Midnight Cowboy Essay

3 Pages 854 Words

The film that I Choose was ‘Midnight Cowboy’ directed by John Schlesinger. It’s the classic story of a sleazy con man named Ratso Rizzo and a Texas “cowboy” Joe Buck, and their adventures in just trying to survive off the streets of New York City. This film was made in 1969 and caused a tremendous awakening because of its graphic depictions and sexual innuendos. Despite all of this, and an x rating, the film still won Academy Awards for best picture, best director, and best screenplay.
Midnight Cowboy starts out similar to that of movies from the 1950’s and early 1960’s, with Joe Buck being an innocent country boy looking for the “American Dream” in the big city. However, unlike those movies, he comes to New York City to be a so-called “hustler” and make his money by being a stud, a male prostitute for men and women of the city. This type of sexual looseness and lack of morals is something that movies of the late 60’s brought to theaters, something that was not seen in the sexually conservative 50’s. The movies theme goes along with the era in which it was made, which coincidentally coincided the sexual revolution. All of this made the idea of a man coming to the city to make money by selling his body seem plausible.
This was a time when movies took advantage of their new-won freedom in pursuit of social realism. Hollywood was making films it wouldn’t dare of made even in 1966-68 and for ‘Midnight Cowboy’ an x-rated movie to win the best picture of 1969; it showed a completion of the movie revolution. This movie was even applauded by the national church groups, who in earlier times had been their biggest foe (Chaplin 6).
For the first time in history, American movies with down beat and pessimistic themes became the rule rather than the exception. Violence, sex, and race were the big box office draws during this era. It was an unparallel profusion of gore, despair, and sexual explicitness,...