#narloch

Narloch was a Herglic gambler and entrepreneur hailing from Giju, who operated a casino on the Outer Rim world Emmer, and was a skilled sabaac player.

The American Dream is an ideology to the terms of Louis Althusser as it “[imposes] on individuals a conception of themselves which fasters their acquiescence in that order” (Counsell and Wolf, 2001:33). In order to colonize America it claims that every man is free and has the ability to succeed, especially if they are ready to move to a virgin land where everything needs to be created. Jessica Narloch sums up the idea behind this ideology as “a chance for people to start anew” (2008:7) and get “new opportunities” (2008:8). As years passed and the world evolved, the idea of accessible success through “the dream of homeownership and upward mobility” (2008:5) that incarnated the American Dream stayed.

American Graffiti portrays a modern vision of the American Dream in which four teenagers are trying to find their path in this world. They all come from different divisions of the middle-class and they want to fulfill different desires to attain personal success: knowledge, love, victory, recognition.

This is a classic Hollywood realist movie. It “locates its characters and action in a determinate social and historical setting” (Mast et. al, 1992:80) by placing them in the 60s in the United States, a post-war happy time thanks to economic growth and the will to forget World War II. Two discourses are opposed: the primary visual one (the image) and the spoken discourse (1992:82). There are a few times in the movie when those discourses clash as when Wolfman Jack denies his identity but reveals himself to be the radio animator through the image of Curt Henderson eavesdropping on him.

The movie also emphasizes the power of radio on youths, therefore it lays light on the increasing importance of media in US citizens’ lives. Historian Eric Hobsbawm who studied nationalism, claims that there was a transformation in the way popular ideologies were “both standardized, homogenized and transformed, as well as, obviously, exploited for the purposes of deliberate propaganda by private interests and states” thanks to “the rise of the modern mass media: press, cinema and radio” after the first World War. (2012:141) In American Graffiti, Wolfman Jack’s show is a link between teenagers. Ultimately it has a huge impact on their lives as illustrated by Curt: he seeks advice from the radio animator that gives him guidance on how to live his life. Here, Wolfman Jack personifies radio and incarnates the power that it can have on people as it becomes some sort of guru for Curt.

This film depicts the reality of a time in a definite space and social situation which cannot be taken as worldwide truth because on the other side of the Atlantic, Europe was still suffering from the world war, Russia was positioning itself against the USA in the Cold War and war was raging in Vietnam. Through the ideology of the American Dream, anchored in American audiences (and nowadays in worldwide audiences) Lucas takes a step back from reality to provoke nostalgia, especially knowing that the film was released in 1973 when socio-political issues couldn’t be ignored anymore.

 Bibliography:

Althusser, L. “From Ideology and the State Apparatuses” in Counsell, C. and Wolf, L. (2001) Performance Analysis: an Introductory Coursebook. Routledge

Hobsbawm, E. (2012) Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge University Press

McCabe, C. “Principles of Realism and Pleasure” in Braudy, L., Cohen, M. and Mast, G. (1992) Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Oxford University Press

Narloch, J. (2008) Facets of the American Dream and American Nightmare in Film. Auflage

Filmography: