Many recent movies about African American life have focused on people leaving the ghetto. Earlier movies about groups living in ghettoes have portrayed the ghetto as a permanent reality. Moviemakers explored ghetto life as an interesting subject and a source of cultural innovation. Life was hard, but social and cultural ways to cope with…

The movie "42" shows memorable events that have faded from our view in recent years. The events are important to the evolution of a multicultural society in America because of the importance of baseball to the common national culture that all the American people have created. Jackie Robinson's significance as a cultural hero is…

School teachers have been used as heroic characters in movies for a long time. Their heroism compensates for the failures of social life in our society by treating problems in the classroom, not the real world, and by acting as the mediators between diverse sub-cultures and the larger society. They are the agents of rationality, scholarship, and…

The figure of the vampire has been an important element of popular culture for more than a century. The movies have been a home for vampire stories, and they have presented them as unusually frightening images. A recent explosion of vampire screen works reveals a new emphasis on addressing female issues as opposed to male issues and focusing on…

"Red Tails," a recent movie about the Tuskegee Airmen in battle, is the latest in a line of movies that seem to petition for admission to the fellowship of the mainstream American society by showing stories of groups overcoming discrimination and proving their strength and their patriotism. As the most excluded and longest-lasting pariah group,…

Three recent movies about war are examined. All have been honored by critics and welcomed by audiences. The three movies are very different from one another. They reflect different ways of thinking and feeling about war. More specifically, they represent ways we relate to the troops we send into battle and our concerns about whether we have done…

Culture offers people suggestions for dealing with life's vicissitudes, and people find different suggestions in different cultures. In a multicultural society, they have a variety of alternatives to choose among: ethnicities, regionalisms, lifestyles, religious movements, occupations, hobbies, and more. In American society, the groups that are…