It wasn't always thus. After all, Welles and company thought they were being censored, even if they weren't. Robbins is muddying the waters here. At the very least, Cradle Will Rock is a rollicking ode to the Federal Theater Project, to its achievements as well as its innocence. But the film laments the passing of socialistic fervor as well, as most Hollywood movies about the left do.
Radicalism is a bright light most safely viewed from a distance of many years.
That Robbins is acknowledging the dilapidated state of theater in America is a given, but there's another layer to the onion. The bright, lifeless mass culture that has overtaken midtown Manhattan is Disney's, of course, and Disney produced and distributed Cradle Will Rock . The movie may be endorsing dissent, but pay to see it, and you shake hands with the devil. Little more needs to be said about both the tenacity of the active left and the untouchable power of corporate culture in the year 1999. 11 no. 5, January 17, 2000.