Please see the Suggested citation note at the end of each article to find out how to reference my work within your own essays.
Please see the Suggested citation note at the end of each article to find out how to reference my work within your own essays.
space zoetrope 
This is an interesting view of American Graffitti, one that reveals to me a scholars, intellictual view of AG. As I am not a scholar and could probably be described as a blue collar denizen of a small town, or the [“neon wasteland,”[4]The film thus functions as an impressionistic type of nostalgic, and partly reactionary, cultural memorabilia which invites its viewer to recall and witness, in filmic terms, a bygone, but apparently naïve, American generation at the crossroads of social transition].I couldnt have wrote that! but you are close on that, as with the rest of your anology. Butyou missed some points. Yea we were naive, we were in a time that was changing, we had put WW 2 behind us, we didnt see that meatgrinder Vietnam coming. We had choices, you could make a good living without a college degree.we didnt see all that was coming at us, we had rock and roll, [no drugs yet] and we were having a ball.The cars were central, we could go to other towns,we had fast chariots, and met [fast wimmin] it was fantastic, and others were coming to our town too.
that film connected, it hit the nerve, it had the sights sounds action and people down. Wolfman was real, we listened to him, and the songs and the trains downtown, the drags outside town Lucas had it right on, only one like him could have made that film because he was there when it happened! And it really did!
Hi Dave, thanks for your comments. I’m glad that AG is a special film for you as it relates to your own experiences. It is also one of my favourite films of all time and I understand it was a very popular film when it was released and sparked the 1950s nostalgia of the 1970s. I guess the Happy Days sit-com was part of that trend. The essay I wrote about here is a post-graduate paper that was conceived in response to a particular question about time and memory. My analysis is thus formulated in that framework. My reading of it is largely informed by a Marxist perspective (yes I was once a worker too) and as such I was very interested in looking at the fetish value of the cars and how that was portrayed in the film. Overall, I believe I give a reasonably sympathetic view of the film, although there are certain political aspects that I wished to illuminate particularly with regard to its utilisation of nostalgia which is related to cultural (=socially collective) conceptions of memory. Thanks again for your statement. I really appreciate your feedback.