Spiraling down the Smelting Pot: Economic Determinism and the Working-Class Hero in The Deer Hunter (Cimino, 1978) and Out of the Furnace (Cooper, 2013)

Abstract

Abstract: Coming thirty-five years after The Deer Hunter, Out of the Furnace , a largely overlooked drama directed by Scott Cooper, seems to revisit Michael Cimino's Vietnam War classic: both focus on working-class Pennsylvania communities against the backdrop of industrial landscapes and decay, war trauma, and even deer hunting. Yet the resemblance between the two films should not overshadow their differences. Cooper's film acknowledges the material limitations of working-class life, which were partly dismissed in The Deer Hunter 's representation of a humble yet convivial Russian American community of steel workers, three of whom set out to fight for their country in Vietnam. Conversely, in Out of the Furnace , two brothers grow apart as one accepts his unsatisfactory working-class position and the other serves in Iraq, hoping to make enough money to escape the mill. This article proposes a parallel between the two films' treatment of working-class masculinity and class determinism in the Rust Belt region at two different yet comparable periods in American history.