Word: dreaming
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...float down the river without understanding any more than we knew before the film began. They are driven by greed and ambition, but we are given no hint of where that greed springs from. The characters barely interact; we see them only as figures moving in a dream. We never learn why Aguirre has brought his 15-year-old daughter on his fatal voyage, or why Dona Inez insisted on accompanying her husband. We never learn why the other men in the band follow Aguirre--in the end, it is clear that their fear of him drives them...
Californians differ over when the dream fizzled. Those of a political bent say the end came last November, when the state bucked a Carter tide to vote for Hayakawa and Ford. Some argue that the peak came in '74, when gasoline shortages tarnished the freeways and exurbs anchoring California's lifestyle. Others insist that the curtain fell last year, when citizens realized the inevitability of an earthquake and the consequences of a drought. But everyone agrees that the California of the '60s a mystical land of abundance and affluence, vanished some time...
...golden epoch that gave rise to the California dream began when America, disillusioned over the loss of its hero President, looked west for spiritual renewal. On the edge of the horizon it found California. Heretofore dismissed for its aimless spirit and shallow purpose, California seemed reborn-or at least exciting. While think tanks scanned the future, aerospace technicians outfitted adventures to the moon. There was a flourishing journalistic "underground" and an archipelago of multiversities that bristled with post-modern architecture...
...without breaking stride. Its gross product was larger than all but five countries; were California an independent nation, its per capita income would have been the world's highest. Yet, statistics aside, something was wrong. Michael Davie noticed the change in his 1972 book, California: The Vanishing Dream: "In the very part of the globe where there is the greatest concentration of knowledge and the most power over nature ... many people had begun to doubt whether knowledge and power really did bring worldly happiness. The economic and technological machine was grinding on but fewer and fewer people thought that...
...course, the California dream was doomed from its inception; a society based on the illogic of instability is no society at all. Once every institution is toppled and all behavior patterns are violated, the euphoria of freedom turns to boredom. Today the vitality of Los Angeles is beyond dispute, but San Francisco's health is questionable. The city that spawned a counterculture now leads the nation in suicide and cirrhosis of the liver. Nor is California any longer a rollicking trend setter. While innovators in other states experiment with megastructures and mass transit, Californians dawdle with their latest amusement...