ABSTRACT
America needed a breed of men who would swarm over a wilderness which was a continent wide, and it produced the adaptation that was needed—the frontier American, famous in song and story as well as in the classic formulations of Frederick Jackson Turner. Turner himself suggested that the frontier experience stimulated innovation, which of course means a break with conformity, a break with the past. The major plot configuration in American films contrasts with both the British and the French. The American, is primarily concerned with “private values,” as distinguished from social-group, political, or religious-moral values. Stated a little differently and a little more abstractly, conformity is the faithful, unquestioning compliance with the standards imposed by a group.
