Hollywood Discovers “The Revolution”

An age defines itself by the words it brings to prominence. Idealism, as in youthful idealism, would be such a word; and by setting it against the various kinds of action it describes one might hope to arrive at a clear view of student protest. Another such word is mentioned rather less often: opportunism. It is possible for opportunism, a pretty fixed quality, to insinuate itself into the unstable world of idealism and so transform it into a mess of platitudes. Starting from a purely verbal existence, these platitudes get read back into reality, only with more conviction since the readers are idealistic, and then, somehow, the end result is violence.

In the movies opportunism is the tendency to reach beyond a modest subject matter, dressing up happy domestic truths with some imagined larger significance, thus, through slick editing, to achieve counterfeit social relevance. If an unfaithful rich man gets an abortion for his mistress, you show him watching television; cut to a...