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By the way, that prof I mentioned did plant a seed in my thinking. His comments about how 50s sci-fi demonstrated the paranoia of McCarthyism and fear of nuclear technology (giant everything going nuts and knocking over cities) it made me start to think "what do the films we watch at a point in time say about what is going on in our culture?"

So for example as the dystopian post-apocalyptic stuff took hold in the latter Bush and Obama eras, I came to view that as a sign that we as a society are not optimistic about our future. Not worried about literal zombie outbreaks, of course, but rather that we're in bad times that will never end. Now it will be interesting to see how film changes after a couple of years of Trump.

And before you say it won't, recall that the Hollywood left hated Reagan with a passion. But by the mid 80s the biggest movies were very pro-military and pro-America. Rambo, MIA, Top Gun, etc. Because that's where we were collectively as a society, it was the zeitgeist of the times. And it showed up on the big screen in spite of Hollywood politics.