Hollywood Knights

Book excerpt: Hollywood Knights examines Hollywood Arthuriana as political nostalgia offered to American viewers during times of cultural crisis: the red scare of the 1950s, the breakdown of traditional authority in the 1960s and 1970s, the turn to the right in the 1980s and the redemption of masculine and national authority in the 1990s. Its analysis of these films explores their proposal of an ideal past - an Americanized Camelot and a democratized chivalry - as the solution to the problems of a troubled present, a solution that will ensure prosperity in the homeland and a globally beneficial American authority abroad.