Country was intended as a contemporary, politically charged counterpart to The Grapes of Wrath, depicting an Iowa farm family threatened by low crop prices, mounting interest on Farmers Home Administration loans, foreclosure pressure, and a tornado. Its subject matter struck a nerve in Washington. President Ronald Reagan recorded in his personal diary that the 1984 film was a “blatant propaganda message against our agri programs,” treating a fictional family drama as an attack on the administration’s agricultural policies. The reaction went beyond private criticism: several members of Congress took the film seriously enough to bring Jessica Lange, who had conceived the project, co-produced it, and starred in it, before a congressional panel to testify as an expert on life on family farms. The episode demonstrated how intensely the farm crisis had entered American political culture, and how a Hollywood production could become an unexpected participant in a national policy dispute.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
Jessica Lange Summoned to Congress After Country Was Treated as Farm-Policy Propaganda
Country / 1980s
Country was intended as a contemporary, politically charged counterpart to The Grapes of Wrath, depicting an Iowa farm family threatened by low crop prices, mounting interest on Farmers Home Administration loans, foreclosure pressure, and a tornado. Its subject matter struck a nerve in Washington. President Ronald Reagan recorded in his personal diary that the 1984 film was a “blatant propaganda message against our agri programs,” treating a fictional family drama as an attack on the administration’s agricultural policies. The reaction went beyond private criticism: several members of Congress took the film seriously enough to bring Jessica Lange, who had conceived the project, co-produced it, and starred in it, before a congressional panel to testify as an expert on life on family farms. The episode demonstrated how intensely the farm crisis had entered American political culture, and how a Hollywood production could become an unexpected participant in a national policy dispute.
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