 Inflation, energy crisis, gas shortages, corruption in the halls of government, polarization and incivility, violence in the streets, the lack of any clear moral understanding, a pervasive sense of despair and hopelessness. It's grim out there, folks. And even though pop culture lags behind current events a little bit thanks to the reality of production cycles, the tonal shift in movies and TV shows in the wake of all this bad news is pretty aggressive. A lot of the stories we've been telling ourselves have taken a bleak turn. At the same time, nostalgia is everywhere, suggesting that people are desperate to revisit a better, sometimes simpler part of their lives. But even a lot of that is a darker, grittier version of the original. Horror, dystopia, dark fantasy, darker sci-fi, disturbing crime dramas and hyper-violent content. Wait a minute, did you think I was talking about today? Oh, no. I meant the 1970s, though the confusion is understandable. It's not hard to see the similarities. Even though most people are dramatically better off today than they were back then, thanks to a series of self-inflicted and utterly avoidable policy failures, we seem to be reliving a lot of the same problems from 50 years ago. All you need to do is look back at some of the 70s most important movies to see that the tone of the entire decade fits right in with what we're seeing today. It was a pretty heavy time, geopolitically and economically, and popular culture reflected that. And I don't mean disco and Saturday Night Fever. To me, five films in particular stand out as almost perfect examples of the vibe of the 1970s. Serpico, Chinatown, The Last Picture Show, Alien, and The Towering Inferno. There will be spoilers for all of these movies, but since every one of them is over 40 years old, if you haven't seen them by now, that's kind of on you. Consider yourself warned. Then get ready as we take a journey back in time on this episode of Out of Frame. So, as I was saying, the 1970s were a pretty heavy decade. As the civil rights movement of the 1960s achieved many of its initial political goals, the 1970s became the era of implementation and integration. But the end of legal discrimination didn't magically create a colorblind utopia, and race relations continued to be tense. On the economic front, the US government was struggling to pay for the Vietnam War and a wave of new domestic welfare spending, but it was also constrained by the gold standard. So, in 1971, President Nixon severed the remaining ties of the US dollar to the price of gold. This led to a period of high inflation and uncommonly stagnant wages, what we now call stagflation. Then, in 1973, after eight years of active military involvement, the US withdrew from Vietnam without a victory, demoralizing. But if that weren't bad enough, at the same time, oil-producing Arab countries were issuing embargoes against the US in response to its support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War, which nearly went nuclear twice. This led to a domestic energy crisis marked by skyrocketing fuel prices and chronic shortages. And while the US was already dealing with all of that, the whole political system got rocked by several major corruption scandals. In 1974, the news of Nixon's Watergate break-in forced him to resign in disgrace, and that was just a year after his vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned, pleading no contest to tax evasion charges. By the end of the 70s, crime was exploding in our major cities, and serial killers were becoming more common. The son of Sam terrorized New York for a year before he was arrested in 1977. But things were even worse outside the United States. In 1972, the extremist group Black September stormed the summer Olympic compound in Munich, in the first-ever live broadcast terrorist event. And speaking of terrorism, that was the same year the troubles began in Northern Ireland, with the Irish Republican army blowing people up, while advocating for independence from the United Kingdom. On the other side of the world, Pol Pot's communist reign of terror in Cambodia lasted from 1975 to 1979. And although the USSR was mired in poverty and economic devastation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 meant an escalation of Cold War tensions. Oh, and a year earlier, 918 members of Jim Jones' cult died in a mass murder suicide, so that was pretty big news too. We talk a lot in our modern day of being tired of living through so many historical events, one right after the other, but a clear-eyed look at this very incomplete accounting of the 1970s shows we're not the only ones who have lived through interesting times. With all these things in mind, it's not hard to understand why 1970s pop culture was so gloomy. After all, the stories we tell each other have always reflected our reality, in one way or another. Or at least, they reflect our artist's perception of reality. So, let's talk about some of the movies that defined their perception of the 1970s. First up, Serpico, starring Al Pacino. Based on a true story, Serpico came out in 1973 and is about NYPD detective Frank Serpico, sometimes called Paco. Frank is young and a bit idealistic when he joins the New York City police force in 1963, but he becomes frustrated and disillusioned as he encounters misconduct, bureaucratic hurdles, and outright corruption in the department. Sounds familiar? Anyway, he takes his concerns to his superior