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The Tragedy Of The Great Depression

Decent Essays

“personal assertion of existential meaning in a universe of potential cosmic meaninglessness” (Mast, 246). In the adventure films and Westerns, heroes are willing to challenge authority for their personal beliefs and feelings. They take actions based on individual beliefs, definitions of right and wrong, and the urge to complete their personal goals and dreams. The helpless antiheroes in screwball comedies present the situation during the Great Depression from another aspect. They cannot make choices themselves because of others’ intervention, and unfortunate things just happen to them. The denial of humanness is one feature of antiheroes. Powerlessness of antiheroes in the ridiculous world definitely reflects the desperate situation faced by the Americans during the Great Depression.
The trauma of the Great Depression is also shown in the inability of government and authority to complete their tasks. In most of Hawks’s films, governments, which represent law and order, are useless and corruptive. Hereoes and heroines have fun to fool the government or the police. For instance, Vivian and Marlowe fool the police through telephone. Susan in Bring Up Baby simply deceives the police to avoid the parking ticket. In the screwball comedies, psychologists are always wrong and they are the unfortunate characters to bear the loss. Americans at that time would like to see the misbehavior of authority and government, and the films express people’s fear of Great Depression and memories

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