ABSTRACT
This chapter considers two contemporary American women's feelings of hope and hopelessness. It argues for the televisual statements of two instances of a convergence towards a new cultural framework emerging within contemporary American society and culture. While bourgeois realignment helps initiate a larger social transformation, this class alone cannot make large-scale change. The point of a new alliance is that all parties have something to gain from it. Such an account for how this might happen and what elements may be necessary for a new cultural alignment in the current period is best served by looking retrospectively at the dynamics within the last crisis of hegemony, the 1930s. Enlightened disturbs three dreams. The first belongs to a post-war American ideal, the second is the cinematic version of the happy end, and the third id one of revenge for social injustice.
