Indiewood and Narratives of the Crisis: the Validity of New Deal’s Domestic Archetype.

Abstract

According to Ross and May, John Ford and Frank Capra stand out among film directors linked to conversion narratives, due to their role in shaping the pattern of the American home during the New Deal, especially by means of The Grapes of Wrath and It’s a Wonderful Life. Seven decades later, the presence of this archetype in modern crisis narratives can be recognized in films directed by Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris, Jason Reitman or Tom McCarthy: four independent filmmakers who have explored the social trends of a country, first shocked by 9/11 social trauma and, seven years later, under a worldwide economic collapse. This paper aims to explore the effect of this domestic imaginary within films by the mentioned directors, all of them interested in the stories of ordinary citizens whose homes are menaced by a crisis of economic nature, but also of a social, moral and politic one.