'The good earth and the still waters': new deal rhetoric in FDR's political speeches and M-G-M's captains courageous. Issue 3 (2nd July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Burgchardt, Carl R.; Diffrient, David Scott
• Is Part Of: Historical journal of film, radio and television. Volume 36:Issue 3(2016)
• Page Start: 305
• Page End: 330
• Publication Date: 2016-07-02
• Subjects: Motion pictures -- History -- Periodicals; Broadcasting -- History -- Periodicals; 302.23409005
• DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2015.1111706
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0143-9685

Abstract

Abstract : This article seeks to demonstrate the underlying ideological similarities between President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Depression-era political rhetoric and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer'sCaptains Courageous (1937), an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's 1897 novel of the same title. Rather than claim a simple causal relationship between FDR's oratorical calls for socio-economic reform and M-G-M's cinematic tale of cooperative teamwork in the face of adversity, the authors make the more modest assertion that the president's mid-1930s discourse is echoed in, and mediated by, director Victor Fleming's contemporaneous production. The film, which on the surface displays the hallmarks of a conservative cultural production, actually functions as a pro-collectivist, pro-New Deal message about the perils of dishonest, unbridled competition. In addition, Captains Courageous is suffused with audiovisual signifiers that are unexpectedly in tune with the sound design and mise-en-scene of 'social realist' films of the period. In making their case, the authors not only provide a reading ofCaptains Courageous that goes against conventional wisdom, but also pose a critical intervention in the traditional historiography of Depression-era film production, which has often neglected to account for this and other (admittedly anomalous) instances of pro-Roosevelt sentiments issuing forth from a studio that famously supported the Republican Party.