officers, and many of them promise to help solve the problem, or at least transfer him to a clean precinct. But despite all of their assurances, it becomes very clear to Frank that clean precincts don't actually exist. A shocking number of officers and detectives are taking bribes and violating citizens' constitutional rights, and no amount of pleading or reporting on his part is making any difference. Finally, seeing no other option, Frank takes his story to the New York Times, which actually happened. Frank ends up shot in the face during a bust, because his fellow officers withhold their assistance. Miraculously, he survives and testifies at a public hearing about the corruption, but he ends up having to leave the country to escape retribution from his colleagues. The message here is clear, corruption is everywhere, and you can only avoid seeing it by turning a blind eye. Sure, you can try to do the right thing yourself, but you're going to pay for it. And that lesson is pretty much in line with 1974's Chinatown. Even though it's set in 1930's California, instead of 1960's and 70's New York City, these two could almost be companion pieces. Chinatown stars Jack Nicholson as private detective Jake Gittes, who's hired by a woman to expose a cheating husband, Hollis Mulray. Mulray is the chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, working on a dam and reservoir that would supposedly help relieve the drought-stricken city of Los Angeles. Jake trails Mulray and photographs him with a young woman, assuming that it's evidence of an affair. But the next day, those photos are published in the newspaper in order to smear the engineer, who, turns out, was sounding the alarm about government corruption affecting the safety and reliability of the dam. That was the first major surprise for Detective Gittes. The other was that the woman who hired him wasn't who she said she was. When Mulray's actual wife, Evelyn, played by Faye Dunaway, shows up at Jake's office looking to sue him, he's able to diffuse her anger but only ends up getting dragged into a more and more dangerous situation when Mulray's body turns up in the reservoir. Something is very wrong here. Jake's investigation exposes deeper secrets, revealing a web of lies, corruption, murder, and incest. The city and politically powerful cronies like Evelyn's father and Noah Cross have been deferring water, causing the drought, profiting from depressed land prices, and stealing money from taxpayers. But unlike the movies you might have seen in the 1950s and early 60s, the people of Los Angeles don't get a happy ending. Jake's investigation and his attempts to expose corruption didn't make a difference to anything. In fact, at the end, despite Jake frantically telling police that Evelyn is not the true culprit, the officers end up killing her, resulting in one of the most iconic lines in cinema history. The phrase is almost nihilistic. Terrible things happen, politicians and their wealthy allies are corrupt, and the system is rigged. The victims pay the price and there's nothing you can do about it. It's Chinatown. But that brings us to The Last Picture Show, Alien, and The Towering Inferno, which admittedly don't seem like they have much in common on the surface, but like the other films I've talked about here, they're all connected by a sense of existential dread, hopelessness, and can be seen as a criticism of formerly trustworthy institutions. The Last Picture Show, released in 1971, is another film that set prior to the 70s in a gritty historical setting that's meant to convey the idea that life has always been unfair. It's a subversive take on the concept of the good old days, and I would say that The Last Picture Show leans into that depressing mood even harder than Chinatown. An exceptionally bleak coming-of-age story, it takes place in 1952 in a dying Texas town. Everyone is miserable. No one makes good choices. The story is full of shameful secrets and petty betrayals and cruel manipulations. It leaves the viewer with the impression that everyone you love will either leave you or die, and you will never be truly happy. Sounds fun, right? There are a lot of movies from the 70s that feel this way, and just like today, I think they reflected the filmmaker's perception of reality. Even more allegorical films in genres like sci-fi, such as Alien, and action movies such as The Towering Inferno feature this kind of dark outlook on humanity and the future of our civilization. Alien premiered in 1979 and features a crew of basically outer space roughnecks and long haul truckers who encounter a hostile monster. I don't really feel like I need to explain this one to anyone, but here goes. Despite the high-tech setting, the team are essentially blue-collar workers dealing with incredibly unsafe work conditions. The crew of the spaceship Nostromo are actually on their way home when they pick up a distress signal. Company policy requires them to investigate, even over the protests of the crew. There is a clause in the contract which specifically states any systematized transmission indicating a possible intelligent origin must be investigated. It doesn't go well. This film is probably worth an episode all by itself, but what's notable about it for my purposes here is that so much of it is centered around problems created by inflexible rules made by distant bureaucrats who are never actually going to be the ones doing the work. The suits stay on earth, while danger, death, and destruction await the working class. Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley is the only one who is wise enough to make calls that go against those top-down rules and which would have saved the lives of her whole crew along with their valuable cargo. Today, mindlessly bureaucratic rules and irrational corporate and government policies are a constant soul-crushing killer of innovation and common sense. It's easy to empathize with Ripley as she has to watch most of her crew die because they did what was written in a manual instead of what actually made sense for the situation at hand, which brings us to our final film, The Towering Inferno. This disaster movie from 1974 stars both Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, which should make it almost too cool for the average human to watch. But for all its star power, it's a pretty depressing movie. The tallest building in the world, The Glass Tower, is all set for its grand opening. In addition to its record-breaking height, it also boasts the latest technology in virtually all its systems, created by the smartest experts. It was the product of the best possible plans, but underneath its gleaming facade, the whole building has been poorly constructed. During the grand opening, an electrical short starts a fire that spreads to the rest of the building. Aside from the obvious, everything is on fire, there was probably a deeper metaphor for a United States coming off of a tumultuous series of civil rights battles and currently mired in the Vietnam War. Our country was a beautiful gleaming beacon of technology and innovation, but deeply flawed underneath. As Roger Ebert said in his review of the film, you may not come out of the theater with any important ideas about American architecture or enterprise, but you will have a vivid, completely safe nightmare. Of course, if you think it was bad in the US, just wait until you hear about what was happening in the USSR and other socialist and communist countries at the same time. If you ever wonder why there are so many dark, gritty movies about horrible people and epic disasters being made right now, and why even the so-called heroes we see in movies and TV shows aren't very good people, all I'd suggest is that you consider that this is the world artists think we have and are holding up a mirror to. Set side by side, it's not terribly difficult to see why these films are so dark and grimy and hopeless. Then, as now, it would be difficult to glance the news without seeing some kind of disaster, scandal, or war. Then, as now, heightened east-west tensions created an atmosphere of nuclear existential dread. Then, as now, it would be very easy to fall into the despair that nothing would ever be good ever again. But I actually want to leave you with a slightly different take on the state of the world. It may seem like artists are holding up a mirror to reality and we just don't like what we see, but their mirror is often distorted. Things were not all bad in the 1970s and they are certainly not all bad today. Political scandals and government created economic disasters aside, the 70s also saw some pretty cool things. The computer revolution began in the 70s with companies like IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, and Texas Instruments. The first mobile phone was invented. Beverly Johnson became the first black model to be on the cover of a fashion magazine. A spacecraft was landed on Mars. IVF was developed, giving hope to millions of couples struggling with fertility issues. VHS beat out Betamax and revolutionized the way we consume media. There was even a good Superman movie. The point is, even when a lot of things are going wrong, regardless of the decade, it's easy to overlook all of the things that are going right. Those might not seem as important as everything else, but where would the world be without say the personal computer or the mobile phone? Would there be streaming content today if we never had VCRs then? Would we now have iTunes without vinyl 8 tracks or cassette tapes? Would any of us be experiencing the level of prosperity we have today without computers and the digital revolution? So even as the world looks grim and feels like it's getting grimmer, remember that the 1970s ended and that throughout the 1980s and 90s the world became a freer, more prosperous, safer, and just generally more awesome place. Things got better then. And I believe that things will get better again. So don't give up on the future just yet. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. Check out the links in the description for ways in which our world was getting better before 2020 and how we can get back on that track. But please, don't give into a sense of nihilism. It won't help you or anyone around you. If you're struggling with optimism, let's talk about that in the comments. I want to say a huge thank you to all our supporters on Patreon and Subscribestar. If you love the show, please consider sending us a couple bucks a month to help us keep making it. And a special shout out goes to our Associate Producers, to Oran The Sheep X, Connor McGowan, Dan Rich, Matt Curtis, Matt Taber, Richard Lawrence, and Robert Lawyer. Thank you. For everyone else, be sure to leave a comment, like this video, and subscribe to the channel, join the continuing conversation on Discord, and follow us on all the social media. I'll see you next time.