Debunking National Myths in Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 and Andrew Moodie’s Riot
Debunking National Myths in Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 and Andrew Moodie’s Riot

Summary/Abstract: In his book, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation, Jim Cullen explains how the United States is essentially “a creation of the collective imagination” (2003: 6). Unlike most other nations, the U.S. defines itself not on the facts of blood, religion, language, or shared history, but on a set of ideals articulated in the Declaration of Independence and consolidated in the Constitution. At the core of these ideals lies the ambiguous idea of the American Dream, a “national motto” that has proven to be amazingly evasive and yet durable for hundreds of years across racial, class, and other demographic lines. The American Dream is such a familiar phrase that one rarely pauses to define the term or trace its origin. In his book, Cullen explores the multiple facets of the American Dream that have shaped American identity from the age of the Pilgrims to the present. From “Promised Land” to Abraham Lincoln’s dream of “Upward Mobility,” the American dream’s ambiguity “is the very source of its mystique power” (ib. 7). The American dream resonates with individual fulfillment, economic success, social advancement, quest for equality in the post-Civil War era, and most recently with fame and fortune epitomized in the culture of Hollywood.

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