Date of Award
Spring 6-2015
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Media and Cinema Studies
First Advisor
Dr. Michael DeAngelis
Second Advisor
Dr. Amy Tyson
Abstract
Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), Emile de Antonio’s In the Year of the Pig (1968), Jonas Mekas’s Diaries, Notes, and Sketches: Also Known as Walden (1969) and Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969) constitute historical artifacts as well as discursive interventions intended to shape a vision of the nation. Therein emerged varying imbrications of ideology and the volatility of the era, along with palpable disharmony that scholars have identified between the youth movement’s cultural and political camps.1 In each case, the film’s avant-garde status did not, in and of itself, confer liberatory ideology. While all but Medium Cool are officially avant-garde, Wexler’s positioning of his subjects, and his shattering the fourth wall to confront the sociopolitical status quo and the mass-communications industry at a time of extraordinary ferment, renders his film among, if not the most, contestatory.
Recommended Citation
Cantoral, Mary Bronstein, "Ideology, the Counterculture, and the Avant Garde: Positioning the Filmmaker and the Spectator in Four Films of Late-1960s America" (2015). College of Communication Master of Arts Theses. 29.
https://via.library.depaul.edu/cmnt/29