On pages 208-209 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein quotes the 1953 memoir of screenwriter Ben Hecht, who was describing Hollywood standards:
“Two generations of Americans have been informed nightly that a
woman who betrayed her husband (or a husband his wife) could never find
happiness; that sex was no fun without a mother-in-law and a rubber
plant around; that women who fornicated just for pleasure ended up as
harlots or washerwomen; that any man who was sexually active in his
youth later lost the one girl he truly loved; that a man who indulged in
sharp practices to get ahead in the world ended in poverty and with
even his own children turning on him; that any man who broke the law,
man’s or God’s, must always die, or go to jail, or become a monk, or
restore the money he stole before wandering off into the desert; that
anyone who didn’t believe in God (and said so out loud) was set right by
seeing either an angel or witnessing some feat of levitation by one of
the characters; that an honest heart must always recover from a train
wreck or a score of bullets and win the girl it loved; that the most
potent and brilliant of villains are powerless before little children,
parish priests or young virgins with big boobies; that injustice could
cause a heap of trouble but it must always slink out of town in Reel
Nine; that there are no problems of labor, politics, domestic life or
sexual abnormality but can be solved happily by a simple Christian
phrase or a fine American motto.“
Perlstein goes on to contrast these standards with the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde, which glorified outlaws while portraying the establishment as corrupt and morally bankrupt.
As I read Hecht’s description of the older standards, however, I
thought, “Man, I actually believe some of those things.” Maybe it’s
because of all the Little House on the Prairie and Touched by an Angel
that I watch. That makes me wonder if what I believe is actually true
in real life, or is rather somebody’s value system that he or she is
trying to propagate.
There is a significant part of me that likes to be inspired and
uplifted, and so I tend to prefer the sorts of movies that Hecht talks
about over movies like Bonnie and Clyde. I don’t like movies that are too
corny and cheesy, mind you, but movies that have values while still
being believable, on some level. Of course, what is believable to me
may be corny and cheesy to someone else.