the first Puritan settlers in
the colonies, whose guiding purpose in the New World was made clear in John
Winthrop’s 1630 sermon aboard the Arabella,
during which he stated that the Puritans would create a ‘city upon a hill’,
free from the religious persecution of the Old World, serving as a beacon to
the rest of the world. In his sermon, Winthrop also declared that ‘we must be
knit together in this work as one man,’ and that the settlers must ‘delight in
each other, make others’ conditions our own […] always having before our eyes
our commission and community in the work,’ thus illustrating the founding
principles of communality and the importance of hard-work that was to be the
cornerstone of life in the new colonies.[1]
Although the term the ‘American Dream’ was not used for a further three
centuries, Willis’ illustrated, here, that the value system covered by the term
could be traced back to the colonial era in these important historical documents.
The
term itself gained popular currency following the publication of James Truslow
Adams 1931 book, The Epic of America, which,
taking its cue from The Declaration of
Independence, sought to define the national characteristics that set
America apart from the rest of the world. In his text, Adams stated that in
America people could expect a ‘better, richer, happier life,’ where
‘opportunity [was available to] all in accordance with their ability or
achievement.’[2] Willis
went on to discuss the marketing of this concept, which was the work of the
founder of publishing powerhouse TIME magazine, Henry Luce. These ‘American’ values
were thus ‘packaged’ and became immersed, both visually and textually in
American culture. Artist Norman Rockwell immortalised the ‘American Dream’ to
the World War II generation of Americans who were exposed to his ‘Four
Freedoms’ quartet of paintings, published in The Saturday Evening Post and acting as the visual counterparts to
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous ‘Four Freedoms’ speech (1943).
Norman
Rockwell, Freedom From Want or The Thanksgiving Picture (1943) as seen
in The Saturday Evening Post
At this point in the lecture, Willis summarised the
post-war boom in affordable housing, spearheaded by William J. Levitt and
depicted in popular 1950s television programmes such as Father Knows Best and Leave
It To Beaver. Interestingly, Willis noted that the characters in these
television shows lived in bigger houses and drove flashier cars than the average
American, fuelling an aspirational drive which led to the burgeoning culture of
consumer credit that we are familiar with today. In this landscape, the
American Dream came to represent prosperity and well-being, which culminated in
2000 with most monumental credit crisis since the Great Depression. Willis
ended this segment of the lecture by noting that in contemporary American
society, the gap between the wealthy and poor is both vast and ever-increasing.
To illustrate this point, Willis showed the audience a cartoon commentary of
this societal fault by Stuart Neiman (below).
Thus,
Willis argued that the communality of work and egalitarian principles of the
first settlers and The Declaration of
Independence have steadily eroded as the United States has come to depend
on consumer spending and a capitalist market. Thus, the ‘American Dream’ has
changed shape and, in the eyes of many, has proven unattainable as poverty and
unemployment rates climb. Willis, at this stage, opened the floor to questions
in what became a lively discussion forum. The audience raised a variety of
questions ranging from Willis’ opinion on the current political climate as the
United States prepares for the 2016 presidential election, to Willis’ personal
experience as a journalist. In what proved one of the most interesting aspects
of the lecture, Willis, responding to a question regarding the role of the
media in Hollywood, answered that, in his career as a journalist, he has borne
witness to rapidly changing journalistic practices. People, Willis stated, now
access news stories in a different way, as the ‘6 o’clock’ news and print
newspapers are superseded by instantly-available news online and via
smart-phone apps. The 24-hour news cycle and the public demand for instant news
has thus changed the playing field and has come to reflect the technological
age in which we live. Hollywood’s role in particular, as the epicenter of the
American Dream, concluded the lecture, in Willis’ reflection of the continued
geographical hegemony of Los Angeles as the city of dreams – a place where
thousands of people continue to flock each year from across the globe to chance
their luck at stardom.
David
Willis’ lecture had the effect of engaging the large audience with his journalistic
perspective on the changing public understanding of the ‘American Dream’. In
his evocation and discussion of several key moments in American history, Willis
demonstrated the continuously evolving nature of this elusive concept, as
countless generations have sought to attain the perfect, charmed life – a life
which has often been the product of advertising agencies and other mediums of
popular culture. With this in mind, it was fitting that the 15th
Annual Gordon Lecture was delivered by a journalist, as it is often on the
pages of the national press that the changing concerns of a populace is
articulated and analysed. In a nation wrought with external and internal
frissures, it will be left to future journalists and historians to determine
the attainability of the American Dream as the twenty-first century progresses.
By Rebecca Dunbar
PGR at The University of Glasgow
