ABSTRACT
Popular movies are cultural standard-bearers; they carry with them the values, beliefs, dreams, desires, longings, and needs of a society and, thus, can function mythologically. Steven Spielberg is, perhaps, the most successful and prolific director/producer/writer of popular films ever. There are two main characters in Spielberg’s first major directorial success Duel : a suburban businessman, David Mann and a filthy black, eighteen-wheel truck whose driver is never identified. Ordinary life comes in the form of a sunny seaside resort town getting ready for the summer tourist season in Spielberg’s first huge success Jaws. In any psychological analysis of film it is all too tempting to become reductive and to look for the “meaning” of movies and their narratives in a psycho-biography of the directors and writers concerned. The cinema has become the place where the people gather in the dark together to witness the story and participate emotionally in the sharing of the projection.
