Radical Critique and Progressive Traditionalism in John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath 1

Abstract

This essay explores the radical critique of capitalism offered by John Ford's film, The Grapes of Wrath. Building on E.P. Thompson's notion of `radical traditionalism', I argue that Ford offers an economically radical critique of capitalism based upon the symbolic resources of patriarchy and racial exclusion. In order to understand the social impact of Ford's cinema, I reconstruct the symbolic and semiotic resources of the laboring community during the late 1930s, relying upon labor histories and community and cultural studies of the period. After examining those semio-social resources, I argue that Ford's work was both re-made by its times and contributed to the formation of a kind of `working class consciousness' in American cinema. I conclude by offering suggestions concerning the limits of solidarity produced by this radical economic critique based in a symbolic traditionalism.