Films of Endearment by Michael Koresky
Author:Michael Koresky [Koresky, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2021-03-01T21:12:34+00:00
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The plight of the farmer and the economic and emotional reality of foreclosures in Americaâs heartland were so prevalent a topic by the mideighties that a movie subgenre all unto itself sprung up. In 1984, Country was part of a triumvirate of female-driven films about women fighting against all odds to save their farms, the others being the Depression-set Places in the Heart with Sally Field and The River with Sissy Spacek. The Oscars that year would offer up a bounty of hearty pioneer women: Lange, Field, and Spacek were all nominated against each other for Best Actress, with Field ultimately taking the prize and giving the infamous âYou like meâ speech. Movies about the American rural experienceâand, more broadly, movies about our citizens working far from urban centers and bourgeois enclavesâthus became as essential a part of the landscape of 1980s cinema as much as the burgeoning teen comedy genre or the drama of metropolitan upward mobility. Actors like Lange and Spacek fit into these roles so well because they gave off a sense of regional specificity, which would become increasingly rare in an ever more homogenized American film culture treating cinema as just another export. Country is an emblem of Langeâs cultural singularity, a reflection of her essence, as well as her political conviction.
In an unprecedented move, Lange, Spacek, and Jane Fonda came together in May 1985 to testify before a congressional Democratic task force about the agricultural crisis and the toll it was taking on the livelihood and emotional well-being of the American farm family. With homegrown warmth, Texas-raised Spacek earnestly intoned, âI would be naive to assume this is a simple problem with simple answers, but one thing Iâm sure of is we canât turn our backs on these people who have fed us so abundantly and so cheaply throughout our history.â Fonda would compare the current situation to the Depression-era bankruptcy and humiliation of American landowners as embodied by her father Henryâs performances in John Fordâs 1940 The Grapes of Wrath, and specifically accused President Reagan of ignoring the farmersâ needs in favor of giving more subsidies to defense contractors. Lange, meanwhile, sporting medium-length brunette hair and a simple navy blue blouse, seemed to be at times forcing back tears. Footage shows Fonda next to her wiping her own wet cheek as Lange summons calm. âThese people are living in a kind of modern-day slavery,â Lange insists during her testimony. âThey are being made to feel and made to believe that they have failed. That theyâve failed their families, their heritage, their country, and they have failed their land.â
Republicansâwho, pointedly, had not been invited to the caucusâcalled out the Capitol Hill event as little more than a publicity stunt. Republican Representative of Kansas Pat Roberts was quoted in the Associated Press as responding, âApparently weâre going to play Hollywood Squares in the Agriculture Committee.â There seems to have been a double standard in considering it gauche, showboating, or counterproductive to have three Hollywood
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