ABSTRACT
By the early 1960s, the gendered, family-oriented American Dream of middle-class suburban existence was eroding away in the public consciousness and being replaced with a more egocentric version of the Dream that implied the promise of another kind of opportunity. The United States was reimagined as a place where, hypothetically, anyone could attain personal happiness. This chapter examines how the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World offers a scathing critique of this new understanding of the American Dream. The immense popularity of this movie suggests that its themes resonated with a wide audience, and the timing of its release evinces the beginning of an ideological shift in mainstream American culture. The chapter then considers the ways in which this renegotiation of American national ethos is conveyed in The Graduate, which the author argue is fundamentally about choosing the values of one's own generation over another.
